I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but October is here. Walk into any store and you’re greeted with pumpkins, mums, and heaps of Halloween candy. In another month or so, shops will be covered in fake snow and sparkly snowflakes and will be packed with trees up to the rafters.

In a brick-and-mortar store, holiday decorations draw attention to the seasonal items for sale. They also give the store a fresh look that might entice customers who would otherwise just pass by the store.

How can you do the same in a web environment? Let’s look at some tips.

1) What holidays, if any, should you “decorate” for? Think about what your site sells and the content it presents. If you sell golf clubs, you might consider winter themes for holiday shoppers, or perhaps some Father’s Day features. Halloween decorations, on the other hand, probably don’t make a lot of sense. If your blog contains craft tips and recipes, a large number of holiday schemes may be appropriate. The point is that you’re not decorating just for fun; you’re trying to get visitors excited about your offerings.

At marthastewart.com, Halloween is on display both in the content and in the overall look and feel.

2) How far should you take it? For a site with only a tangential relation to a holiday, use subtle touches, like a fall color scheme in the background or a tiny pumpkin in a corner. (more…)

Last Friday, I was speaking with a Marketing Mentor client about two proposals she was about to spend the weekend writing.

She was very excited about these new projects, but when I asked her what the budgets were, she said she didn’t know. It wasn’t that she had neglected to ask that all important question. In fact, she had, but the prospect wasn’t forthcoming with that information. My client didn’t want to push at the time, perhaps because she didn’t wish to annoy or anger this potential customer.

To her, each job was worth at least $20,000, but in reality, she didn’t know if her prospect would be able to afford that. To me, preparing the proposals without first learning this essential information sounded like a potentially colossal waste of her time, not to mention her weekend.

So I suggested she get on the phone before putting pen to paper, and I told her to ask the question that even a client who refuses to give you a budget can’t evade: “Are you thinking $500, $5000, or $25,000?”

Could that work for you? Would your clients answer that simple question?

Search engine optimization is big business these days. Type SEO into Google and you’ll find hundreds of individuals and organizations promising to place your page near the top of the major indexes, for a fee of course.

Unfortunately, it’s rarely that simple, for each search engine has its own secret formula for generating results. Meta tags, links and who knows what else influence these calculations, so there is just no one right answer. However, at the most basic level, (more…)

In my last Marketing Mentor Tip, How to Dominate Your Market, I focused on what you get if you decide to specialize — namely higher fees because clients are willing to pay for expertise.

But how do you choose which market to focus on? This is the question that stumps many designers.

So here are a few questions to ask yourself about the markets you’re considering:

1. What size and of what type are the projects available through this market?
2. Are they the kind of projects that you enjoy and are capable of doing? Or do the projects conflict with the kind of work you normally do?
3. Do you have experience and samples to show interested prospects?
4. Does this market know they need your services?

Defining your market and determining if that market is viable will be the topic this Thursday, September 27 when my partner, Peleg Top, and I give our first of the Grow Your Business from Your Desktop webinar series in partnership with HOW Magazine.

Let’s face it: once you’re April Greiman, Edward Tufte or anyone else on the AIGA list of medalists, you can kick back in a (well-appointed, loft-like) cave dug into the side of a mountain and hungry acolytes will hunt you down.

Until then, it’s up to you to draw eyeballs, and I don’t mean the kind Daniel Johnston is partial to (although, hey—it’s worked for him) . So how do you create some kind of presence? How do you bridge the gap between Talented Neophyte Sans Cred and Design Elder?

Promotion, promotion, promotion. (The good kind, not the cringe-inducing sort.) (more…)

Many designers believe that marketing the widest range of services to the largest possible group is the path to success. You’d rather be a generalist because you think you’ll get more business. And on one level it makes sense: the more opportunities you have to make a sale, the more sales you are likely to make. But in reality it doesn’t work that way. In fact, success comes to those who focus on (more…)

In my last post, I addressed a new and irrefutable ability to quantity design’s ROI. Way cool! Now we can prove design’s specific contribution to bottom line profits! That’s gotta be good. Right?

Well…Before we jump at the prospect of quantifying design, we should strongly consider if we should.What are the ramifications of measuring design? How will this change the process? What are the valid concerns?

In this post I will address some of these concerns and provide my thoughts on why proving design’s value is a still a good thing—in fact, it’s a very good thing if, and only if, the information that results from this process is properly positioned. (more…)

Kitchen designers figured this out a long time ago: the better the flow, the more productive output. The famed kitchen work triangle—that connection between sink/stove/fridge—makes it easier for the cook to maneuver without wasted motion.

If you haven’t already, start applying that principle to your own workspace. Don’t worry about the “right” way; you’re looking for your best way to organize things so that you can take care of business. For example:

• Do you have the phone within reach, and a pen/pad of paper near it to take down messages as you get them?

(more…)

I take most taglines with a grain of salt, but when MOO says “We love to print” I think they really mean it.

The MOO website, moo.com, is as fun as the products they print.]

Many designers have a love/hate relationship with printing. Print materials can look so amazing, and are so essential to promotion, but can be a real challenge to put together. Isn’t it time you had a little more fun with your print work? (more…)

Chocolate promos?

Besides business card and letterhead, have you ever created any kind of promotional mailer piece for yourself as a designer? So much emphasis has been placed on the online portfolio of late that I feel physical, tangible methods of self-promotion have fallen by the wayside among designers entering the industry today. But that’s exactly why a well-done mailer can catch people’s attention. (more…)