Small Business Marketing Guide - DIY (do-it-yourself) BRAND MARKETING STRATEGIES to HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Your company is small. Your budget is small. You want good design, but you wonder, “Can I get good design at an affordable price?”

Yes. You can do it yourself.

But first, be aware of the common perils DIY designers fall into. Before you start any design project, keep these do’s and don’ts in mind:

DON’T fix it, if it ain’t broke

You need design for two major reasons:

1. Your goals have changed
2. You aren’t achieving your current goals

If your goals are the same—you’re satisfied and successful—then why redesign what’s already working?

DO define your goals

Unfortunately, goals rarely remain the same over time. Why? Because the environment or context of your business is always changing. For example:

• You’ve grown
• New competitors have emerged
• New technologies have been released

Changes in the business environment trigger changes in your business goals, or they make your current goals harder to achieve. So you must modify your goals or create new ones. These goals that must be clear, and you must decide which is most important. For example:

• I want to attract a new audience
• I want retain enough customers to survive a downturn
• I want to remain the leader in my product category

Setting goals enable you to know where you’re going and when you’ve arrived. Goals give you something to measure; it creates an explicit contract. How do you know if the design is right? Ask, “Does it meet the goal?”

Different and new goals entail changes in your company’s behavior. Customers need to know about these changes.

How?

Through messages. And through the design of these messages.

DON’T send multiple messages

A clear goal helps you form a focused message. Here are some examples:

• We have a new product for you
• Our old product has a new feature
• We have a sale
• We’re still number one
• We treat our customers best
• We’re trustworthy

Never communicate too many messages. It’s harder for customers to remember why your company is different. For example: Don’t use your logo to convey strength, innovation, success, leadership, cheerfulness, luxury, and responsibility all at once. You cannot be all things at once.

DO focus on one message

All messages are not created equal. Pick the absolutely most important message you want customers to remember. Then, focus all your design efforts on that single message. This reduces the customer’s forgetfulness, confusion, and uncertainty.

If you must communicate other messages, treat them as secondary and never equal to the primary message.

For example, the success of President Obama’s campaign relied on a single memorable message:

• Change we can believe in

Supporting this message, he consistently appeared young, calm, and thoughtful, when McCain did not.

DON’T use poor typography

Typography is one way to express a message. The way you set your message in type affects how the message is perceived. Poor typography makes your message harder to read, understand, and remember. Avoid these mistakes:

• Too many fonts; Too many sizes
• Bad font choices (overly decorative, unreadable, trendy)
• Poor typesetting (inconsiderate letterspacing, word spacing, line spacing, and line lengths)
• Distorted type (stretching, disproportionate scaling, and mutilation of letters)
• No hierarchy (everything treated the same)
• ALL CAPS

DO pay attention to typography

Good typography is clear, legible, and conveys your message effectively. It’s hard for both amateur and professional designers to learn good typography. But here are some general tips:

• Pick the most important word or phrase, and make it stand out from the rest.
• Treat similar information in a similar form
• Don’t make words or phrases stand out randomly.

DON’T try to get it perfect the first time

Designers can be “obsessive-compulsive.” While attention-to-detail is a trait every designer should have, diving into the details too early can drown you. Avoid this trap and create as many flawed prototypes as early as possible. They key to good design–like good writing–is editing and revision.

DO revise, revise, and revise

Writer Anne Lamott refers to the flawed prototype as the “Sh***y First Draft,” the first attempt “where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place.” As a designer, you’ll need to create many Shi***y First Drafts. You don’t care if it’s perfect, just as long as you start explore many ideas. Then you can evaluate them to learn what works and doesn’t. This testing process leads to revisions, more drafts, and the process starts again.

DON’T do it yourself

When what you’re designing fails to accomplish your defined goals and also fails to communicate your message, then it’s time to stop designing it yourself and hire help.

DO hire someone

OK, you’ve saved up some money to hire a pro, but you still can’t afford the top-tier firms. Is there a happy medium between DIY and expensive top-tier firms? Yes. Try these sources:

• Design students (Contact the local design school and ask for contacts. Check portfolio sites like Coroflot)
• Freelancers (look for them on Craigslist and Elance)
• Pro-bono designers (If you’re a non-profit, you might qualify for help from studios like Joey’s Corner)
• Boutique design studios (Check AIGA for a list of small design studios)

When hiring professional help, remember: fast, good, cheap–pick two. Getting all three is nearly impossible. Here’s how to hire a designer:

• Don’t send an RFP
• Do send a creative brief
• Ask to see samples of past work
• Above all, have a conversation—you need to be comfortable and able to talk
• Start small—keep the risk low. e.g. design an ad or web page
• Ask for a “fixed fee”—not an hourly rate. This makes the designer think about total hours in advance and provides an incentive to work fast.

Additional resources

• The Non-Designer’s Design & Type Books
• DIY: Design It Yourself
• Making and Breaking the Grid
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
• The Elements of Typographic Style
• Thinking with Type
• Better Typography Without Design school