Hey Old Business, Try to Keep Up.

The older generation of business man understands a very important principal about building business that the younger generation has trouble with. Build the relationship, build the business! If you have no relationship with your customer, it is easy for them to switch somewhere else. If your relationship is solid, they most likely won't leave on a whim. Simply put, if you do your job well, people will come and do business with you, period.

This strategy is the way to keep customers doing business with you forever. The new question is, is a good relationship with your customer enough?

Today is the design age. Great design is everywhere and, more importantly, a requirement. Everything from toilet brushes, waste baskets, sink faucets, and even tissue boxes are designed to perfection. Why? Because people associate the outside with the inside. In the same way, fancy restaurants "design" or plate the food before it arrives to your table.

While the older style of relationship business building is still key, new business doesn't come as easy anymore. More tools and resources make it easier to start a business today and therefore the competition is greater and more fierce. In this design age, your prospect is bombarded with marketing messages every day. The options are simply to vast in number for your prospect to consider every one. Instead they must narrow down their options in the least amount of time, and hope to gain the best results. How will they do this? It's quite simple, if they don't know anything about your company, the public image you put out there is all they have to go by.

Your relationship building will keep your customer forever, but your great design will give them a reason to walk in that door.

Does Your Innovation Lead to Stagnation?

All marketers have been there; they have endured the beads of sweat and coped with the stress of coming up with a new idea. They are commissioned to turn the company around, or increase revenue. In a quest for new ideas or innovative new marketing tactics, it is very common to get caught up in pushing the envelope or pioneering new design trends just for the sake of change.

Frequently, a great idea is brought to the table, and in the excitement of the moment, your team and your designer begin adding and tweaking this new idea to the point of prodigious complexity. While there is nothing wrong with adding or tweaking your next marketing idea, this process can become risky when you innovate just for the sake of innovation, rather than solving the real issue. You could easily end up with something that just blends into the noise.

When the problem solving begins and ideas start flying it is common for your team to start focusing on beauty, aesthetics or the next hot trend. Resist the temptation of stagnation and remember these 4 points:

1. Does this idea directly achieve our goal? Your new design or marketing campaign must have an achievable result. If the new idea does not show potential in delivering direct results, scrap it no matter how painful.

2. Is this information easy to comprehend and remember? Is the message communicated clearly? Your customers are in a hurry, either spark their attention so they stick around, or give them something simple and easy to recall later.

3. What can we remove? Start to question "why" about EVERYTHING! Why is that texture behind the image? Why is this blue? Why are their scratch marks over this photo? If no one has a good answer, it's time to get rid of that element.

4. Don't be afraid to throw it out! If you have an idea that is almost good, or nearly perfect but you just can't make it work. Throw it out!! In many cases you will spend lots of time on something that cannot work. If you throw it out (or simply set it aside) there is a better chance of having an epiphany later that will connect the dots.

Are your great ideas being overshadowed by thoughtless elements, or complexity? Will your new idea blend into the sea of fake creativity? Is your innovation leading to stagnation?

Don't Compare Yourself to Your Competition.

Why do you obsess over your competition? Why don't you simply obsess over your customer? To covet your competition or their offerings is a very dangerous angle to take, not only in business but in the marketing of your business. To focus on others in the same industry always leads to mediocrity and of course guarantees you will be one step behind. If you are comfortable simply picking up the crumbs that your competitor discarded, stop reading. If you want that big juicy steak on the table read on...

It is good to point out why you are the best option for your customer, but stay away from mentioning specific competitors. In design, marketing and advertising, when you use your competitor as a spring board to sell your own stuff, three negative scenarios could play out.

1. It makes prospects aware of your competition: Seriously, do you want to give your competition free publicity? If you mention your competition people will most certainly Google them. Sure they aren't as cool as you, but does your prospect know that?

2. Comparisons are for similar products or services: Your prospect or customer will assume you offer a similar product or service. Comparisons in advertising or marketing are the first step to turning what you offer into a commodity.

3. People will assume you are inferior: We are advertised and marketed to every single day. If you have to compare yourself to your competition there is a good chance your audience will assume your competitor is better. After all, you used them as an example, they must be the authority on the subject.

Aren't you the best at what you do? Do you really want to send your competitor business? Is it time to re-write your marketing strategy?

Wake Up, Good Design Isn't About Decoration!

My jump off point for this post is a genius blog post by Garr Reynolds over at www.PresentationZen.com. He's a spiffy guy, please read his post.

I would say the biggest misconception about the graphic designer is that their job is to make things look pretty. Is this really why you hire them though? In Garr's post he makes a statement that sounds all too familiar:

"Design — even graphic design — is not about beautification. Design is not just about aesthetics, though aesthetics are important. More than anything, design is about solving problems or making the current situation a little better than before. Design is not art, though there is art in design."

A graphic designer's true objective should be to focus on a tangible goal to achieve. In most cases this tangible goal is to grow bottom line revenue, however this goal could also grow membership, publicize a cause, or find your lost dog Snuffy.

Design doesn't come easy, your designer doesn't just go to the computer and create shapes; creating visuals is about 5% of his or her job. The other 95% of his job is problem solving to find visual answers, and better understand what you audience will relate to. There must be some level of attractive display, but this should never be the top priority. I have seen plenty of design projects in my day that were beautiful but failed to accomplish company goals. (Maybe there were no goals to begin with, maybe the project was one of those things "we have always done")

What questions could be asked before the process begins to avoid these problems? How much more could companies achieve by leveraging great design? What good questions should be asked to make sure design focuses on achieving goals?