Marketing your services

by David Wright (dwright@artmaze.com) - Artmaze (http://www.artmaze.com)

As I already wrote in my other articles, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is very different from marketing a product in a box. I also mentioned that one of the main differences is that the “need” for most products has to be created, and most of consumers don’t really need the products they buy (clearly some food and similar essential items are exceptions). A business needs business, to be in business. Your services are needed and the following should help you understand the basics on common marketing tools such as using brochures, videos and other media.

About your potential clients and competition:

I also wrote briefly about identifying your potential clients. Clearly architects, developers and B2B Marketing companies are potential clients in addition to other similar design oriented-companies. As well as identifying your potential clients you also need to identify your potential competition, their localization, approximately rates and business practices. Frequently, architectural offices, in particular the larger ones, have internal rendering departments, or at least one dedicated architect/drafter that does the 3D work. Clearly, selling your services to these types of clients is more difficult and requires a bit more strategy from your side.

Some competitors are single-person companies, some others are 2 to 5 person businesses (probably the majority) and a small few are larger than that. The larger ones tend to be more marketing focused, than just offering services. This seems to be a new trend in our industry, one that I highly recommend you to observe and think about. To become one of the larger firms, or to stay in business for the coming years, you have to become a professional marketer, not just an artist, or an architectural renderer, where services are part of your total offering, and marketing solutions will complete your offering.

Marketing Tools

Going back to the basics; let us talk about our common marketing tools. Most of these tools are obvious but the correct use of them is not. Start by producing a brochure, a portfolio, a demonstration tape and other common media such as DVD’s, CDROM’s, postcards, and “Thank you” notes. Then, most importantly, think about public relations and the effective use of your phone.

Frequently, artists that want to sell their services understand the basics of mentioned tools, but just as frequently commit mistakes that make their marketing investment useless. The following simple scenarios demonstrate the most common mistakes:

Brochures:

Sending brochures to a list of addresses: You print a brochure, using professional printers / 4 color press output. You invest time and money for the production and mailing. Then you obtain a list of companies and send these brochures to your list of companies. These lists probably have the main company address but not any particular person’s name. The result is that about 97% of your mailing will not end up at the desk that matters, and the surviving 3% still has only a 1% chance of getting a positive reply. Practically all the effort and money is lost. What to do? Save the brochures, print fewer quantities and use your phone. Call these companies, obtain real names, talk to those potential clients, explain your services and inform them that you are sending them a brochure with more material. Then after some time, you follow up to obtain a meeting for a short 15min personal presentation of your work to them.

Sending brochures to a list of addresses with a name: Similarly to our first scenario your results depend on statistics; but you already are very much better off. Your chances for them to call you back are still the same, therefore is mandatory that you improve this as I already explained in the first example. Look at it this way, on average on a 1000 address mailing, you may get, if lucky, a 1% return call rate after reading your material cold. It is cheaper and faster to mail less and use your phone than expecting clients to call you. Your brochures are best used for leaving after a meeting, as a constant reminder of your existence. These types of clients share something in common: they do not have much time, they usually do not open unsolicited mail, and they are unlikely to call you first unless you are very lucky. Most of these service based businesses are done by public relations and establishing friendships, not my mail, bulk mail, spam or other product based marketing processes.

Brochure messaging: Without a doubt, to show your visual imagery is the key for this business and any other where visuals work is your product. The brochure must supply a clear message, and clearly stating what your services are. Don’t expect clients to guess that you produce animations if you don’t mention it, or that your company also produces still renderings if you only mention animations. This is a common mistake; you have to be very clear about your offering, and your offer has to make sense.

Demotapes & DVD’s: If your company offers animation work, you must have media that demonstrates such work; obviously a demo-tape is common. Similar to brochures, the sending through the mail of video tapes or dvd’s to addresses from a list is not a good idea in itself. It is highly expensive and with no guarantee of positive results, and simply is the wrong way of doing B2B marketing. My opinion though, is that this method results in a higher positive response rate than just sending a brochure. Videos and dvd’s still generate some curiosity in the recipient that a typical cdrom-brochure combination don’t cause any more. There is a better chance that potential clients open and look your video than deciding your envelope that contains your brochure wrapped round your cdrom.

In addition to these warnings, some competitors will request demo-tapes from you in order to check your work; I personally don’t have a problem with this, but I do want to warn you that some companies that do not have 3D facilities or abilities may request demos to use them for their own bids; to attach your nice video with their work to perhaps get a contract. This last one is also part of the business but frequently is done without you know about it. Always find out who is requesting your videos and if they don’t look like a potential client, then call and ask the reason for the request. If such a company has to use your work to make or even win a bid, there is no guarantee that they will use your services in the end. It would be a good idea that they sign an agreement first.

Websites: Your website is your most important brochure, one that can serve images and videos and act as an advertisement. Your messaging and contact information should be very clear, and as I mentioned with brochures, clearly defining your offering is essential. It can de used as an electronic brochure, that you forward to potential clients during or after a phone conversation or before a presentation.

A very common mistake is to think that your website, no matter how great it is, will replace the executive sales process. Many of us think that a website is a self-running machine that will bring you business. From all our years in business, our own website only produced one successful contract from an unsolicited bid request. But we do have very high hit rates and have constant requests for estimates and demotapes from all over the world. What the website does for us is to create name recognition and show the quality of sample work. It makes it very much easier to get an appointment with the right persons. But I am sure that many of you have already figured out, that practically no website contacts are converted into clients, and site-originated bid requests are more likely to come from competitors or companies that need an extra bid for a pre-fixed bid process. My regretful conclusion after all these years is that websites bring the wrong contacts. The best advice is to stick to classical practices, such as using your phone effectively.

Regarding your website design, the only thing I want to comment on, is that some go too far on the artistic side, mainly with those pages that are done using Flash. The only think you communicate is the opposite of what you should communicate, which should be a clear, and quick message, with contact information. Many potential clients don’t have the patience to figure out weird user interfaces that just communicates complexity instead of simplicity. Remember, your website should be used as a tool and not as a self-running sales mechanism, for which it does not work.

Printed Portfolio: for your presentations, I highly recommend you to have a letter sized printed portfolio that presents only the best of your work. Such a portfolio can be most impressive to potential clients and very usable for discussing styles, colors, and textures with them. This portfolio should consist of single white sheets with either one or two images and titles per sheet. In addition to this portfolio, printing your best images in a large size also helps. Most of medium and large architectural offices have walls that you can easily afix your work; which is great for presentations over lunch.

CDROM: I don’t have sufficient data to prove that this media is not really useful for your marketing, but my colleagues and I share a negative opinion about this. Since the early ‘90s there is a new tendency for people to resist their curiosity and not launch a cdrom that they got in the mail. Perhaps AOL’s massive CDROM marketing plan and its aftermath is partly to blame, but I think a DVD Video or a VHS has better chances of being viewed than a CDROM. Also, you can burn video DVDs to have data in them.

Email: To be brief, use email for email purposes, anything else is spam. Most of us extreme dislike it, so it does not work for services, but has some success for mass products. I receive plenty of spam from our market, mainly people that are fishing for subcontracting jobs from the more successful companies. There is nothing wrong with doing “business development”, but spamming is not the way to do it; use your phone or write a very personalized email. It’s better to call 10 companies than emailing 500, I promise you will get better results.

Postcards: If you can afford it, a good idea is once in a while to send a simple color postcard with your recent work on the front. Clearly this is expensive, but it works. It keeps your clients in contact, so they will remember you, your company and services. Sending electronic postcards is different, it can and will be treated by some as spam email.

Final Word:

The market has inertia. Anything you do is a series of tiny pushes that hopefully will eventually get to the point where you will get a client. You must persist in using all the marketing tools that we all have, and integrate them into a single intelligent message that you exist and know what you are doing; an intelligent way to communicate and get positive results. As I have said so many times, your best tool is your phone. Good luck!

David Wright is a long-time 3D user and CG artist and has succeeded in the A/E/C (Architectural / Engineering / CAD) market with “Artmaze”, becoming a leading provider of integrated 3D animated visuals and multimedia services. Comments or suggestions about this article are welcome; David can be reached via email at dwright@artmaze.com