By Shaun Crowley

Freelance designers who specialize in marketing materials are in high demand. As a result, freelance promotions designers can make a lot of money. So what specialized skills do you need to be a publicity designer?

I’m a copywriter and I work with designers. I prefer to work with designers who understand the marketing aims of the graphic design assignment I hand to them. I tend not to call upon designers who design visuals that are unsuitable for the sales messages I am trying to communicate in my copy, however good the design looks.

That’s why the tips I reveal in this article are not really ‘design’ tips. They are practical tips aimed at giving you clarity when you interpret your brief. If you want tips on what colors or effects to use, this article isn’t for you. If you want ideas to help you plan your approach to publicity design, read on.
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Freelance designers who produce marketing materials will know that design and copy should be developed together to work well.

But sometimes there isn’t enough budget for teaming with a copywriter. Or the client needs a project in a hurry. That’s when being able to produce concept and copy in addition to design can be a powerful business advantage.

It goes without saying that an ability to write is fundamental. But you don’t have to be a copywriter to produce strong concepts and write copy for many smaller projects.

Think of the concept as a hook, a lead-in that will grab readers’ attention and persuade them to read on. Think of the copy as a fulfillment of the concept’s premise, the fleshing out of the product story.

Avoid trying to do too much, bombarding readers with multiple copy and visual messages. For any piece to be persuasive and memorable, its design, headlines, visuals, and copy must work together to communicate one single and strong message.

As idea starters, below are thirteen simple concept/copy approaches. Each has been proven to help deliver sales results.
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By Shaun Crowley

Wouldn’t it be great if new clients contacted you? In the following article I’ll show you how to conquer the search engines so prospective clients can find you online. We’ll look at four core areas: Choosing your keywords, Making the content of your website searchable, Fulfilling the needs of browsers, and Getting other sites to link to you.
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By Shaun Crowley

If you have an interesting story to tell, a press release will help you to make newspaper editors aware of it.
Maybe you recently won an award. Maybe you stumbled upon some interesting information in the field you work in. Or maybe your design contributed towards some kind of achievement on behalf of your client.
Depending on the scale and content of your story, you can send your press release to marketing websites, marketing magazines, the relevant trade press, the regional press, and even the business section of the national press.

Don’t confuse a press release with an advertorial. Advertorials are essentially promotional articles. If you want your press release to be treated seriously, you’ll have to sacrifice the temptation to plug the benefits of your service up-front, and instead disguise them with informative content.

Let’s assume you have an interesting story to tell. How do you present it in a way that encourages editors to print it?
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By Shaun Crowley

Last week, Shaun told us how to frugally market your freelance business. This week, he tells us how to:

PART 2: HOW TO BOOST YOUR FREELANCING JOB OPPORTUNITIES AND INCREASE YOUR FEE ON EVERY PROJECT

Last week we offered best-practice promotion for all freelance artists. Now let’s examine some ideas for artists who want to go a step further. How can you market your business to double, treble, even quadruple your regular income?

A unique aspect of your service might be a specific skill you specialize in or a layer of service you provide that others don’t. For example, if you are a graphic designer, your unique selling proposition may be one of the following:
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By Shaun Crowley

PART 1: HOW TO FRUGALLY MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

Get the most out of business cards
Business cards are your most important publicity items. They tell people how to contact you (don’t rely on email signatures—clients will wipe off your emails without hesitation and will not be able to contact you when a job comes up).

Your business card should be smart, clean, and easy-to-read. Don’t be too flamboyant. I know a designer who had his details printed from left-to-right on one side, and his details printed backwards from right-to-left on the other side. Whilst filing it away, his biggest potential client clipped it onto a backer card inside out. When she called upon it later she couldn’t make sense of it. Consequently she trashed the card and called another designer.
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By Shaun Crowley

Your design can only be as good as the brief you worked from. The best projects are borne from briefs that are open enough to inspire ideas, while being specific enough to feel workable. Shaun Crowley shows how you can elicit these kinds of briefs by providing clients with briefing templates.

Picture the scene. You’ve just landed a new client, who hurries a brief to you for a marketing brochure. There are a few holes in the brief, but instead of asking for constant clarification, you get to work. Later you’re told the design “isn’t quite right”. Before you know it, the client is refusing to pay.

Familiar story? All too familiar for most freelance designers I know. Ambiguous design briefs are infuriating. What’s worse, clients who set you up to fail often go away thinking you stuffed up.

So what can you do to avoid this?
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Adapted from The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook by Shaun Crowley

Image from iStockPhoto

For many people, telephone prospecting can be a painful process. You know it’s a necessary activity—without it, your work will sooner or later dry up.

This article shows you how to gather the courage and the impetus to phone for work, and how to improve your telephone technique for maximum effect. Continue Reading