Our January 2012 newsletter kicked off our 10 year celebration and included some reflection on what we’ve learned the last 10 years. This top ten series will further explain the navel-gazing thoughts.

Clients want—and need—design that builds business.

You hire a creative firm for one main reason – to improve your business. Whether it’s a design firm, a full service marketing company, ad agency or web development firm, you are looking to increase business, your market share.

That being said, the prettiest, coolest, wittiest most clever creative work does you no good if it’s not aligned with business objectives and lead prospects to take action.

Does your branding resonate with your audience and tell us why we should buy from you? Does your advertising have strong calls-to-action? Is your website Google-able, engaging and tell people what to do next? Does the piece, or the very notion of doing it connect with something you are trying to achieve? How will you measure success?

Pre-Creative Phase

Before even launching into creative, do a plan. Whether with professional help or on your own. Determine specifically what you are trying to achieve (ie: more enquiries by web form) and how you’ll measure success (ie: 20% increase per month). Know who your target audience is and that it will take several points of contact to get a sale. What are there concerns and what do you want them to think of your company? If you have these things in mind as you work on your creative you can ask at every step, will this support my business goals?

Creative Phase

While developing your business-building creative according to your well thought out plan, new ideas or opportunities will certainly come up, but you’ll have objectives to weight them againast. Ask yourself ‘will doing this here help me get there?’

Whether planned, or new ideas, constantly ensure that everything supports each other and fits together, leads people along a path to what you want them to do next and ultimately to whatever your goal was. And track it!

To find out if your marketing is working hard together, book a free Marketing Map session.