When the Boss Gets Sick: Part 2

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Yesterday I talked about how I use auto responders and auto reply emails to notify clients and potential clients that I am out of the office.  This is a great way to notify people that I am out, but not so great if a client has an emergency that they need taken care of.  This is where a back-up plan comes into play.  I have two back-ups that are still in theory/idea form, because I have not needed to utilize them.  One is a virtual assistant and the other is a relationship with other freelancers that do the same thing I do.

For the most part, freelancers get along with each other and some in similar fields work together and help each other out when needed.  Some send overflow work to each other and others step in when someone is sick or unable to facilitate their client’s needs.  While we are technically competitors, in my own my mind, we are not.  In my field in particular, I feel that each designer has a particular design aesthetic that shows in their portfolio and body of work.  Design is often subjective.  What appeals and looks great to someone, may look dreadful to someone else.  There is a reason why my client’s choose me and a reason why others choose someone else.  For that reason, I do not see my fellow freelance graphic designers as direct competition.  Plus, I also believe that what is for me, is for me and what is for them, is for them.

I respect them and their work and when I work with other freelancers on their client’s projects, I am careful to try not to appear like a separate entity if I have direct contact with the end client.  Recently, I played a back-up role for a freelancer (really, she is an agency) that needed to take a leave of absence for a new bundle of joy on a couple of projects.  She had a team of back-ups that stepped in to keep her business running smoothly, clients happy and work flowing while she was out.  It was kind of awe-inspiring for me to see how the relationships she had developed and fostered turned into something that was kind of beautiful.  All of us lending a hand to help someone like ourselves, a small business owner that needed to take time off.  I hope that if I had a similar need, the relationships I have developed would do the same.

My other back-up idea is more for communication and admin purposes: a virtual assistant.  All of my client files are stored in “the cloud.”  My theory is that if a client had an emergency and needed to have a file sent, something looked up, information, etc., that could not wait until I was back at work, a virtual assistant could help to facilitate those needs.  My theory is that they could use one of the (many) email addresses I have set up and I could include this address as a point of contact for emergencies in the auto responder email.  Because my files are in the cloud, I could give them access to look up information or send files to clients.

Thankfully, I have not had to put any of these theoretical plans into action, but it does make me feel good to know that there is a plan in case I need it.

Do you have any plans in place for running your business when you cannot physically do so?

When the Boss Gets Sick: Part 1

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I do not get sick very often, but I recently fell ill to the point that I needed to take some time off from work.  The great part about being the boss is that you do not need to file a vacation request or ask for sick leave.  However, the awful part about being the boss in a one-person firm (freelancer) is that if you take a break, the business may have to go on hiatus with you.  Of course this depends on the type of business, business model, etc., but in my case, the business was on break.

It happened the week of Christmas, so it was fairly easy to take the week off to recuperate and I had only planned to work 2 of those days before falling ill.  Although working as a freelancer I am a one-person entity, I do have a few things in place to help me out in case of illness.  One is fairly simple; my auto responder emails.  The bulk of my business comes from two places: through my website and via referrals.  Referrals either contact me directly, via email or through my website.  The first point of contact from me for inquiries through my site and referrals is via email and this is where an auto responder comes in.  When I am sick, on vacation or out of the office for an extended amount of time, I turn on my “out of office” email auto responder.  This lets those that contact me directly via email, know that I am out of the office and when I expect to return.

There is also an auto responder/reply email attached to each service inquiry form on this site.  Depending on the form that is being filled out, an auto reply email goes out to the submitter of that form either with additional information about the service they are inquiring about or a time table for when they will hear back from me.  If I had needed, I could have set all of the forms to send out a reply that I was out of the office due to illness for a specified amount of time.  Because of the way I have my business set up, the types of replies that form submitters receive, and the fact that it was a major holiday, I did not make this change.

While I was out for a week, because of the Christmas holiday, it did not have much of an impact on my business.  Auto responder emails are a simple and easily accessible tool that most solo-preneurs can use.  Tomorrow I will talk about the back-up plans that I have.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2014

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new-year-resolutionLast year I made a couple of business resolutions that I came pretty close to achieving.  This year, I am making a resolution that is both personal and business related.  My resolution for 2014 is to make more art…  For some, this might sound weird because I am a graphic designer and for some, what I do for a living is art.  However, I want to make more art outside of my graphic design.  Prior to becoming what I call, “a real adult.”  I use to paint, shoot photography and draw.  I have been creating since I was born.  As a baby, it was with words (babbling).  As a youngster, crafting and drawing and in college, I began painting and experimenting with photography.  Somewhere in my adult years, it stopped.

It may have been the stress and responsibility that comes with being an adult, paying bills and trying to just exist.  A few years ago I started back crafting and creating, but not making art.  This year, I plan to make more art.  I am not sure what form the art will take, it may be painting, drawing, mixed media or photography.  Whatever the form, I plan to do more than I have done currently.  I think it will be beneficial because I will be exercising and stretching my creative muscle in a different way.  I think it will also make me a better designer.  This is why I consider this to be both a personal and business related resolution.

 

Doing Something for the Benefit of Exposure May Not be Worth it

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Providing a service or product for free for exposure, or spending money on something for the sake of the exposure, is often a glamorous lie.  In most cases, exposure does not actually pay any bills and most bill collectors will not accept it as a form of payment.

I feel new businesses and up-starts fall prey to this more often than established businesses do.  The more established businesses may have already encountered a few glamorous exposure lies and new businesses are often targeted.  When I first started freelancing during my college years, I was approached a lot about doing graphics for free with the promise of the exposure it could bring me.  After I graduated, I moved to Atlanta and struggled to get my feet wet with my freelance business there.  Finding clients was my biggest hurdle.

Because I was still relatively new to not just the city, but also the industry, I was met with offers of designing, again for exposure, rather than a monetary payment.  Slim budgets, just needing something temporary or right now, were often the reasons given.  Having something I designed in front of lots of people, etc and/or having my name or logo listed and credited with the work would “expose” me and bring me more business.  At least, that is what I was often told.  I do believe that in some cases, the person pitching this to me really believed what they were saying.  I believed it to and ended up doing a lot of free work that did not net me a dime.

From a business standpoint, it was a loss.  What I do takes time and effort and I charge for that time and effort.  Doing it for free, was basically a donation to someone else’s dream and cause.  The reason why I did not net from the exposure is not because I didn’t do good work, but because the audience I was being “exposed” to, was not my demographic.  It was not the audience that would most likely use my services.  I highly doubt that someone received a club flyer and said, “Hmmm…although I am a struggling college student, I am going to hire the person who made this flyer to create my brand identity for the company I don’t have.”  I received exposure, but not to the right people.

It has been a long time since the last time that I was approached to do something for free, for exposure.  However, a few months back, I was pitched by the marketing department of a local news station to purchase advertising space on their website.  “It will be great exposure and put your brand in front of more people,” I was told by the marketer.  It sounded glamorous, and like something I might be interested in doing at first thought, but as I began to ask more questions; I realized that it wasn’t really that great.

I would receive a business page on their site and one web ad.  When I asked where the ad would be on their site, I was told it would be buried somewhere deep in an obscure part of their site.  Not their words of course, but the reality of where it would be in my eyes.  I asked if the traffic numbers he told me applied to that page…he did not know and needed to ask a supervisor.  The final answer was, no.  The business pages did not have those quoted traffic numbers either and the video that would appear would be hosted on their YouTube channel and not mine.  All in all, there was no value that I would gain by paying for this advertising.

It made me realize that although I was no longer being approached for free work in exchange for irrelevant exposure; I had reached the next level of being asked to pay for irrelevant exposure.  The glamorous lie was no longer free.

Have you ever been approached to provide a product or a service in exchange for exposure?  Did you benefit from the exposure?

Random Musing:: Email Marketing

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The effectiveness and relevancy of email marketing in todays technical landscape is a topic that I see pop in and out of marketing debates.  There is a school of thought that sees email marketing as a dead tactic and not relevant.  I think this thought is primarily because it’s no longer the cool trendy marketing item that everyone is buzzing about.  Email marketing was born during the email boom; during the age of AOL, Hotmail and the emergence of Yahoo.  By the way, as a side note; if you still have an AOL email address that you actively use, get rid of it.  It dates you.

I feel that as long as email inboxes exist and email is used as a way to communicate with people, email marketing will continue to exist.  I also believe that it is still a relevant tactic.  I feel the relevancy is lost in the way the tactic is used.  The way it was first used is similar to the way junk mail is used in “snail mail.”  I think direct mail marketing is a relevant and useful tactic, but most businesses use it in a way that is not very effective or relevant to what people want today.

That is the same problem with email marketing.  Most businesses are still approaching it in the same way it was approached during its inception.  Times have changed and people have changed.  I use the term consumer interchangeably with the word “people,” because consumers are people.  Like with snail mail, when junk mail (direct mail advertisements) first appeared in their mailboxes, they were new, interesting and gave them a reason to look at them.  Now, they are in most cases, instantly trashed and discarded.  A business today, has to send out twice if not triple the amount of mailers to receive the same type of results and response that would have been gotten many years ago.

Why, because people became desensitized to them.  They were bombarded with them and it made checking the mail a negative experience if all you often found were bills and advertisements for things you did not want nor need.  The same thing has happened with email.  At first, you loved to check your email to see if someone sent you anything; a note, a message, a poem, a chain letter…  Now, email accounts are quickly abandoned due to malicious hackers, viruses, spammers and unsolicited advertisements.

Rules were put in place just like with junk snail mail to try to cut down on unsolicited emails and subscriptions to lists.  You are supposed to be able to unsubscribe easily and technically you have to commit some action in order to be subscribed to a list.  The lines are often blurred when it comes to the action that is committed (I handed you my business card at a networking event) and not everyone uses an email service to send their emails (being cc’d with 500 other people on an email that you can’t unsubscribe from).

People have become desensitized to email marketing in the same way.  Businesses that buy email mailing lists like direct mail marketers do, will not see the same effectiveness that they would have from a list with subscribers who willingly signed up.  They will also see less unsubscribers if they also provide value in some way to those that have signed up.  What constitutes value is different for each business.  For one business, the value may be in coupons, exclusive offers and secret sales.  For another, it could be just an inside look into that brand’s corporate culture.

The key to it all is the people.  The consumer.  The one’s that you are actually trying to market and advertise to.  If businesses place a high priority on learning whom their consumers are as people and what those people want from them, they can actually be very successful with a marketing campaign.  The campaign that works for them might not actually be a direct line to a sale or purchase, but an indirect one.  Something else to keep in mind is that email marketing can work as a complementary tactic in an overall marketing strategy or campaign.

Email marketing is not irrelevant or dead.  It just has to be used and approached differently from how it was done at its birth.