Why Hire a Graphic Designer

Many business owners think they can’t afford a graphic designer.

Think again.

Your time is valuable

Simply put, you are an expert at your business. Graphic designers are experts at graphic design. They understand how to create marketing collateral that will convey your business’ image while capturing the attention of your target market or customers. Taking advantage of their expertise will save you time and your marketing materials will be done right. Besides, when you think about it, do you really want to try to design your own marketing materials?

Distinguish your Business

To quickly communicate your marketing message to your customers and distinguish your business as different, good graphic design is essential. The importance of strong visual communication cannot be over emphasized. Well designed marketing collateral conveys what your company is about, the tone of your organization and what it would be like to use your company’s services. Humans rely heavily on what we see. By working with a qualified graphic designer your marketing materials will utilize colors, fonts, images and artwork to create a strong visual impression for your company.

Great graphic design is a mix of art, your business and marketing— its something that takes years to master—but once mastered the results can be simply amazing.

Slow Economy? Keep Marketing!

With all of us being hit with rising expenses and a stagnant economy it’s common to want to put the brakes on marketing and related services like graphic design. However, understanding some key marketing facts with help make sure your business thrives in a slow economy.

Marketing Generates Revenue

When sales fall many companies make the mistake of cutting expenditures in the wrong areas. The budget for marketing is usually the first one to be cut or even eliminated. The reality is that the amount of money a company spends on marketing is directly related it’s gross revenue. So cutting the marketing budget will not help the company’s income but rather hurt it.

Stretch—Don’t Eliminate—Your Marketing Dollars

In a slow economy it’s crucial to think of more effective ways to market your company, thereby stretching your marketing budget. For example, can you make small changes to your products or services that will enhance their benefits. Use a blog to initiate a dialog with your customers. Ask them what could be changed to make your products or services even better. Remember, small changes are often just as if not more powerful than large ones.

Strengthen Your Company’s Brand Identity

Is your logo or brand identity on par with your company’s personality? If not, now is a great time to give your brand identity a refreshing update. Team with a competent graphic design studio to realign your business with your marketing objectives.

Enhance Your Website

Is your website optimized with descriptions and tags that search engines use so that your customers will find you? What about your website navigation? Is it easy for visitors to navigate through your site? Is your website copy relevant to your audience? Partner with a reliable graphic and web designer who can enhance the experience of those who visit your website as well as encourage them to contact you.

Create a Referral Program

We all know that some of the best clients are those that are referred to us from an already loyal one. Reward clients that refer you with a small personal item that is useful to them. The gift will be well received and you will have connected with your client on a personal level.

Customer Touch Points

For many companies, 80% of their sales come from only 20% of their customers. Concentrate on persuading that 20% to purchase services or products from your company again. Some of the best ways to accomplish this is through a postcard campaign, a phone call or a newsletter. The more times you touch base with your customer the better.

Increase Website Traffic with Reciprocal Links

Getting listed in search engines is only part of the goal to bring traffic to your website. You can gain visitors to your website by forming relationships with other sites of a similar nature or theme. By sharing traffic with other sites everyone benefits. So how do you go about exchanging links?

First, send emails to the webmasters or technical contacts at the sites you wish to exchange links with. Most webmasters are more than happy to exchange links, as they also know the importance of sharing traffic.

Next, create a dedicated links page. When a Webmaster agrees to exchange links make sure you add their link to your website in a timely fashion to show your commitment. Over time, as you continue to add reciprocal links, you will begin to see a noticeable increase in traffic to your website. In addition it will help you build long term relationships with the owners of these sites. Often times these relationships can be turned into strategic alliance partners allowing you to develop and information and editorial exchange, as well as traffic.

Additionally, many of the key search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Google, most importantly, uses this method to determine their page rankings. So you will have the added benefit of increase free traffic from search engines as well as the benefits of reciprocal links with other websites.

So don’t stop by just submitting your website to the search engines. Go another step further and pursue reciprocal link exchanges with websites similar to your own. In the long term success of your website this is essential since search engines can change their ranking algorithms at any time. Long term traffic exchanges with your reciprocal link partners is far more enduring.

Standing out from the crowd

In today’s economy it is crucial to make your product stand out from the crowd. If your marketing materials—your website, brochure, advertisements and even your business card—establish you as different you will weather a slow economy better than your competitors.

Show don’t tell

Stand out from the crowd by showing your potential clients what you do for your existing clients, don’t just tell them. For example most companies tell what their services are by saying something like, “we provide solutions that help your business achieve tangible results”. Stand out from the crowd by showing your prospects what you do by saying something like, “Learn how we helped a local resort hotel increase their occupancy rate to over 90%”.

In taking the second approach you are showing your prospects what you do. It invokes an action. It will get your prospects to interact with your marketing materials in a meaningful way while allow you to demonstrate your expertise and show the results you have produced for others.

This is a very simple example, but when you think about it—which one is more enticing? Which company might you contact?

Increase Vacation Rental Exposure Through Guest Testimonials

Guest testimonials of your vacation rental property can help you market it more effectively.
One of the best ways of advertising your vacation rental is to include testimonials from those who have already been your guests.

How do I get my guests to write testimonials?

The first key in getting testimonials from your guests is to simply ask them. A simple display in your vacation rental encouraging your guests to share their comments in a guest book can be a very effective means of gathering client testimonials. Check your guest book frequently and contact guests that leave a raving review and ask them if you can post their comments on your website.

One of our clients has gone a step further by hanging a small framed message above the area where they leave their guest book, inviting their guests to post a review of their unit on Trip Advisor. In addition, they include this invitation on their deposit refund invoice that is sent to every guest after checkout. This invitation reaches the guests when their vacation is still fresh in their minds and they are anxious to talk about their wonderful stay in your vacation rental property.

Receiving testimonials about your property on TA can provide your vacation rental with a lot of positive exposure. Make sure to ask your guests to include your name, the name of the property and your specific unit number. By doing so, readers of the testimonials can enter those details when doing a search on Google.com and find your personal website for your vacation rental property.

For an example of the kind of results you can reap from the two suggestions above, take a look at how they have worked for one particular client of Fabian | Ross Creative who owns a vacation rental property at the Mauna Lani Terrace on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. Take a moment and to to the Trip Advisor website and search for “Mauna Lani Terrace H303″.

These testimonials are great marketing pieces for this particular unit because the guests included the unit number at the Mauna Lani Terrace and the names of the owners, Dave and Sandy Schlegel. Readers of these testimonials can easily get in contact with the owners via their website for this luxury vacation rental by doing a search on Google.com with keywords Mauna Lani Terrace H303.

So what are you waiting for? Start asking your vacation rental guests for their testimonials today, and start increasing the market exposure of your vacation rental property.