Neil Tortorella is a veteran graphic designer with
over 25 years' experience in developing identities,
collateral and web solutions for both large and small
companies. Based in Northeast Ohio, Tortorella Design
has received numerous awards for design excellence.
The problem with self promotion
by Neil Tortorella
Self promotion can be a tough gig
for a lot of creatives. Many of us have our mother's voice
looming in the back of our
heads telling us that it's not polite or proper to brag.
Others have a lack of confidence when it comes to tooting
their own horn. But, to paraphrase Mr. Fisher, "If you
don't toot your own horn, nobody's going to do it for you."
Self-promotion isn't just a side issue or nice thing to do
when you have some spare time. It's the life blood of your
practice. Clients come. Clients go. That's the reality. Unless
you've worked out some way to insure a steady stream of prospects
and clients, you'll find yourself caught in the feast or famine
trap. Truth be told, in most cases, just because you've built
a better creative mousetrap, the world isn't going to beat
a path to your door, unless you tell them how to get there.
So, where do you start? My belief is to handle your practice
just like any of your other clients. Marketing, promotion and
communication is what we do. Now it's time to do it for yourself.
Your practice should be your number one client. Start by doing
some soul searching. Figure out what you're good at, what you
love doing and what makes you different from every other black
turtleneck out there.
Go through the research process and determine your goals, how
much dough you can afford to sink into your efforts, what your
competition is up to, etc. Then, create a plan and stick to
it. For me, I pop all my promotional activities on my computer's
calendar/contact manager. I love my computer. It talks to me.
Seriously. I put all my activities on the calendar and then
set it up so the computer alerts me when I need to do stuff. "Neil,
remember you have the following task ..." One night, when
my son was over, he said, "Holy smokes! You've got a wife!" Well
... not exactly, but it does help to keep me on track. The
point is, when you get busy it's very easy to put your promo
efforts on hold. Bad idea. It's important to keep promoting
when you're loaded up with work. It helps to insure you stay
that way.
Take some time and look into your promotional toolbox. What's
in there? How about an e-newsletter? Perhaps a postcard campaign?
Online portfolios? Cold/warm calls? Networking? Volunteer work?
Odds are you'll want to do a mix of things. But, (and it's
a really big "but") choose only those tools that
you're comfortable with and can follow through on. The idea
is that your promotional efforts should be a natural extension
of your workload and fairly easy to implement.
I've found it useful to create a written plan that's a subset
of my overall business plan. In there, I write down what I'm
trying to accomplish, my budget, time table, tools, etc. It's
a good idea to have some sort of checks and balances to determine
whether or not certain tools and tasks are really effective.
If they're not, dump them and try something else.
Most of us creative types are bookaholics. I'd recommend spending
some time at your local bookseller, either online or off. There
are loads of resources out there to spark some ideas for promotional
techniques and inspire you. One book immediately comes to mind.
First because it showed up in my mailbox over the weekend and
second because I'm in it - The
Savvy Designer's Guide To Success: Ideas and Tactics for a
Killer Career, by none other than the
man himself, Jeff
Fisher. This sucker is chock full of great
ideas and advice for taking your promotional efforts to the
next level. Buy it. Read it. Live it.
If you're totally lost when it comes to self promotion, it
might help to have someone nudging you on. Fortunately, there's
just such a person. And, she just happens to be the queen of
self-promotion - Ilise
Benun. Benun literally wrote the book
on self-promotion and offers a service called Marketing
Mentor.
Ilise, or one of her fellow mentors, will take you by the hand
and guide you through the marketing maze step-by-step. What
more could you ask for?
As we close out another year and look to the next, take the
time to plan your future. Make it a goal to get out from under
the feast or famine syndrome by creating a sound plan to promote
your practice in a consistent, effective manner. By doing so,
you'll get more of the kind of work and clients you like, be
able to pick and choose your projects, and attract clients
who value and respect you and your work. Now, isn't that a
nifty way to start off the new year?
