A professional image is essential, and your best starting point for this probably is a marketing or a graphic design company. “A lot of contractors have bad design,” says Sheri Grant, Fathom Creative’s art director. “Their wives want to do it, or their administrative assistant. I think that’s probably OK for a general audience, but if you want to appeal to a more design-sensitive audience, you’ve got to have good design.”
Amy Perry says that a key advantage of design firms over freelancers is that “we take a team approach that looks at the big picture and sees the implications” of how one marketing component will support every other. It’s critical to maintain a consistent look and feel. “A lot of small businesses think they have to keep having a new look,” she notes, “when oftentimes the opposite is true.”
Professional firms offer creative and technical advantages as well, such as the ideas that emerge from group brainstorming sessions (see “Group Think,” right), and the superior materials that sophisticated technology and resources can produce. Many will also oversee the printing process, which can catch potentially expensive or embarrassing errors.
In addition, most marketing and graphic design companies can help you assemble the rest of your marketing team, including a photographer, a copywriter, and a printer. Other than the photographer, none needs to be local. “You can have great phone and e-mail relationships,” Grant says.
Group Think The basic form of your mailing — one postcard or a series? Two black-and-white pages or eight pages of color? — hinges to a large degree on your budget. “It’s very important for us to understand our client’s budget,” Grant says. “You can do great things with a one-color postcard if it has a gorgeous image,” but she cautions that a single mailing, whatever its form, is never sufficient.
More caveats: Postcards can easily get lost in the mail shuffle, so always go oversized. And don’t cut corners by using flimsy paper. Give your mailing some heft, says Perry, who also likes paper with an interesting texture. “It’s another way to differentiate,” she says.
Once your mailing’s basic parameters are established, collaborate. For its recent re-branding initiative, Classic Remodeling & Construction, Charleston, S.C., hired an advertising and public relations agency called The Bosworth Group ( www.thebosworthgroup.com). Classic president Bob Fleming, several key staff members, and members of Fleming’s peer review group also weighed in creatively. “I think the large collaborative group drove the ad agency crazy at times,” Fleming says, “but in the end, I think we ended up with an even better product than anticipated” — a series of oversized postcards that will culminate with an impressive, accordion-fold brochure featuring a die-cut cover in the shape of Classic’s logo, all packaged in a provocative vellum envelope.
The collaboration between DeCiantis Construction and Smizer Perry began with a launch meeting “for all stakeholders,” Perry says. “We want all those who have a say in a marketing and creative direction to be involved early, so we all go down the same path together.” A key issue that owner John DeCiantis wanted to address was “this perception that we’re too busy to take on new work,” DeCiantis says. “The message we wanted to send was: Here’s who we are and the type of work we do. And we want to work.”
To accomplish this, Perry’s team asked about the competition, changes in the design/build industry, and DeCiantis’ clients. Perry went on to write a creative brief for everyone in her studio, and then to host a “creative cafe” — a brainstorming lunch for her entire staff. “We’ve done the homework already” by then, she says. The creative cafe is “very free association; nothing is sacred, and nothing is stupid.”
From that lunch emerged the winning theme of DeCiantis’ campaign: a postcard series playing on the headline “DeCiantis Is…” followed by an alliterative series of words (with project photos) that remodeling clients want: details, dependable, design, delivery. Perry doesn’t expect homeowners to hold onto the cards, but to receive enough of them so that DeCiantis becomes etched into their minds as the obvious choice.