Save yourself money with the right logo.  By that I do not mean all of the marketing fluff that comes with trying to sell you logo design, or branding, or whatever other term is thrown out these days when it comes to a logo.  What I mean is how that logo or brand is delivered to you, the client.

The best example I can provide is when I was working on a project for a local company.  This project was one which involved sponsors who would email their logos to have included in the final piece.  Without fail, I ran into many issues, and as you might expect, I received just about every file type known to man, many of which were unusable.  For those that were somewhat usable, they still required work.  It took work to extract them from a format that could not be used.  In one case, I was provided a Word document as a hi-res logo.  When I explained the format that was needed, I was told that the company did not have that.  Yet I had seen uncountable advertisements (including billboards) for this company.  Someone, somewhere had to have it! The sad thing was that the hi-res files that others had to create never made their way back to the company.

So that meant more work. And what happens when your designer works?  Yup, you pay for it. And if you do not correct the problem at hand, you will continue to pay for it until it is fixed.

If you have a brand, you should have that brand saved digitally in a variety of popularly requested and used formats.  If your logo requires a specific typeface, you should have that handy as well.  Many designers (and I am guilty of this, too) will throw out file types when some clients might not necessarily know what they are referring to. Here are some of the more popular file types:

• EPS:  An EPS file is probably the most important one to have.  Since it is a vector file, it can be scaled large without sacrificing quality. With the EPS file, any designer could convert it to the format they need without spending any extra time in doing so.
• AI: The AI file is the native Adobe Illustrator file which contains editable and unflattened content.  This file, like the EPS file, can be scaled but also allows the designer to make changes.
• PSD: This is the native Adobe Photoshop file.  Similar to the AI file, it usually contains editable content.
• TIFF: A TIFF file is another type of flattened image.
• PDF: Depending on how your image was saved as a PDF, it could still contain vector data and a hi-res image could be used from it.

Formats to frustrate your designer:

• PUB: Microsoft Publisher files, while they do have uses, are not suited for hi-resolution printing.  So if your job is going to press and you have a Publisher file, it will have to be reworked.  A logo inside of a Publisher file may have to be recreated at hi-res.
• DOC: Microsoft Word documents are similar to Publisher.
• Web-sized: Typically, a GIF or JPG saved from the web, or for the web, are not easily used.

So what would I recommend?  Take a look at the files you have and create a brand pack containing an EPS, PSD, and PDF if you have them.  If you do not have any of these, it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to have someone create this for you. If you have specific uses for your brand (i.e. It cannot be placed on a certain color background) then having that usage document handy, along with the logo files and typefaces will make your designer happy.

And with a happy designer, they are not spending extra time formatting your logo and actually working on your project.  That saves time.  That saves money.

How consistent are you?  How often do you have to see a specific message before it sinks in and sticks? If you have the answers to those questions, then I have one more question for you: how are you applying that to your marketing?

It can take many client touches and marketing messages before a client will bite.  You have to be consistent with your message, product, service, and also how you present yourself to your potential clients.

Here is a great example.  A while back I went to eat at a steakhouse in downtown Atlanta and had an amazing experience.  The service, food, and overall environment was above and beyond, exceeding all expectations.  For a designer, it was nice to see all of the attention to details placed into the menu as well as the interior décor.  Before leaving I picked up a business card from the hostess area to check out their website once I got home.  When I was able to visit their website I had to do a double-take as I was certain I had mistyped the address and landed on another site by mistake.  Surely the company that spent untold amounts of money toward their physical location had not neglected their online presence to the degree that I was seeing!  It was almost as if I was looking at a site that belonged to another company. For this restaurant, they were lucky in that I found their website after a wonderful experience.  I would have easily gone back because I knew them to be top notch.  However, if I had been searching online and found their website, I might have been so tempted.  Yes, there was that much of a difference.

I had been paid a compliment recently regarding some design work I had completed for a company.  It was noted that the website, blog, business card, ads, email marketing, and other creative efforts all carried the same look and feel, i.e. the company brand.  That made me feel great!  No matter how a client found that company they would be getting the same message visually.

So I have to ask again, how consistent are you?

When someone visits your store, is the look of your location consistent with your website?  Is the ad that they saw in a magazine similar to your website and your store?  If someone were to find your blog apart from your website, store, or business card, would they immediately associate it with your business? Did you get your business cards for free from an online special even though they do not represent your company look and feel? Are you using a free blogging site with an appearance vastly different than your company website?

You see, it is not merely enough to have a website, blog, and other advertising.  It all needs to be consistent so that when clients and potential clients see the messages you are putting out there, they can all tie it in together as coming from the same source.   Your website and blog need to have a unified theme.  The advertising you do, whether on television or print need to carry that same theme. How confusing is it to see an advertisement that looks one way, a blog that looks another, and a website that looks different than everything else?  You might as well be going the other direction!

In summary, when working with your designer, establish a branding strategy and campaign.  Go beyond a logo design.  Think about the overall visual message you are delivering to your client. Prepare color themes, mood boards, and above all, imagine you were the one looking at the marketing material and had to make a decision whether to buy or not.

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bizior

Communications with clients has become a very complex and tangled web with the introduction of social media.  Social media is great as it can drastically increase your marketing reach, it also expands the number of ways you are able to be contacted.

How is this a bad thing, you ask?

Perhaps it is not actually that bad.  However, unmanaged, it can easily turn into some wild and unruly beast.  In reading Heather Vreeland’s blog, I see where she is upgrading…herself.  While all of the upgrades from 1.9 to 2.0 are great, the last tweak to her operating system was the one that really stood out the most.

“Funneling the avenues in which I can be reached :: I love Twitter and Facebook, but I can’t manage those inboxes in addition to my email. So, if you follow or friend me, try to contact me at heather@atlantaoccasions.com if you want to talk biz. I use my social networks primarily for business, but not necessarily as a point-of-contact. You’ll get a quicker response from me if you reach out via email.”

This stood out primarily because last week as super hectic for me and my business partner.  Preparing for a big weekend event does not mean your client’s needs are put on the back burner.  It does not mean you stop your company while you prepare.  It does not mean you stop communication.  It means you work extra to ensure your event goes off without a hitch while not allowing for any slip in normal business processes.  During this week, I had received contacts via Twitter direct message, Flickr mail, Shuttr messages, and Facebook all coupled with the usual barrage of emails and phone calls.  I always start returning phone calls first, then emails, and the social media contacts follow.  Overall, it can overwhelm you, and do it quick.

So… how do you want to be contacted?  If you prefer to be contacted via phone or email, then that is something you need to make clear.  I am not saying that you should ignore anything else that comes through but there is nothing wrong with replying, then kindly reminding your contacts that if they need a more prompt reply then phone or email will do the trick.

More importantly, how does your client or potential client wish to be contacted? If they have ended up following you on Twitter or added you as a friend on Facebook, that might not infer that is how they want to be contacted.  It might just be that they want to learn more about you, your company, or follow what is happening with your company.
One last note here would be the difficulty in tracking follow-ups.  I save just about every email.  If it is client related, I save everything.  It becomes a challenge to refer to conversations on Facebook, Twitter, as well as email.  Having everything in a single place makes tracking when I followed up much, much easier.

There is still nothing wrong with picking up the phone and talking to someone.