Growth hacking and creative marketing ideas for graphic design business
Graphic design has a really important value proposition; however, you are in danger of being left out if the person who runs the business does not give it the importance it deserves. To avoid this, it is key to offer a design whose execution is already integrated with the business itself.
Sergio Lopez
Creativity is a characteristic that every human being can develop; however, training in graphic design is not something that is achieved just like that. For this reason, sometimes pivoting the value proposition is something interesting for the business and an example of this can be to go from offering creativity to offering maximum utility.
Sergio Lopez
The secret of good design agencies is in the concept, in the idea. However, not every agency has to fit this definition. Pivoting to a value proposition that is in the quality of the production rather than the inspirational start-up bud can be very interesting to differentiate yourself.
Sergio Lopez
The Stories of the InterContinental Life podcast feature an eclectic mix of interviews covering themes including Empathy, Connection, Worldliness, and Fascination. Each story aims to inspire listeners about a given destination of an Intercontinental property. Interviews range from a bespoke tailor in London, to an Ethiopian restaurant owner, to a Beijing-based art critic.
Sergio Lopez
Growth hacking is a marketing methodology that each day is becoming more and more famous. However, what is it really?
Does growth hacking apply to graphic design? Can the graphic design industry actually implement growth methodology and active experimentation framework? And most importantly of all, how can it help you or your company?
Growth hacking is a relatively new focus in the marketing field, which focus is achieving company growth. Its goal is to test ideas that may (or may not) improve the customer experience without investing a lot of resources. Once the tests have been carried out successful ideas will be replicated and those which aren´t will be abandoned.
First, we start by deciding which metrics we´ll be using to measure growth of our graphic design corporation. Key metrics should be the best ones to deliver growth to your company, like how much revenue we get from our top clients, the time it takes to do a standard project or number of orders per client.
Once we know which metrics are the most important ones, it is time to set SMART goals. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely). For example, increasing the number of visits to your webpage by 20% in the next month, to increase 10% the average number of orders per customer in four months could be valid revenue goals.
Goals are a desired increment, of decrement, of your key metrics.
When we already know what brings us growth, which KPIs to focus on and also, what are the SMART goals associated with them, it is time to design growth drivers. Growth drivers are ways that we think will help us achieve our goals, and we will be testing if they work through small campaigns, called experiments.
by testing, maybe we can network with your audience online
In fact you can’t sit around and wait for your clients to come to you.You’re going to have to go out there and figure out how to promote your graphic design business, and for this we have to know where potential customers are located.
We will discover who your audience is, and then search for places they often visit online, such as Facebook groups, forums, blogs, industry news sites... For example, suppose you want to become a graphic designer for a startup. When new startups need logos, emails, brochures, or any visual effects, you want them to turn to you for help. To connect online, you want yourself to be found in places like Startup Zone Forums where professionals talk about their transactions. Even though you may not know anything about some topics, groups like this often have discussions about marketing their business.
Your goal is to find as many conversations where you can offer an expert opinion or lend a hand.
However, how can you do this without spending the day on the internet inside forums instead of working? The objective should be to look for a fast and cheap sistem that we can test.
Otherwise we could try to showcase your success with case studies. If you already have a group of satisfied customers, then your blog might be the ideal place to post in-depth case studies.
Your product portfolio highlights the end result that customers can expect, while case studies tell the story of how you can help customers solve problems through graphic design skills. There are many ways you can build a good case study. This is an area where we could take advantage of our past work to seek a new horizon.
In order to find the right marketing strategy we should answer all these and more questions with information obtained from small tests that allow us to have a global vision of the most important thing: What can make us GROW.
Learnings are essential and we must document them in order to know what worked in the past and what to avoid repeating. You should have a constant feedback cycle and track your learnings continuously.
Want to know more about how to apply growth hacking to your graphic design business? Sign up for Hypertry and ask for a one to one session!
