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voodooboy · #3 (**permalink**) 10-14-2003, 03:22 PM

That IS a loaded question. Who are the customers? I have had a menagerie of customers from attorneys to evangelists, Mom and Pop shops to search engines and auction sites, models to movie prop manufactures. They are the guy next door, your own parish or small town grocery. Everyone is a potential client And I mean, EVERYONE.

What do they want? What they want is to succeed, create recognition, increase market share and profit margin. (But isn’t that all of us?) Surprisingly enough, I would say 80% don’t know what they want. Their competition is online so they feel they need to be also. They want to communicate their message, but don’t know how to get it across online. They want to beat their competition into early retirement and be the next big dog on the heap!

The question should not necessarily be what they want? But what they need. Everyone wants to have the number one position on the search engines. But realistically, can everyone be number one? Does your client really need to be number one on Yahoo? It really depends on the clients industry. Are they a niche market, are they global or local?

What most clients need is someone who can tell them what they want when it comes to design. They need someone who can listen to what they think they want, and then evaluate their company and industry and help them to develop to their real needs. Some people want this size font and these colors and this photo on the front, and a clock, a search engine and a couple cool scrolling text scripts that flash and a text based cursor tail to follow their visitors everywhere they go. But is that really what they NEED? 99.9% of the time, no.

We are the designers of this industry, most of us have gone to school to do this, and some of us have had to extend our current fields to incorporate this new industry. But not everyone is a designer. A banker does not design and should be reminded not to try too. That is our job. That is why they came to us. We should not agree that they need a 500 product shopping cart if they only ever plan on selling 10 items. Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying to design to restrict growth, but keep them in the realm of the real world. I would never sell someone on a Flash intro if they don’t need it. I would try to talk them out of it by explaining WHY they don’t need it. Some people would do it just for the money. But I look at it this way; they entrust us with their business, their first impression (which means everything) and their budget. What they want is not always what they need to achieve the 3 primary goals: recognition, profit and market share.

WOW! Soap box, exit left. Sorry, I just get going sometimes. The point is that most people have any idea of what they want, but get disillusioned by the options and technical abilities and can’t rationalize the difference between what they want, and what they need to achieve their goals. There are some that know exactly what they want and have done their homework, and we should be grateful for those few as it makes life a little easier when you come across them.

As for marketing myself, I believe strongly in giving the customer what they need (as you can tell above) which gives them what they want even if they don’t see it at first. This gives me a very satisfied customer. Then I begin marketing. I ask for a testimonial regarding my services (credibility) then I ask for 3 referrals. The best marketing is word of mouth. And believe it or not, word of mouth is not necessarily local. You can go national by word of mouth marketing before you know it. Then there are the local business chambers, join one or two of them and watch traffic hit your site. Join a couple user groups and network with those that compliment your services. If you are a designer, then network with programmers and database administrators. They can bring you work and visa versa. I put my URL on everything (and I mean everything) I send out or hand out. From business cards, holiday greeting cards, stationary and emails. Always keep plenty of business cards on hand. If someone asks me for a piece of paper, all I have are business cards (even if I have my organizer with me). That way they write on the back of my card and it is a note they wrote, so they are going to keep it. Eventually they are going to turn that note over and see my card. And yes, I have gotten business that way. I guess if I pushed the online marketing and print media (newspapers and such) I would get more business. But word of mouth actually brings in enough for me.

I know this is more than or not at all what you were looking for, but it is a great question and I hope that between your question and my (long winded) answer, we can get some good input.