Life
Imitating
Design

If you haven’t heard that there is a worldwide financial crisis, then welcome back to Earth. I hope you enjoyed your trip to the moon.

Everyone from Prime Minister down is looking for ways to cut corners. From clipping coupons to federal budgets, saving money and saving jobs are the order of the day.

What about your business? If you haven’t started making cuts, the chances are your customers already have. The jobs that are keeping the wheels spinning today may have started months ago. What will you do when things really do grind to a halt?

Obviously, by then it might be too late. But cutting back on advertising and marketing is not the way to attract more business. Research (email me for sources) says that companies that cut marketing expenditure during a recession are most likely to not recover for five years. This is a critical time for investing in marketing.

Do you have a plan? There are ways you can trim down, cut costs and improve without lavish expense. Start with making decisions about where your business is headed and look at where your brand is now.
Here are some ideas for improvement -

1. Overhaul your visual identity. Get rid of the gimmicks, sharpen it’s focus and make it look like you mean business. This is no time to hold on to creative decisions for sentimental reasons. Being attached to a logo because it was your first great idea is not going to help your business.
2. Upgrade your collateral. Take a look at business cards, brochures, leaflets, handouts and other print material to decide if it still serves your business well. Business cards are the best place to start since they are relatively inexpensive and the most useful.
3. Improve  your web site. A new website design can be the most effective way to do this, but there are simpler measure that can be done piecemeal. If you’ve just updated your logo, get that on your website. Colour scheme, typography, copy and photographs can all be changed easily.
4. Blog. Writing about your area of expertise is the best way to establish yourself as a specialist and improve awareness of your website.
5. Rush new ideas to realease and market them now. Advertise the new products and services with online advertising – Facebook, YouTube, your website. Motion graphics and short videos work well. Once you’ve posted them on YouTube you can add them to your Facebook account and spread the word to others.
6. Fire your freelancer. This is a time when you need a designer who is going to be around for the long haul, with a broad area of expertise to make recommendations for your brand. Most freelancers specialise in just one are and are not qualified to help you grow into other areas.
7. Save money. Yea, no brainer, this one. When you hire NBurman Design to overhaul and improve your brand, you will be automatically saving 20-50%. Research shows that other design companies actually charge DOUBLE for certain services. When you use NBurman Design, you are always saving money.

You may not be able to spend your way out of a recession, but you may be able to market your way out.

Here are some ways that NBurman Design can help:

1. Website development
2. Search engine optimization
3. Content Management Systems
4. eCommerce
5. Business cards
6. Brochures, catalogues, mailings
7. Motion graphics ads
8. Presentations (Powerpoint)

Download the price list and take a look at solutions details.