Your horn was made for tooting

“We hired a designer to make the graphics/do the SEO/run the Ad Words program. Oh! I didn’t know you do that.”

In the past three or four weeks, I have had variations of this conversation with different clients.

Since I’m so familiar with my company and the services we provide, I often forget to spell them out for new, and even longtime, clients. Did you know:

• I am an award winning graphic designer?
• We design brochures, books, annual reports, marketing pieces, direct mail, folders… pretty much anything printed?
• We also design logos?
• All of the websites we design include a content management system and free tech support for the life-time of the site?
• We work with printers both locally and remotely to get the best price and the best fit for your project?
• Our partners include videographers, writers, editors, photographers, illustrators, Flash developers, and programmers?
• Our websites are based in Wordpress, using it as a content management system?
• We keep up with the latest in search engine optimization, and all of our sites researched for keywords and are SEO optimized?
• We run several Google Ad Word campaigns for our clients?
• We offer non-profit organizations a 10% discount?

Probably not, because I don’t mention those things that often — I’m usually too focused on the project at hand. That’s a major mistake on my part. Our existing clients are already sold on us and usually are more than happy to find out that we can provide extra services. And even if they don’t need them, knowing that we do more helps with our word of mouth marketing when they tell other people about us.

So what are we going to do about this?

First of all, I’m going to get more comfortable with that piece of marketing. It feels odd to toot my own horn, but if I don’t, who will?

Secondly, I am going to distribute our “Soup to Nuts” brochure (already printed, sitting on our bookshelf) to every current and prospective client. I made the brochures for a trade show, but they’re certainly not doing us any good in our office. We already know what we do.

Thirdly, we are planning some promotional pushes (email and direct mail) emphasizing the breadth and depth of services we provide.

Lastly, we are going to focus more on social networking to get the word out. We already have a Twitter account (@LeslieTane) and we’re going to start a Facebook page soon, focusing on the scope of the work we provide.

Hearing “I wish we’d known you do that. We would have hired you” once is one time too many. Let the promoting begin!

Want to toot your own horn? Go ahead and do it in the comments!

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