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Description: Promotional ad for live event sponsored by association.

Brief. Concept mirrors original theme of “back to school” for training and education in running a successful martial arts school.

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Description: Ad promoting live event sponsored by association in multiple cities around the world. Will appear in house magazine and other martial arts publications. Ad was designed so copy fits into the live page area of other pubs, with bleed to accommodate the larger page size of NAPMA publication, thus saving production costs in not having to re-size the ad art.

Brief: “Rock and Roll Worth Tour” theme to connote the excitement of a “live” event.

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Description: Flyer to be inserted into monthly member packages announcing the launch of a newly-redesigned member website.

Brief: Show images of sections of the new site with callouts to emphasize new features.

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Description: Joint ad for Sandy Springs Tourism & Hospitality and the City of Sandy Springs to promote their positive approach to business.

Creative Brief: Show diversity in the working population, with photos of Fortune 1000 companies headquartered within the city limits. Includes logos for both organizations and locator map.

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Yes, it is.

There are more than 500,000,000 people on Facebook, and half of those people log in daily. The average user has about 130 “friends,” and boy, do they share links and interesting pieces of information — about 30,000,000,000 per month.

Think about this. Just for FUN, people log on and read the bits and pieces of special deals, interesting articles, fun pictures, articles and more. If you as a business owner can get just one person to “like” you, then you are instantly recommended to an average of 130 friends. If you get “liked” by a power user, then we’re talking hundreds or thousands of friends. By any definition, that is good marketing

What’s the commitment of time? You need to put up the pages that describe your business. You also need to occasionally post an interesting picture or bit of information.

What’s interesting? Anything that speaks to the benefits your product or service offers to the consumer. Here’s an example:

Not Interesting: We just added 3 new chairs in our hair salon. We welcome Joni, Andrea and Hank as our new stylists.They’re great! Stop by soon!!!

Interesting: We’ve all but eliminated wait time with the addition of three very talented stylists. Joni is an expert in color and we are seeing some marvelous updates to our clients’ hairstyles with highlights. Andrea is our new men’s stylist who understands how to adapt a haircut to a client’s hairline. Hank is our new make over specialist all the way from the big salons of New York. All I can say is WOW! You gotta see this!

You get the idea. Talk about the things your customer wants to hear and tell them how you have just made their life a whole lot better.

Social Media is really just “organized recommendations.” People like discussing the goods and services they buy, and this is the opportunity to add a name to it. We always hear from our clients that “word of mouth is the best advertising.” We agree, and social media harnesses that power. That is worth a little time and effort.

A few years ago, I stopped doing this. I did not choose to do this. Stopping was imposed on me by all that new technology.

It seems that every time I upgraded hardware or software, I was stopped in doing the most important thing I can do for clients — producing their work on time and on budget.

You know the drill: Load a new program, then deal with the consequences of that action, which might include something a small as learning where your favorite keyboard shortcut went to in this version, to fixing the hardware that no longer runs the more powerful, and demanding, software.

Or, if you buy some new hardware, you then spend a week integrating it into your workflow and work habits.

I finally got tired of the rat race in technology, as I spent long years in various art and creative departments where the latest whiz-band shiny tech thing was a mandatory acquisition, if for no other reason than to stay compliant with clients new toys.

Enough.

So, in 2000, when we went full time with Wells-Smith Partners, I decided to use ancient technology, including my trusty Mac G3, a couple of small Raspberry iMacs, and a couple of hard drive to hold files. Our network was “sneaker-net” based — we went from one office to the next with files on a floppy disk or Syquest or Zip disk.

And I used that setup for three years, until I finally needed a little more speed, and invested a whole couple of hundred dollars in a new — wait for it — used G4!

From 2000 to 2010, I would not buy a new computer or upgrade my major software, because I simply did not want to invest time and money in getting the darned stuff to play well together.

The other graphic designers in my neighborhood laughed when I sat down at my computer, but I churned out a lot more work than they did, with a lot less downtime. My systems were tested, trusted, and (almost) never went down.

Of course, all good things come to and end, and my systems started failing. I saw the writing on the wall: doom and gloom from more and more crashes and incompatibilities.

Time to jump ahead in technology again. Nice thing about waiting for the bleeding edge to pass you by is that the hardware and software get better and cheaper.

So we bought new computers for eveyone, including a new server, with AppleCare for each, and all new software upgrades. We even added a single, lonely Windows PC, which sits in my office.

Happy, fast, reliable production days are here again. Everything just works, and I concern myself with satisfying clients, not troubleshooting.

At least for a couple more years.

Later…

Some small business owners will draw a sketch of a logo on the back of a napkin while having a beer with friends on a Friday night. All their friends agree it looks GOOD after 2 or 3 beers, so a company logo is born. All you need is a graphic designer to clean it up, and there you have your logo.

A corporate identity program signals to your customer who you are and what you do. It presents both a visual and written presentation message. It is the first impression your customer gets of your product or service. And, as we all know, a bad first impression is hard to overcome. That is why larger corporations spend so much money on developing a significant identity.

Small business owners want to present a professional image, but often don’t have the budget. What is really needed? First, you need a professionally designed logo or visual image. You’ll see a lot of logos for smaller businesses with tools or letters altered, or some other visual play on words. The problem with this approach is that the viewer doesn’t always “get” the cleverness. Not being familiar with your business, that approach can confuse more than present the image of professional.

The second important element is a slogan or tag line that summarizes what your business does. It should make a statement about what your core value is in the product or service you offer. Again, clever is less important than clarity.

You need a well-designed and clearly written basic services brochure that outlines what you offer, plus basic stationary for anything you send out — sales letters, proposals, contracts and the like. We also recommend a series of postcards and ads of all sizes that coordinate to the core values of your business.

Finally, You need a well-designed and well-optimized website that reinforces the message of your ads and printed brochure, but also updates and informs the customer of new products and services.

Many small business owners look at that list and hear the cash register in the background of their thoughts going “ka-ching”! The bottom line is once you have your corporate identity package, it’s good for many years, with only occasional, minor updates.

Ask yourself the question larger corporations do: “How much does it cost to leave a bad impression?” We all know the answer to that one: lost business opportunities.

About 79% of all adults are online for more than 11 hours a week. That’s a lot of potential customers to ignore. Yet, many small business owners think a website is something only a larger company needs — one with a national customer base. In fact, not having a web presence is a bit like locking your front door for 70% of your business hours.

Small business owners often hire someone to put up a website for them, but they don’t do the second, and equally critical, step if search engine optimization (SEO) work. When they don’t get any response from their website, they tend to dismiss the websiite as “this Internet thing doesn’t work,” forget about it, and their website becomes a lovely scrapbook and not much more than that.

SEO is how you get Yahoo or Google to index your site and rank it on the search results page. When a search is made for a product or service in your area, these search engines call up all of the web pages with relevant information to the search term. If the SEO work is done correctly, your site will appear on page one or two of a relevant search. If it hasn’t been done or its been done badly, your site will be somewhere around page 4,992, if that high.

Buying a website without SEO is like buying a billboard on the Interstate where all of the local commuters pass daily. Right before rush hour, you cover your billboard with a tarp. Just as this would be a crazy waste of time and money, it’s equally crazy to put up a website without SEO.

A site that is well indexed has been especially written for certain keywords and phrases that match popular search terms for a particular product or service. These terms are selected in advance of writing the site and woven into the text so it reads naturally. If the text doesn’t read well, the search engines assign it a low priority and send you back to the badlands of page 4,992.

A well optimized website is central to any marketing program for a small business, if it is written and indexed to attract local searches. So, to answer the question in the headline of this blog, yes, you really, REALLY need one.