Virtual Impax

Tag: client relations

  • A Day in the Life of a New Media Consultant or Agency….

    A viral marketing campaign is one that the target audience shares enthusiastically with other members of the target market without remuneration from the advertiser. The “holy grail” of  new media marketing is achieving “viral” status.

    The video  below is destined to achieving “viral” status not only amongst new media consultants and agencies but anyone who provides an intangible service will be able to relate.

    The reason this video is destined to become “viral” is that it illustrates the absurdity with absurdity.

    My favorite “absurd illustration”  is the client with her hair dresser.

    The one that “hits” closest to home – “Can you show us how you did this so we can do this on our own?”   Darren Barefoot even writes about the close cousin to this one in “What software did you use?”

    He does a great job of explaining the reason that line ends the video above:

    In creative enterprises–from a pencil sketch to a feature film–the tool is the thing that matters least. What matters is that weird combination of skill, clever decisions, intuition, good fortune and the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s blessing that makes for a successful creative project.

    Creativity is a blessing and a curse.  The blessings of creativity are obvious and if you’re looking for a “creativity booster” check out Marelisa’s “How to be more Creative“.

    The curse of being blessed with an abundance of creativity and trying to sell that “service” is illustrated in the video above.

  • A Day in the Life of a Designer

    This is what it’s really like to work with clients, especially corporate clients.

    Thanks to Alan Weiss who offers this video as the reason why he doesn’t do OD consulting. Obviously, when working with clients, we all face the same challenges whether you’re a blog theme designer, a graphic designer or an freelance writer.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9YeOQm3Y0[/youtube]

  • Tangible Evidence: Your Blog Can Increase Your Profits

    David Maister is an expert on the management of professional service firms. In his post Pricing Consulting Services he writes:

    Raintoday.com has just released a new study Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Consulting Industry 2008. 645 respondents in the consulting industry completed the survey. Among the findings:

    Firms that are well-known in their target markets receive higher fees, see their revenue grow, and earn higher profits than their lesser-known counterparts. Brand leaders were more likely to price their services at a higher level than their competitors in the market (42% of brand leaders were premium-price vs. 28% of lesser-known firms). And, they were more likely to actually get higher fees by up to 35%.

    There are a LOT of ways to become “well known” to your target market.

    • You can spend money on advertising in various media that reach your target audience.
    • You can write articles for publication in magazines read by your target audience.
    • You can arrange to speak before groups of your target audience.
    • You can write a book to demonstrate your expertise to your target audience.

    If you want to become well known to your target audience, I STRONGLY encourage you to engage in any and all of the above activities.

    However, if your budget is screaming and your time is limited, then the best low cost, highly effective method of becoming “well known” to your target market is to launch a self hosted WordPress blog.

    Becoming well known used to be thought of as an “ego” thing.  The report above demonstrates that becoming well known is necessary to affect the bottom line performance of your service based business.