Jan 23

How Inbound Marketing Works [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing

In a previous post I explained and included an infographic on what inbound marketing is, in this post I’ll show you how it works through an example of how you came to this blog post and how a typical customer may come to your website if you were to use the same methodology of inbound marketing through blogging, SEO, lead nurturing and social media.

Allow me to speak to the business owners first. If you’re like most small business owners without a marketing department, you’ve probably felt a bit of a decline last year in online sales or in offline sales depending on what industry you are in. This year you’re wondering if it will be the same? Depending on what kind resources you have, you know that 8% to 10% of your budget should be allocated to marketing. At this point you’ve probably thought through what your goals are and how you’re going to go about moving the needle forward this year. Before you sign up for another 12-month contract with that trade mag or siphon off more money for pay per click, please consider what it would look like if you had a method of marketing to truly measure your efforts and that it was able to show you what was working and what was not—in real time—for less money.

Now to the Marketers. We all know that content is king in this digital age. You are an expert in something and have plenty of things to talk about concerning your industry and how you could use your knowledge and the collective intelligence of your company to change the marketplace for the better if you had a mechanism in place to do so. Why not use those ideas to create content and begin pushing those ideas out to potential prospects and customers? This content would begin boosting your SERPs, build thought leadership, acquire more leads and build your brand.

If you’re still evaluating whether inbound marketing is right for your company, consider these facts taken from State of Inbound in 2013 by Hubspot:

Inbound is real, and it shows remarkable traction for such a new industry: While inbound marketing is a relatively new industry, it shows sizeable market share and impressive budget growth rates.

Sixty percent of companies will execute inbound marketing strategies in 2013
Marketers allocate 34% of their overall budgets to inbound tactics – 11% more than they
dedicate to outbound strategies, like banners, direct mail, and more.
This year, 48% of marketers plan to increase their inbound marketing spending – the
third year in a row that inbound budgets are increasing at a near 50% pace.

I believe inbound marketing is here to stay and if you’re not doing it yet, you’re competitors most likely will be. Below we’ve included an infographic to explain to you how inbound marketing works and how its working for us. The process is broken down into 8 steps of what a typical inbound marketing program works from Stranger > Lead > Close > Customer/Client > Delight.

Click here to enlarge graphic

Interested in learning more about inbound marketing and how it can grow your marketing and sales? Take a look at this next article on How To Implement Inbound Marketing.

You’re a business owner or a marketer that has a few problems. It sounds looks
something like this:
- Traffic on my website is going down!
- How do I acquire more quality leads?
- Can I align my sales and marketing teams ?
- I need to redesign the website.
- How do I get my employees more engaged?
- How do I build my brand?
- How do I grow my business!
So you head out to Google to search for some ideas on how to accomplish these tasks because that direct mail campaign last month — well lets just say it didn’t work out very well this time around.
You quickly scan through the first page of results and find something from a blog that is titled “How to turn your website into a lead generating machine.”
The blog post has some great advice on how to increase traffic and get more leads to your website. The site also offers a whitepaper on “How to build a better brand”. So, you click on the call to action, fill out a form and type in your name, email address and phone number and download the whitepaper.
In a few more days, you return to the blog because you thought the whitepaper you downloaded was really great. So you read some more helpful articles like “How to acquire more website leads” and downloaded another whitepaper “How to hire right” and decide to go ahead and give them a ‘like’ on Fecebook. You then notice that the firm offers branding and marketing services. You think, hmm… they look like a group I could work with and you begin to warm up to the idea of contacting them to see if they might be able to help you.
You then receive an email from the agency suggesting two free ebooks for you to read. The agency’s website is intutive so it adjusts to your interests and asks you if you would like for someone to contact you. You select, Sure! ‘This agency is pretty cool and I think they can help me.’
The next day, a representative calls you, explains a bit more about the agency’s services and sets up a Prezi to help you learn more. Next you ask for a proposal and before you know it, you’ve hired an agency to start helping you grow your business.
Its been about 3-4 months, after a short web redesign, some additional brand development consulting and implementation of an inbound marketing program. Your beginning to see traffic on your website pick up and leads are beginning to come in. You have to hire some more people to handle it all and things are looking pretty dang good! Welcome to Inbound Marketing.

Jan 21

What is Inbound Marketing? [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing

Understanding-Inbound-Marketing As a marketer or business owner you’ve most likely at one point purchased an ad in the yellow pages, local magazine, radio, tried direct mail or maybe even shot a 30 second spot. These forms of advertising commonly known as “push” marketing or “outbound” marketing has been the gold standard for advertising since the 1950s.

For a long time marketers have been pushed into utilizing these types of advertising mechanisms to acquire sales leads and customers. Often times we feel like we’re throwing our time, energy and money out the window because typically there is no way to know if our efforts are really paying off—and if they are, we don’t know why—as it’s very hard to track and measure. This has been the common experience of outbound marketing for almost 70 years. Although it is effective to a degree and in certain channels and industries, its always left me wondering; why can’t we as marketers figure out a better way to get a higher rate of return on our advertising dollars?

Enter 2014, and things as you now well know have changed drastically— if you didn’t feel it last year, you will this year. We’ve experienced a fundamental shift in consumer behavior. People no longer want to have one way conversations with companies, they want a two way conversation. For a long time it was always the company doing all the talking, but now consumers want to talk back. This has caused the smartest companies to engage in what is called inbound marketing.

Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time. (Source: Hubspot)

Below we have put together an infographic on inbound marketing to help you understand how it compares to outbound marketing. We hope that this will shed some light and give you some ideas on how to grow your business this year.

Click here to enlarge graphic

Interested in learning more about inbound marketing and how it can grow your marketing and sales? Take a look at the this next post on How Inbound Marketing Works.

Jan 18

5 Myths of Brand Development Debunked

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

Push back to adopt brand development from the business owner can sometimes be very frustrating. You’re under fire to deliver quality leads to sales — recent tactics of PR, Ads and SEO just aren’t working. You struggle to find true marketplace differentiation but you are not sure exactly what that is. Your messaging is all over the place and the boss wants results.

Don’t give up! We’ve put together a few things to help you look more seriously at why it’s more important than ever to take the time to develop your brand and to help you start coming up with a pitch to turn things around.

In today’s economy, we have 10 to 20 of everything. People begin their purchases by going to the internet or by asking their friends. They block out nearly all advertising. 70% of the purchase decision is over before a customer even contacts a sales person or purchases something from you. Today, brands must go above and beyond to prove trust and authenticity to their customers. One bad experience — and it’s all over Facebook. Below are 5 myths debunked to help you answer your critics on the need to engage in brand development.

1. Your brand is your logo
Myth. Your logo is just one piece of your brand. Your brand consists of many things: what a customer thinks, feels, tastes, experiences, hears and sees, the good, bad and the ugly about your brand. A fresh, clean and clever logo is very important as it’s usually the first thing customers’ experience.

2. Brand development is expensive
Not a myth. It’s funny how many companies try to do brand development on their own because they’ve gone down the road of trying to hire a branding agency and have gotten back an estimate that curls their toes. But when trying to conduct it themselves they end up screwing up their brand further and spending more money than they would if they would’ve just hired the branding agency. The brand development process takes a lot of work and is priced accordingly. Many hours are spent on research, competitive analysis, communication audits, customer interviews and plenty of time thinking and thinking and thinking. Brand Development is an exhaustive process. To develop a successful brand, you must have a professional brand strategist to provide fresh perspective, insight and direction.

3. Brand development does not need input from your employees
Not a myth. An employee by definition is: a person working for another person or a business firm for pay. True, but in today’s economy, an employee is more like your brand ambassador. He or she may know more than you (Marketing Director or Owner) about your customer. Ask them questions about what customers think about your brand and nine times out of ten you’ll get ten different answers. Your employees are the people who are typically face to face with the customer every day. If they are not accurately communicating the brand values, then your brand is not working to its full potential.

4. Your brand is not your product
Myth. Your brand is your product! People buy what your brand offers them not what you sell them. Take Apple for example; they sell computers, but what they really sell is ideas and the ability to create and think differently. See this video by Simon Sinek for a further understanding.

5. The process is over at rollout
Myth. We have seen so many companies develop brands, throw a big roll out party for their employees, give them a t-shirt and a mouse pad with a new mission statement and within a month, nothing from a cultural standpoint has changed and customer satisfaction surveys remain stagnant. Why? Because the brand development process doesn’t end at rollout, it begins! Companies must shift their focus to the employer brand to begin drilling into the culture through their recruitment and talent management practices. Every new employee hired, must be what the brand personifies otherwise your brand development process is nothing more than a creative exercise — it must be implemented properly or all that hard work I mentioned above will be nothing in 6 months.

Companies and startups need to invest in brand development to help them understand who they are, how they can better the marketplace and how they are going to attract the talent necessary to grow and remain sustainable.

If you are looking for help in defining who you are, what makes you unique in a cluttered marketplace and how to build a foundation of sustainability, culture and best hiring practices for your brand. Contact us today!

Dec 19

6 Reminders Why (or why not) Your Website Rocks

By Joshua Claflin Web Design

So you just launched a new website. The site looks great, functions as it should and the whole company loves it. You’ve had great feedback from customers and the rumor is the board members are also impressed – all is good in the marketing department today. Good job! But just in case you have forgotten about the initial goals and objectives, here are 6 reminders why your new website is rock’n!

1. You have an amazing careers page
People are like gold and are your most important asset. This important section of your site should be shared with marketing and HR. The best career pages have videos that present some aspect of the company other than work. By attracting and hiring the right employees you will create a better company culture. You’ve given your employees purpose and a reason to get out of bed every morning to come to work. They are empowered to generate ideas and innovation is so thick it’s flowing from the water fountains. Your people are the key differentiator in a marketplace full of identical competitors™.

2. You write specifically for your customers
You’ve spent some time figuring out who your target market is and you’ve pegged three buyer personas that you have based all your content around. When potential visitors hit the site, they are drawn in and stay there. Low bounce rates baby!

3. You’ve made it responsive
Since over 20% of all website are viewed on a smartphone or tablet and climbing – you’ve created a responsive website that allows users to see content on multiple devices. See some other interesting mobile more stats to the right.

4. Every page is optimized
The old adage goes, “unseen is unsold”. Every page is optimized and indexed by Google. Your keywords have really gained traction and are passing on important leads to your marketing team for qualification.

5. Every page is like flypaper
Every page on the site uses succinct phrases and larger type with big beautiful graphics. Graphics are easier to scan and easier to understand. Most people’s attention span is less than 10 seconds. You must get your point across quickly and engage your visitor and you’ve done that. There is also some videos that allow visitors to watch about your latest product feature.

6. Strong call-to-actions and lead nurturing
Every page has a CTR (Call to Action) and a mechanism in place to pass on quality leads to the sales team. You created the website in this way to reduce costs on lead generation because cultivating leads online can save your company money and make your sales funnel much more cost-effective.

Is your website still rocking?

Today, with so many aspects of digital marketing changing it’s somewhat impossible to keep up with best practices for web. Contact us today for a free consultation on your website and how to make it rock!

Dec 15

Can Your Brand Become Iconic?

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

Can your brand become iconic? This week, I look at two brands that have achieved cult-like status. I will explore their history and attempt to trace their origins and discover what made them iconic. First we’ll start with a little branding 101.

Brands originated as far back as 1100 BC. The first known brand was from India. As man progressed up to the industrial revolution, it became necessary as more companies entered into the marketplace the need to differentiate ones products and services over another. Generic brands found it useful to become a real brand to succeed.

The term “Brand” comes from the old Norse word brandr “to burn.” And as we all remember, Cowboys used brands to identify their cattle just as companies today use their brands to identify themselves.

Today, the term branding is used in marketing, advertising and sales as a way to build relationships on a social and psychological level. Brand developers seek to create not only the words, shapes, colors, look and feel of a brand but also to connect them to the consumer on an emotional level that then creates a preference over competing brands.

Some brands do this so well, they’ve become iconic. They’ve transcended into something bigger than just a product or service – but rather an attitude and lifestyle. Two examples I am looking at is Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company and Ironman Triathlon.

The first example is Harley-Davidson. This iconic brand not only defines and differentiates a motorcycle company, but it also defines an entire class of people based on their lifestyle and attitude towards life. Talk to any Harley owner and immediately you’ll get a sense of who they are based on any one response to a trivial question about the weather. You may say: “Nice weather we’re having today isn’t it?” Harley owner: “ Yeah its #$*@ awesome – good day for a ride!” Then you watch them walk off in black leather chaps, vest and boots. Harley has extended its brand into watches, sponsored sub brands on Ford trucks and others. This brand has achieved cult status and is listed on Interbrand’s list of the 100 most influential brands.

Iconic brand The second example of a company that does this well is Ironman. Ironman’s tagline “Anything is Possible” – defines the attitude of the people who train for and finish a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mike bike and 26.2 mile run – all in one day. Ironman has extended its brand into shoes, watches, headphones, cereal, power bars, sports drinks and clothing. Not only has it’s brand become synonomous with inspiration, but also with accomplishment – which is its main draw for participants. Who would pay a $500+ entry fee, sacrifice 9-12 months of their life to train and then purchase on average $3000-$10000 in equipment to go through 8-17 hours of pain on race day. Although not as widely known as Harley, Ironman has achieved cult-like status, to the people who are called by its brand name.

By tapping into the psychological aspects of the personality, companies can have a greater understanding into their customer’s motivations and triggers. So to that end it pays to do upfront research on your brand before crafting it.

The question remains, did Harley and Ironman purposely craft their brands in this way? Can you actually go out and create an iconic brand with a cult-like following? Or did these brands happen serendipitously?

In my next post, I’ll look at the history of both companies and seek to discover how these two brands have achieved iconic status.

Nov 06

How to Revive a Dead Website

By Joshua Claflin Web Design

So you started a website project a few years ago and it has basically been left to drift and DIE! Somehow you got really busy and the dreams of starting your new internet venture got put on the back burner. It wasn’t your fault… job, kids, life got in the way. But now, you’re ready to get back on it – fully motivated and ready to rock. Have no fear, here is list of things you can do to revive that old website and get it back on track, or until you can afford a new one.

Ask yourself these questions to evaluate where you are and where you need to go:

Website Design & Branding:

Is the current branding look/feel in line with the audience you were targeting years ago? If not, make some changes. Update your tagline, maybe change your logo to a new font face, update the colors, etc.
Is the imagery looking a bit nostalgic? Replace those pics with people who live in this era.
Content – does it look busy? Is the functionality outdated? These types of issues usually deter savvy internet users from staying on your site. Make it super easy to understand. You only have about 8 seconds to capture their attention.
More pictures, more content, more action! Add some JQuery sliders or an animation.
If you made the brand about you, make sure you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. People will tend to heavily gravitate or heavily repel from personal brands based on how they see and/or relate to you. This will also effect your ability to effectively target your audience.
Make it mobile-friendly! Your website must work on all devices.

Content & Community:

For subject enthusiast sites (hobbies, interests, sports, politics, etc.) to be successful, you need to be blogging 2-3x per week – yes, that’s a lot. No one said it would easy. To supercharge it, add 2 or 3 videos monthly or more and make sure the photography and content is interesting and adds value.
Imagery needs to be rich and interesting. This causes the site to be “sticky” – meaning when people hit it they stick around.
Inbound marketing or “pull” marketing is the name of the game. Blogs or articles should add value to your subscribers and visitors. Earn their trust, help them solve problems, make them feel a part of something bigger, provide useful information — build your credibility.
You need to think in terms of how you can build a community or “tribe” where you earn the trust of people who have the same likes/dislike as you. I have two clients who are really successful at this.
Client 1 on average sees over 6k visits per day and Client 2 has a community of over 85,000 people and has over 10k visits per day. They both built a community that supports their users. In your case, you need to be the catalyst to help your visitors come together. You may seem to have the right topics, but you must also be willing to let things go completely organic and be as authentic as possible. In a media saturated world, authenticity is better.
Both clients direct their efforts toward other online groups, email marketing, merchandise, events and online radio shows. Checkout blogtalkradio.com.
Social Media – Once you’ve got some relevant content going, time to start reaching out and joining the conversation on other blogs, Facebook pages and following like-minded people on Twitter and connecting on LinkedIn. Build a following by commenting and jumping in on conversations. The great thing about the web is you don’t need an introduction, just something in common — so jump in and start making friends.
Already thinking along these lines? Good…now you need SEO to ignite it.

SEO & Marketing:

Your site most likely needs to be optimized. Since it’s been dead for months (or years), it lacks a lot of the keywords necessary for page rankings.
To accomplish this, you need to hire a professional SEO firm to help you get it optimized.
Google just put out a new algorithm – the programs that rank websites – and their requirements are stricter than ever. The new algorithms are now based on sites that provide real substance and real human opinion. Gone are the days where links were enough.
Site speed – very important, make sure your site loads quickly.

By keeping these points in mind, you’ll be ready to shock your website back to life!

Oct 31

How to Design a Great Logo in 7 Steps

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development, Logo Design

Several times a year I am commissioned to design a logo. Projects run the gamut in subject matter, and I often find myself biting my lip because I’m not inspired by what the brand, product or service stands for — these projects are priced accordingly or turned down. However in most cases, I’m able to take an idea and run with it, knowing that I can come up with something that meets or exceeds the client’s expectations.

Typically the most difficult projects — the real stumpers — are about subjects that don’t relate to any tangible objects in the real world. It’s much easier to get creative with a person, place or thing than with an idea. In these cases you have to incorporate related objects to communicate what you are trying to convey. For example lets look at a past project – Noble Plans, a non-profit recruitment agency or RPO.

How do you come up with an icon for Noble? Or Plans? You don’t — it doesn’t exist. The easy way out would be to come up with some typeface and call it good. We solved this problem by using the “cross meaning” method as a way to communicate the meaning of noble. ”Cross meaning” is essentially finding something that is similar to the meaning but drawing from another category. So instead of asking what does noble look like — the question becomes, what is noble?

Some examples of Noble may be: A Politician (haha, …no.)? A Knight? A Shield? Perhaps a Lion?

The answer to the problem was a Lion. It proved to be a good fit to express nobility, integrity and strength. These were also brand attributes the owners wanted to convey. We then used a strong typeface to reinforce. In the end, not only did the Lion make sense, but it also differientiated the brand in a highly competitive category. We also made sure that within their category, their competitors where not using a Lion.

Really great logo designers typically invoke a high level of cleverness into design. Cleverness is the ability to show inventiveness or originality.

I define creativity as: the capacity and talent of a designer to take shape, color, form, style, imagery and type and transcend those design elements into original, progressive ideas that give the viewer or audience something they have never seen before. Creativity can also influence the purchase decision by causing the viewer to feel enjoyment or satisfaction when encountering a piece of communication. In design, creativity is often restrained to ensure accuracy in communicating with the desired target audience. It can also be repressed by the product or service owner’s idea of how best to present itself. These dynamics determine the level of “punch” of any creative execution.

Remember a logo is much more than just a “logo” – it’s the number one business asset that allows businesses to compete and differientiate themselves in the marketplace. For small companies, it’s the pivot point that establishes a sense of pride, ownership and foundation.

Below is the process I generally take when designing a logo. Sometimes when I hear the name of the brand, by God’s grace – the idea just pops in my craw, other times — it takes some work and a lot of thought. But the challenge is what keeps me loving what I do – being a designer and a thinker.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford

First things first, start off with word association: Using the Visual Thesaurus tool and Dictionary.com – I will look for words similar to the subject’s name, meaning, industry or any other nouns or adjectives to begin to understand the meaning and potential underlying meanings and how they are percieved.
Begin initial concepts: Based on your initial impressions of the subject, sketch out some rough concepts on paper. I will then look for photographs to bring resolution to the concepts.
Create 3 different categories to design – Abstract, Lettertype and Icon
Textures, Materials and Movement – Can you reinforce your message with any of these elements?
Color & Type – Add the appropriate colors and characters (typeface) based on the directive of the communication.
Presentation – a little trick I use to present logos is to arrange them in a way that builds up to a climax – presenting the weakest designs first and ending with the strongest. Try to also arrange in a professional layout, just don’t throw them at the client all at once. Walk them through your process. This helps create a great presentation and leaves you taking applause at the end.
Recommendation – Without a solid presentation your best ideas will fall flat. I always give our recommendations on what we’d like to see the client go with and then fight for it. This adds value to the client and helps you to establish more credibility for later projects.

Nov 06

Nine Tips to Make It In The Design (or any) Business

By Joshua Claflin Graphic Design Business, Small Business

This month Garrison Everest celebrates nine years in business.

Like most entrepreneurs I started in a basement back in early 2003. Prior to getting my start, I was doing UX design for a start-up right out of college that went under after it blew through $39 million in venture capital in 12 months.

I began working on little projects referred to me by friends and family, but when 9-11 hit and the country went into a brief recession I was forced to put my fledging dreams and business aspirations on hold and find a “real job.”

I found work with an agency downtown Denver that was located on the top floor of the Qwest building, (now Century Link). After being with the agency for 9 months, commuting 2 hours a day and experiencing the stress of what it takes to be an agency caliber designer, I knew that without a doubt, that if these people could do it – so could I.

[quote style=”boxed” float=”right”]Seven out of 10 new employer firms survive at least 2 years, half at least 5 years, a third at least 10 years, and a quarter stay in business 15 years or more. Source https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/[/quote]

Feeling anxious about getting back to what I started, an opportunity came along to be acting creative director with a virtual digital advertising agency on a contract basis working out of my apartment. I was essentially promised a steady workflow and was free to work on building my business. After a lot of thought and prayer, I felt God pushing me to make the jump. The job would be contract only, no benefits, no office — and no guarantees. So I quit the downtown agency and made the leap.

Now working incredibly late nights in my $450/mo Capital Hill apartment downtown Denver – it was fast and furious designing online ads, landing pages, print and website design — and I was loving it. After 6 short months the company I was contracting with went under from poor management because its owner took the cash and bugged out to Mexico (I’m not making this up), but left me with all their clients including NASCAR. This was the opportunity and springboard that really took my business — which was just a sole-proprietor at the time — to the agency level.

Slowly over a 10 month period, income began to increase and more clients and projects came in. I remember when I got my first check for $13K. I almost went through the roof – but I knew that I was on to something and I was developing something special that I could call my own. I guess the rest you can say is history (or history still in the making).

So here are a few things I learned in the process, below are nine tips that you can apply to your business that I have always tried to focus on that have brought nine successful years of business and counting. Being election day, you could call it my 9, 9, 9 plan.

Work hard – This goes without saying. If you are a self-starter and got the talent — the sky really is the limit in this country. Hard work always came naturally to me from my years as a competitive swimmer to chopping and stacking wood when I was a boy. A strong work ethic was instilled in me at an early age. Try to develop strong work habits and don’t quite till the job is done.
Persistence – There were times when things got really grim. We’ve gone through some really tough months that have tested our resolve. Like other agencies that went under in the great recession, we almost lost it all as well – but we were able to hold on. Never give up – you never know when the next big project is around the corner.
Diversify – One of the things that makes our group unique is that we can do a lot of things for our clients very efficiently. Brand development, website design, logo design, packaging, SEO and now business development, marketing and sales. I think people who work in the agency business naturally become experts in business and become the “go-to” guys. We have since focused more on brand development and have partnered with other companies who are really good at SEO and programming, but continue to retain the ability to do these types of projects in house. This has allowed us to diversify our skill set and to stay afloat during tough times.
Never stop learning – Read the current marketing books, sign up for webinars, keep up on the latest software releases, know how to speak and present yourself and your ideas and always try to position yourself as a resource.
Be Proactive – Be the first to let the client know where you are on a project. Never allow them to email you asking were things are. Try to think ahead. I will spend the first hour of my morning going through my task list and determining how I can best serve a client and what needs to get done by close of business. This keeps clients happy which leads me to my next point…
Get Organized – Know when things are due, keep your schedule tight, know when to say “no”, always keep your time commitments and always be on time. I trained for an Ironman early this year while balancing my 3 and 5 year old, a wife studying for medical school and a full work load – it’s possible.
Differentiate – Find out how to really stand out in a crowd and how to separate yourself from your competitors.
Confidence – Confidence only comes through experience – failures and successes. I have crashed a few designs, botched a few presentations and have had clients drop us. However we’re lucky to say we’ve had more successes than failures. Be willing to take a risk and go after bigger accounts that you think are out of you reach. I was once told by an old friend of mine. “when people are scared, they go farther and reach higher.”
Networking – I am blessed to have made a lot of important friends and contacts when I first started out. I owe a lot to these people who referred leads and believed in me. Without their referrals I don’t think Garrison Everest would be where it is today.

In the design business most of it is about dealing with people. The better you are with people, being sensitive to their expectations and personalities the better and farther you will go. One thing that is also important to mention is being ready for opportunities when they come your way. We make sure to have our sales presentations and website updated with our latest and greatest work as well as talking points at the ready when potential leads call in. Always be prepared to talk about what you’ve done and how you’ve helped clients in the past. Ok, so it ended up being 11 tips.

I hope this has encouraged you to start your own business or to keep striving in yours.

Apr 03

Garrison Everest Featured in PRINT Magazine

By Joshua Claflin Political Campaign Design

A few months ago I was interviewed by PRINT magazine on the topic of Political Campaign Design in the age of Obama called Ink on Plastic. It’s always fun to get national recognition, especially for what is considered a non-existent market for being a “conservative graphic designer” – a term you don’t usually hear in the design community because of its left-leaning majority. We work with right and left-wing business clients (we actually don’t even ask), because really, who cares? We are all Americans right? However, when it comes to political work, it’s all conservative issues and candidates.

The left-leaning design majority was apparent when I was in College at the University of Wyoming. When most of my peers were wearing chains, sporting purple hair and idolizing Bill Clinton, I was showing up to class in a white shirt and tie (I was president of my fraternity and on the varsity swim team, so such an outward appearance was appropriate, if not the expectation) — It was I who stood out at the end of the day. It wasn’t my fault I grew up on a ranch in Northern Wyoming with a skill and talent in design. I am a 5th generation Republican, I don’t have a choice in these matters. Regardless of being a minority among my peers as a conservative designer – even in the Denver web and design market – I am thrilled to get the plug.

I do, however, want to reply to a couple of statements made in the article, “…it seems unlikely that in the near future, vernacular American political design will be transformed by abstract concepts like ‘narrative’ and ‘brand.'” As Callahan says, “It’s just putting ink on plastic.”

There is some truth to this, evident by the fact that of the thousands of people who run for elected office every year, many have neither the budget nor an understanding of the benefits of branding and design. But for those folks who do get it, and to challenge Callahan’s suggestion that candidates are only known for the look of their yard sign, I’m willing to bet that those with a better looking yard sign not only have a higher likelihood of getting elected, but most often do. So in the end, it’s really not just ink on plastic, now is it?

Below is an excerpt from the article written by Fritz Swanson.

Garrison Everest, of Denver, is a design firm that is struggling to bring state-level candidates around to the new realities of political design in the Obama age. When you Google “conservative political design,” Garrison Everest is the top hit.

Joshua Claflin is the president and creative director of Garrison Everest, and after nine years in the business, he finds himself doing more and more comprehensive designs for political clients. A designer all his life, Claflin studied graphic design and marketing at the University of Wyoming. His firm typically works with local and state candidates but has also been brought in by national campaigns. Most recently, Garrison Everest was in talks to do work for Newt Gingrich’s 21st Century Contract with America initiative.

“The real story,” Claflin says, “is that the Obama campaign turned the political design industry upside down. Any candidate who is serious about winning has to take his approach. Politics is no different from business, and those same best practices need to be considered. Develop your brand, your narrative, and a creative platform.”

But this message has been hard to get out. Before Obama, very few political clients came in looking for help. And even post-2008, when Garrison Everest’s traffic tripled, it was still only working for a handful of actual clients: four regular ones right now, and only about ten total over the last three or four years

“Conservative Republicans are just starting to wake up to the power of design,” Claflin says. Even though many politicians come just for a yard sign, he sets out to show them that a strong web presence and an integrated design package (including a WordPress-based content-management system, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and a business card and letterhead) are what every serious candidate needs these days. “If a candidate stands for something, they need to communicate it through all of their touch points,” Claflin says. He explains to prospective pols that they should have a typeface or an insignia. They need to do something that introduces the politician as a person, something that cuts through the clutter. They need to become a brand.

“The brand has to stand for something, has to be unique, and has to tell a story,” Claflin says. “It is not enough to have a product and a service—you have to have more. There are ten to twenty of everything, including political candidates.”

For his conservative clients, he suggests a corporate color palette: dark blues and dark reds. “Nothing green, nothing pink,” he says. He steers them toward angles rather than curves. He prefers sans-serif typefaces, masculine forms. And he really likes the work. “The best part,” he says, “is seeing the exposure of the design in the public, especially when your candidate is elected.” Claflin’s satisfaction is sharpened by civic pride, a sense that he is helping to clarify and communicate issues of substance. “It’s more satisfying than working on, like, a regular lawn-mower service,” he says.

The key draw of political work for graphic designers, Claflin thinks, is inspiration: “These candidates are inspiring. It carries over into the design. When you talk to a candidate, you get excited by their stances and their values, and it is inspirational.”

Even though Claflin can make the case that clients need good design, and even though he has the insight and the passion to give conservatives a design ethos that is right for them, the political work is still only about 5 percent of his total business. The main reason Claflin can’t convert contacts into clients is budget. According to the Institute on Money in State Politics, the average total budget for a state-house race in Colorado is $36,334. The average price for one of Garrison Everest’s integrated design packages is between $5,000 and $8,000. “It’s very hard to find someone who will go all the way and really do it right,” Claflin says. “They are hesitant to make the investment.”

And it’s not just small, hand-to-mouth candidates. I asked him if he ever got the job designing Gingrich’s Contract with America. “No,” he said. “They just didn’t have the budget.”

Read more at PrintMag.com: Ink on Plastic

Joshua Claflin

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