Enter the Archives: Creativity and Balance

We talk a lot about creativity here because…well…we’re a creative design firm. Our archives are a great look into our evolution as designers and creative thinkers. Check out some things we’ve said about design to see how we balance creativity and work.

Stay true to your goals.

Embrace your Small Business America lifestyle. Appreciate the flexibility it offers, and the opportunity it presents to produce your best work. Your creativity is waiting to emerge- you just have to let it.

Keep track and follow up.

In our small studio, we’re all project managers to some extent. We develop (and continually evolve) a sort of checks and balances system that helps us keep track of each others work. We want to make sure nothing but our best work goes out the door. That doesn’t mean, though, that the process is always smooth. This article from Workawesome has some insightful ways of handling unscheduled breaks in the day, and actually remembering to follow up later.

Busy isn’t necessarily bad.

There’s something to be said for losing a little bit of your sanity during times like this. If you’re smart, you’ll take something away from it- experience, self-control, perspective, a new medication for high blood pressure- that you can carry over into the next phase your company launches into.

Marketing isn’t always necessary.

When you stop trying to attract clients with all those conventional marketing techniques and start talking to them, you make something awesome happen.

We’ve done this through blogs, twitter, and e-mail. We like it because we get to see our clients (and they get to see us) through a friendly non-work lens.

Breathe. Balance.

Balancing work and creativity isn’t always easy, but once you find that sweet spot in between work and creativity, you’ll be able to find more ways to connect…like humans.

Inspire Trust through Stories

To Market or not to Market?

There are a lot of companies pushing the idea that you have to constantly market. That you have to constantly send out emails, newsletters, or text promotions. We’re of the other class — only promote when you have something to say. There’s no point in sending needless letters, tweets, or emails. Your customers will get annoyed. If they want information, they’ll come to you, and that’s usually a great place to start.

Look to your customers.

Sometimes, the answers are right in front of our noses. Rather than constantly moving outward and looking for a new way to market, sometimes it’s better to see what the customer wants. Think about who they are and how they communicate. Are they sending you emails? Texts? Tweets? Meet them in the middle and connect with your customers they way they prefer. More often than not, your customers will communicate with you when they need to.

Is old-school better?

We believe that it’s more important to have a well-designed website, engaging newsletters, custom-built designs, and relevant email marketing campaigns rather than fast-blast text messages or a series of pointless emails. Marketing is never something that people want to be interrupted with. We hate sales calls during dinner; we are against most forms of invasive marketing. It’s better to have in-depth content, a well-updated website, and valuable information than to push your ideas in front of your customers’ faces.

When marketing is important.

Sometimes, marketing is a have to rather than a should. For example, if you have a new product coming out, you’ll want to create some ad copy or some web copy. Maybe you’ll send out some postcards. You’ll probably have a tweet or an ad campaign. These are all valuable forms of marketing. But let’s face it. Famous brands didn’t get that way by shoving their products in their customers’ faces. They did it with grace and with ease.

No matter how you market or how often you market, you should communicate with your customers the same way that you would across other mediums. Market smart, brand smart, and reach your customers where they are. Marketing should always be about putting valuable content in a place where the customers can see it and can appropriately respond to it on their terms. Anything else is probably counter-intuitive.

Spotlight on Vieux Care

We’d like to congratulate Vieux Care, a direct primary care office based out of New Orleans, on the launch of their new website.

Vieux Care values the art in doctor-patient relationships, and we wanted to push the boundaries of what their site could accomplish. Because they value honesty, transparency, and near-immediate doctor-patient communication, their welcoming site incorporates a beautiful color palette, inspirational images, and three easy-to-navigate guidelines for how patients can receive care.

Study

Vieux Care is a company that values the doctor-patient relationship, so we wanted to make sure that their site was healthy, clean, and well organized. We began by reviewing their competition and creating a plan that would allow us to approach this site from a patient’s point-of-view. Patients can receive immediate care from their doctors, and we incorporated white, easy-to-spot buttons that would allow customers to preview the benefits of joining Vieux Care.

Text

Vieux Care values the people of New Orleans, and we created text that would reflect their inner values— their ability to see fewer patients; their dedication to remaining hassle free; and their patient-focused care.

Color Palette

Vieux Care provides real care, and we crafted a color palette that would be calming nd welcoming. We know that joining a new primary care practice can be intimidating, so we made sure that the clean lines and streamlined feel of the site reflected Vieux Care’s ability to reduce hassles and remain patient focused.

Accessible

Elegant architecture, streamlined navigation, and subpages that build off of one another create a site that is full of easily accessible content. Customers feel welcomed by the color palette and the curved edges of the buttons, font, and the chunking of the various sections.

Social Media

Because of the nature of the site, Vieux Care relies heavily on social media interactions with patients; so we made their social media contacts minimal and easy to find.

Why Newsletters Matter and Why You Need One

Businesses are constantly looking for ways to make their work, ideas, and projects stand out. While blogs and news pages can help, we wanted to explore the wonderful world of newsletters because writing and publishing a weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly newsletter can help you receive a higher ROI than other forms of marketing.

Newsletters help people decide what their next move should be.

Newsletters can help you do the following:

• Remind customers about a specific product or campaign. Let’s be honest. Your customers get a lot of emails every day, and they can’t remember every single promotion or campaign, even if it’s a great one. Create a memorable newsletter or drip campaign to remind your customers that you have something great to offer them. Remember to make sure you understand your customers before you send them a newsletter.

• Inform your readers about a specific idea, project, or newsworthy item. You don’t want to saturate your readers with too much information, but once in a while, a well-informed article, an in-depth newsletter that highlights your new projects, or a newsworthy item that is easily shareable can encourage your readers to spend more time with your products or services. Before you send out a newsletter, review ways to write an email that gets read.

• Offer discounts. Newsletters are great for discounts and promotional items because they can be read at the reader’s convenience, they are easy to store and share, and they cost next to nothing to send out. And according to Campaign Monitor, “email delivers the highest ROI for marketers.”

Based on their data, Campaign Monitor found that “emails receive even higher ROI than affiliate marketing or paid searches.” Consider how you’re spending your marketing money— shifting to a focus on a newsletter or email campaigns can help you gain more money while satisfying your customers’ curiosity.

• Campaign monitor also noted that “email opens on mobile devices grew 30% from 2010 to 2015.” So when you do send out an email marketing campaign, make sure that it’s fully optimized for mobile devices before you send it out.

• Email newsletters should be personalized to each customer. According to Experian, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened (via Campaign Monitor).

A newsletter should be as much about your customers and their needs as it is about your product. Good luck!