2009 has been a year of stops and starts, there is no doubt. One thing has really become clear, though. Managing any type of marketing requires a lot of effort. A lot of our clients are small central Alberta companies and associations who don’t have full time marketers on payroll. There is even more pressure when people are just trying to keep the doors open and cash flow up.
I suppose the most notable example is writing copy for a website that may contain 20 to 30 pages and have supporting images, graphics and data to go with it. Creating that is a formidable task – it needs to be done fairly quickly in the project life cycle, takes a long time and usually requires gathering resources a client might not have access to (photoshop files, vector logos and the like).
I’ve gained more and more respect for clients who go through the process to present themselves and their businesses in an effective way. I say this because we’ve recently done significant work on our own website and was reminded of how much work it is to re-write and re-compile a companies data, profile and identity.
I’ve gained more and more respect for clients who go through the process to present themselves and their businesses as best they can.
A client recently reminded me of a quote from the book the E- Myth by Michael E. Gerber. To paraphrase (poorly): “Most small business owners are practitioners (I.E. welder, writer, or professional rock climber) and they are not business managers.” Most small business owners have a daunting job ahead of them just keeping things together, while managing to apply their chosen trade well enough to still excel in small business.
So what’s the point of all this? Really I wanted to point out how much I respect anyone, anywhere who can pull the small business model off. And what of those in larger organizations? It’s also amazing to watch the workload juggling overtime pulling professionals out there who get to run the really big projects.
We try to excel at graphic design at Redpoint, but the business does “get in the way” often, but that’s ok. Everyone is doing it. We just don’t take it personally when clients forget to get us material, or doesn’t review drafts in a timely manner – there is a lot of business to be done before marketing gets done for a lot of people.