PushingSnowballs

Creating a Screen-Friendly PDF Brochure

Want to create a great brochure to send via email? Then don't just make a PDF of your current printed materials. Make sure your work is seen in its best light by creating a document that is optimized for on-screen viewing, and then using the full range of functionality available in PDFs.

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Free Tools for Creating Marketing Budgets and Forecasting Revenue

The authors of Professional Services Marketing have created two interesting tools to accompany the book, and made them available for free download on their website.

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Big Company Marketing for Small Creative Firms

As a marketer of a small firm, there is a lot you can learn from big-firm marketing operations, and some of them don't cost anything. Here are six examples.

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The Fine Line Between Persistence and Stalking

Some of you may be familiar with The List. They maintain a database of marketing decision makers at companies throughout the U.S. and Canada, and sell access to this database on a subscription basis. It's actually a pretty good service (although not cheap) if that's your market, and...

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Do You Have a Prospect Wish List?

I've talked in the past about the value of emphasizing content marketing over high-volume cold calling, but in that same post I also recommended that you consider creating a "prospect wish list" that includes potential clients that you will proactively pursue.

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Why do Designers Blog?

Why do designers blog? I'm not asking this rhetorically, and I'm not asking it in a pejorative fashion, like "Why do designers waste their time with blogging anyway?" I'm posing a serious question about what people are trying to achieve with their blogs.

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Understanding the Marketing Value of Pro Bono Work

Do you do pro bono or "low bono" work for non-profits? Many, if not all, creative firms do at one time or another. Designers and ad agencies will create identities or marketing materials for free, and architects will do work that, while usually not free, is certainly far from profitable.

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Cold Calling Versus Content Marketing

For creative services firms, cold calling as a new business tool has always been a frustrating enterprise. Unlike people selling consumables, or services that are purchased on a regular schedule, creative services marketers very rarely reach a prospect when they have a need for what they're selling.

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Harnessing the Referral Power of Bigger Fish

You may already work as a subcontractor to big agencies, but there's also a second, less common, way to get work from these connections. And this method may pay actually pay bigger dividends in the long run. You want to get them to send prospects directly to you, hopefully to become your clients.

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