20 Ways to Promote Your Good Design Products
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We outline 20 ways to promote your design company and products. Website, portfolios and directory listings remain indispensable. You can upgrade to a full-featured ecommerce platform and an internal press center. Networking for referrals is essential. But the most effective would be to tap into the marketing savvy of large outlets, and design award organizers who provide a full spread of marketing support. |
You’ve spent years building up your design business and team. Then again - endless hours on your lines of creative products. Now is the time to double up your effort and promote them. Whether your company creates furniture sets, architecture, photography packages, fashion, shoe or jewelry, marketing is crucial to your success. We outline 20 ways you can promote your good design products - and reap the rewards you deserve.
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The first step is to ensure your company has a credible Web presence. Establish a homepage, which can be a professional Website, a storefront on an online mall, or a full-fledged ecommerce site. At a minimal, you can use a profile page at an online community or a social network. Weave a Web identify with today’s Web tools.
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Second, ensure you have an online portfolio of successful designs. Potential customers need to trust your design background and history. They need to visualize what you can do for them. If your homepage described above does not contain extensive gallery of your designs, you can use an online portfolio platform. They are dedicated to presenting images, with tagging, search and social features. Examples are Behance.net, DeviantArt.com, Architizer.com or PhotoShelter.com.
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There are three levels of online stores to sell your design products. One, online printers and digital publishers help you save the troubles of handling materials, bulk purchasing, inventory, production, packaging, delivery and payments. For example, CafePress.com and Zazzle.com will print your designs on apparel, mugs, stickers or bags on your behalf. Ponoko.com handles 3-D printing of design parts, while Lulu.com and CreateSpace.com publish music and books. Two, online malls or megastores, such as, Etsy.com and Bonanza.com charges a commission or monthly fee to host your store, display and sell your products to a large, ready, customer base. Three, hosted ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify.com and BigCommerce.com are the dedicated and full-featured option. You will be able to create a complex online stores that can even be linked to your physical outlets’ point-of-sales system.
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Our sixth suggestion: List your homepage, portfolio or store URLs in design directories. Guide Web searches back to your pages. Let the world find your homepage, portfolio, and latest products by making sure that many design directories point back to you.
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Have your creative people write free tutorials or courses - crediting your company as a source of talents and thought leaders. Your company’s specialized knowledge may be routine to you, but novel and helpful to others. Articles and tutorials also lead to speaking engagement and invitation to networking events for your partners. On these free courses, you are expected to link back to your homepage, portfolio or product selling pages.
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Now that you have your shops set up, make sure you have a regular channel of communication and news dissemination. Use blog, video blog, social blogging, social network news feed to your advantage. Make sure that updates about your designs pop up regularly in the face of your targeted customers. For a new sofa design, you can post a blog article, a vlog of behind-the-scene manufacturing process, then a Facebook update with links to the blog and photos on Instagram.
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Send press releases to trade magazines, design blogs, and local news outlets. Most press releases are ignored by editors. So to make sure your releases are selected for publication, you need to create newsworthy and clearly written pieces. Fill your releases with useful information for their readership and personal quotes, which will catch the editor’s eyes.
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Our 10th recommendation: Distribute newsletters with the purpose of building a list of emails of loyal followers. Recycle selective blog articles, tutorials, and guest articles. Aim to help your readership save money, earn revenues, and improve their lifestyle. Include one or two products from your online stores that you want to sell. Give special discounts or gift to your subscribers to encourage loyalty.
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As a company, you have more resources to manage communication. Create your own press center to coordinate press releases and online media helpers. Set up dedicated email account to communicate with the press and Skype account for interviews. Create videocast capability for virtual press conferences. Build a library of press releases, presentation and press packages. This virtual department can now be delegated to a staff or a team.
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Join designers’ associations. Professional association membership not only attract peer designers, but often also corporate buyers, suppliers and wholesalers interested in design products. Associations lend social status to members. They are also important hubs to learn about the latest news, events, trends, regulations and exhibition opportunities.
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Connect with corporate buyers, wholesalers, in addition to selling to individual buyers. Wholesalers buy in bulk, and they can help finance scaled-up production. Buyers for hotels and interior designers, for example, may be constantly looking out for design products for their renovation or expansion. Wholesalers have access to marketing budgets for new markets and audience. Connect with social groups with specific interest, such as, home and garden hobby groups, to contribute as their event speaker and consultant.
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Ask for referrals. Referrals are valuable because they are pre-filtered both ways, pre-qualified, social endorsements and marketing shortcuts. The level of trust is many times above other types of social connections. As advised in marketing seminars: Just ask for referrals! Having built a great-looking Website, portfolio and Web store, and established a credible social status, it is much easier for trusted associates to send referrals your way.
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Advertise your company’s design products and services in trade magazines, online directories, Google or Facebook. You can reduce online ad cost if you select less popular but more specific keywords. You can choose to “soft-peddle” your products, sometimes by promoting an indirect product, such as free wallpapers, photos, tutorials, blogs or portfolio. As a company, you can have more diverse products to advertise. You can cross-market with other design products within your group.
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Our 16th suggestion: Join a trade show to highlight your latest line of product designs. Trade shows are costly to join, but they attract dedicated industry insiders and wholesalers. Trade shows maximize the number of vendors in a compact place and time, encouraging more buyers to come into contact with the design companies and talk. Both sides know they are committed to providing and finding the design products or services.
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Join group or juried exhibitions, or those organized by artist cooperatives, local government or your associations. They are newsworthy events to write about in your blog and press release. Readers for your blogs and newsletters are more likely to read an article that is news event about your latest exhibition, than an article that is theoretical. With a team of diverse talents, you can join more exhibitions, to the credit of your company.
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Free work can still reward your company. One way is to give away small gifts that highlight the quality of your designs. Educational videos or free 3-D designs can be distributed to various platforms, with links back to your Web hub. This saves marketing cash. Two, charity and community projects can open doors to new experience, connection and referrals. Street art festival can energize your team members, expand their horizon and get them in touch with daily users.
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License your designs to large outlets. After selling a successful batch of products, large wholesaler might be interested in buying the rights to manufacture by themselves, to better control quality, timing, and financing costs. While you need to worry about intellectual property protection when manufacturing in developing countries, you could license to US or European wholesalers or retailers, and let them manage the legal and intellectual property issues of manufacturing in China, for example.
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Join a prestigious design award competition. The leading international design awards provide winners with benefits such as a profile page, trophy and certificates of recognition. But A’Design Award stands out among them in providing all-round promotional services to winning individuals and companies. Winners receive marketing support in terms of press release preparation and distribution, sales listing, award ranking, business networking, marketing and consultancy services. The winners are promoted to thousands of media editors, bloggers, and news outlets.
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To recap, as your design company grows, you need to dedicate more time and staff resources to organizing promotional campaigns. The basic Website, portfolios and directory listing remain indispensable. You may upgrade your shop to ecommerce site. Set up an internal team as the press center. Network for referrals. But some of the most effective approaches are to tap into the marketing savvy and services of large wholesaler or retailers, and take advantage of prominent design award competition organizers who provide a full spread of marketing support.
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 REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY:
http://designamid.com/magazine.php?pageno=671
http://artshow.com/juriedshows
http://competition.adesignaward.com/theaward.html
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This article was added on Saturday, 8th of October, 2016 at 05.15 pm by author 
