Customer Information

Knowledge is power. Information about your client is essential in order to satisfy him/her. You can learn a lot about your client by asking yourself a few basic questions:

Who: Who is your client? Where is he located? Try to get to know him a little bit and learn more about his preferences. Does he like a cutting edge design, or is he more conservative?

Why: Why did you client contact you instead of one of your competitors? This information can be helpful to advertise your strong points. This can also help you to identify your weak points and improve them.

If you want to know more about your strengths and weaknesses, you could also perform a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and opportunities should be exploited while weaknesses and threats should be contained and improved.

Here’s a small example. A client says he chose you because you are very punctual and you provide good feedback. These are you strengths and they should be advertised. Another possible client didn’t chose you because they think that you charge too much. This is one of your weaknesses. You can solve this by reducing your price or by offering more value for the same price.

Perhaps you lost a client because your web design skills aren’t as good as your logo design skills. This offers an opportunity: if you can improve your web design skills you could potentially attract more customers. An opportunity can possibly increase your revenue stream while a threat can decrease your revenues. For example: you’ve found out that there’s a new competitor stealing a lot of your clients. In this case you should advertise your strengths and try to win them back.

Commitment

One of the most important aspects of marketing is making the customer feel that you are there for him/her. Basically, everything revolves around your client, so your first goal should be to satisfy him. Satisfaction is defined as the ability to perform better than expected by the client.

This customer satisfaction starts with our previous aspect: customer information. Try to use the available information to create something that is focussed on the needs and wants of the customer. A lot of designer rely too much on their own vision instead the client’s.

And don’t forget: when you’ve finished the project, don’t forget to do a follow-up. This could possibly generate a future income from the same client. This once again shows you that you are interested in your customers.

Convenience

When you want to establish a relationship with clients, it’s important that he/she can reach you. You can’t attract new customers if no-one is aware of your existence. Potential and existing clients should have no problem contacting you. That’s why a good website or blog is so important. And don’t forget business cards, advertisements, testimonials…

Another aspect of convenience is the payment method. Try to offer as much payment options as possible, for example cheques, paypal, credit cards… The more convenient it is for you customer to use your services, the higher the probability he will become a new client.

Cost

Price is an important part in the decision process of your potential customer. There are 3 methods to calculate your price:

Cost Plus Method:

This first method takes into account your costs, your desired profit, and then totals these into a price. Your costs can be divided into two separate groups: direct and indirect costs. Direct costs can be tracked to the delivered service, for example labour cost. Indirect costs can’t be directly linked to your service. Indirect costs include for example rent, office supplies, electricity…

Competitor Based Pricing:

Another method of setting your price is by looking at your competition. This could be a little bit harder because you don’t always have information about your competitor’s pricing strategy. If you happen to have more information about your competitor’s pricing, you can use this to your advantage.

Position Pricing:

The market’s perception of your business can affect your pricing. If you’re a well established designer with a lot of respectful testimonials, you’re probably able to set a higher price (premium pricing). When you’re a young designer who is just starting to freelance on the other hand, you’ll probably set your price a little lower in order to penetrate the market (budget pricing).

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