enterprise task 3

How will i promote myself?

What are the most suitable marketing methodologies for my own practice and the most effective methods to reach my potential cliental?


Within my promotional material some of the methodologies within the marketing communications mix would fit really well within promoting myself; advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing. Advertising and public relations are extremely important within graphic design, advertising to get your name out there and examples of your work out into the public eye and public relations to try and build contacts with other graphic designers and graphic design studios.
 I feel the most important aspect of self promotion would be my own personal branding as a designer, my own self identity. Branding myself will be the most valuable part of my personal promotion and the most important aspect to get right. This is because the way i brand myself will be the way i am initially viewed by any potential clients/employees, instantly giving them an overall impression of who i am as a graphic designer and whever or not they would like work with me.
Therefore a creative, aesthetically pleasing identity will be essential if i would like successfully reach my potential cliental.


To look further into this i looked at possible ways that i could promote myself as a graphic designer;
here is some of the information i found.

[ http://freelanceswitch.com/designer/how-to-promote-your-graphic-design-business-%E2%80%93-part-one/ v4]
-listing tips and advice on how to really make your self promotional material stand out from other and outlining different ways of self promotion and the importance of each one, mainly focussing on buisiness cards and how essential they are for graphic designers. 
''Business cards are your most important publicity items. ''
http://www.overnightprints.com/blog/freelance_designer_business_tips/]
-mainly showing ways for freelance designers to get their name out there but still very applicable to my chosen area of design, the site list 5 ways to help with self promotion and as you could imagine some of the advise shared is somewhat redundant but the site still stresses the overall importance of a successful business card.

http://www.davidairey.com/what-makes-a-good-business-card/
-i then stumbled upon this link which further stressed the importance of a good business card and the importance of having one, offering helpful tips for how to design a good business card and showing examples of business cards that WORKK.

“Regardless how flashy or clever your card is, if contact information is not readily available, or quickly processed, the card failed. What does it matter if someone remembered some neat trick the card does or how nice it looked if they find a hint of difficulty acquiring your information from it.”
— TERRY TOLLESON'


'A clean, uncluttered design shows that you care about appearance and immediately sends out a professional vibe'' - David Airey, 

Therefore it would seem that as a graphic designer your most important self promotional device is your business card, if you hand out your business card to a professional this will be their first glance at a piece of your work and therefore it needs to signify you as a designer instantly. So first step of my self promotion will be to design a business card, therefore if the right situation came up, i could start handing them out and hopefully hand out a good impression of my design work.

Business cards will also come hand in hand with public relations, building up an instant relationship with clients and professionals is another important principle of promotion. And is something that i urgently need to start putting more effort into, not only visiting studios and building up relationships with professionals but leaving a good lasting relationship with clients also, so that your name will spread through word of mouth and clients will keep coming back for more work.

I suppose one of my main potential cliental would be potential design studios/work placements that i am trying to gain interest from. Therefore i feel the best way of approaching promoting myself towards a certain design studio would be to personalise my promotional material towards the company itself in order to gain the most recognition. It shows that you have put time and effort into contacting a studio instead of just forwarding the same email to 20 different places, try to personalise what i am going to send to studios around them as a studio.

Another massive element of self promotion would be my online presence, i need to take full advantage of the online resources available to me to help get my name out there as a designer. Being that most of these resources are free to use also it means that these will be a very essential promotional tool for me.
Websites such at tumblr and twitter have already helped me get my work out there and viewed by thousands of people.
Having a personal webpage will also be key in getting my name out there as a graphic designer, much like the business card a website needs to reflect my style and taste as a designer because when viewed by clients/employees it will give them the overall impression of who i am. I need to build my own personal webspace that reflects my graphic design work.