At Hot PJ we are about boosting the profitability of our clients’ businesses by strategically improving how they communicate with their clients and prospects.

It’s not possible to do this by just designing pretty brochures and websites. We take the time to get to know as much about our client’s business as we can; their target audience and how they behave, the business’ key capabilities, their product or service offering and how it sits alongside their competitors’,  what past promotional campaigns have they run, how they were resourced, implemented and measured, and how they performed… plus many more aspects. We do this long before we start discussing the design or shape the communication will take.

Free 45 minute Think Tank

One of the services we offer free to any business struggling with getting a marketing promotion off the ground is 45 minutes to tap into the many years of marketing, sales and design knowledge we have at Hot PJ. Perhaps, like one business owner this week, you have an idea in mind but aren’t sure if it has legs. Talking it over with someone outside your business who has  extensive marketing and design knowledge can help to focus your thinking.

Last week we spoke to a consultant who came to us with a promotion he had put together himself. Designwise it wasn’t bad, just needed some tweaks that any designer worth their salt could suggest. However, when we drilled down, we found he hadn’t defined his target market – that is those organisations and businesses he wanted as his clients. To get a picture of who these businesses could be we talked about the types of work he had done in the past, those that he had enjoyed dealing with and (importantly) those that were prepared to pay him well for his service.

This revealed two distinct industry groups which we further narrowed by geography. In order to effectively communicate with these prospective clients he needed to identify and locate the key decision makers within those groups – the person he ultimately needed to convince in order to win them as a client. We assisted with ideas on ways he could find these people, but warned him that there was a strong chance his research would reveal at least two types of decision makers that will require quite different messages. A business owner will have different needs to an employee, they will have different triggers so may well require a different message and offer. We discussed all this before we even looked at the type of promotion he was planning and the design he had created.

This is what I mean by taking a strategic approach – one which differs from many other design companies. So if you have a marketing dilemma or hurdle you don’t know how to get over, take advantage of our free 45 minute ‘think tank’.

Contact Hot PJ to make a time.

Photo: World Athletics Championships 2007 in Osaka – 400 metres hurdles favourite Bershawn Jackson struggling at the last hurdle, which leads to his competitors overtaking him and him dropping out in the semifinal. Photo by Eckhard Pecher

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: General, Marketing