Be a Princess to Your Clients

I have the fortunate privilege to not only be the owner of my graphic design company, Kristal Clear Graphics, but I’m also a full-time mom who gets to stay home with her two kids. So now as a mom of a four and one year, I have a fun variety of topics I talk about during my day from branding and design details to Barney and Bottles. A couple months after my son was born, I was feeling stumped in trying to come up with a topic for a newsletter that I was writing to my clients and contacts. I asked my daughter, who was 3 years old at the time, "What should I talk about in my business newsletter?" She replied with an obvious answer … "princesses!"

I don't know how she became obsessed with princesses as my husband and I tried our hardest to DIScourage the princess phenomenon, but it still came. So I thought to myself, "Ok, Kristal, you've got a creative mind for your design projects, why not put a creative spin on princesses for your newsletter. So this is how it turned out, and I’d like to share it with you:
Remember the last time you were in line at the grocery store looking at the tabloids and you saw that regular article about the celebrity that looked less than perfect. Maybe they gained a lot of weight, were caught by the photographer without their makeup and dressed in sweats, or just looked intoxicated. Whatever the mishap, it's our human nature to think what we're seeing on the celebrity is undesirable.

The next step of the process is to decide what to believe about the celebrity. Was their image taken out of context and you give them the benefit of the doubt or do you develop negative feelings from that image that make you dislike them and possibly even boycott their music/movie/TV show/etc. So the moral of the story is it's in the celebrity's best interest to always look like a princess (or a prince)!

How does this pertain to your business? Well, a celeb's face, personality, actions, etc are the brand and image they create for themselves. It's a little different from your business's brochures and web site, but both market to their audiences with these tools. Just as a celebrity could lose popularity and eventually money based on bad decisions they make with their image, businesses who don't put a "pretty princess" face on won't thrive amongst their competition either.

For instance, imagine you're a customer looking for a tailor to make alterations for that special "princess/prince" attire you need for a wedding. An acquaintance gives you a business card of someone from their networking group. The paper is flimsy with a random clip art image of a dress and suit on it. It has their company name in text but no logo and you can tell the owner printed it off their computer. It doesn't feel like a very professional establishment, but you go look at their web site anyway. It's quite obvious they made it themselves as well. It's very plain, hard to navigate, and little sense of design organization. Not completely comfortable with trusting your formal attire to this place you google other area shops. It's no surprise you didn't find the first shop in your google search, but you do find one nearby who's web site gives you a much better feeling. Their logo and design style is prominent, professional looking, plus it's consistent throughout the pages of the site as you discover it's quite easy to navigate. Your last discovery is that both shops quote you at the same price. Which company do you feel more comfortable going with? Obviously the one who's first impression was a professional one you could trust.

Now there's no reason both companies couldn't perform upright, quality service, but there is a reason they had to come up with the phrase, "Don't judge a book by its cover." It's because it's human nature to do just that, and in this day and age when people's attention span is so fast your business can't afford to not look its best. Instead, you always need to make your business look like a princess.

If you'd like more information about how you can give your business an attractive cover that will make your clients choose your product or service from amongst your competition, contact me today and let Kristal Clear Graphics turn your business into a princess.

Kristal Young, owner and graphic designer of Kristal Clear Graphics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers creative services in print, web and beyond. Now specializing in social media design for business identity, you can visit online at http://www.kristalcleargraphics.com or like Kristal Clear Graphics on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/kristalcleargraphicsllc.