The Six Essential Steps to a Great Project

Processes are essential for success of any project. Design, Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are no exceptions to the rule. Many companies in our profession state they have processes but they really just “wing it” every time. We aim for consistency. We liken our process to relationship. We want to meet your needs. We want to ensure that your marketing fits your companies budget, timeline and needs, not the other way around. Below is the basic process we work within to achieve the solutions for your marketing needs.

Step 1: It's Just Lunch (the first date)

Not unlike dating this is the get to know each other phase of our relationship. Before we decide to “get serious” with each other we need to gather information that starts our relationship on the right path. This will be a few meetings to understand your projects needs.

We will go over “the Essential 9” questions:

  1. What is your target market?
  2. What is the product or service your selling?
  3. What is the message you want to communicate to your target market?
  4. What is the feeling your trying to communicate?
  5. What is the size, number of pages or other hard details of the project?
  6. What have you seen that is similar to your project?
  7. What is your timeline?
  8. What are the milestones?
  9. What is your budget?

Step 2: Make It Official

This is the getting official part of the relationship. From our gathering of information we will put together a proposal or estimate. Upon acceptance of the proposal or estimate we will create and sign a contract. We will also take a deposit from you, in most cases ½ of the proposal or estimate cost.

Step 3: Create Great Design

This is the fun and play part of our relationship. Don’t worry you won’t see crappy clip art and lame layouts. We will unlock the creative monkeys from their cages and let put their creative energy, talent and problem solving to work on your project. We are consistently looking at inspiration and new design techniques to make your project cutting edge. We will utilize the latest trends along with traditional marketing cornerstones and job specific solutions to create concepts.

Step 4: Mix’n Match

This is the grow together part of the relationship. We will deliver a concepts for your to review and engage us in conversation on changes. We will add, delete, edit and change the concepts to fit your needs. We like to call this the “mixing and matching” the concepts with your vision of a single completed project. We will give you our opinion but realize your the final approval and the one who ultimately pays us, we want you to be happy. Sometimes this stage happens a couple of times to get the design, message, and details just right.

Step 5: Happily Ever After

This is the honeymoon phase of our relationship. The hard work is done and were ready to enjoy some time on a beach. All of the revisions are finished and we are ready to publish, sent to print, or implement your project. We will formally ask for your final approval. We will assist in anyway possible with your needs in getting the finalized artwork to your printer or other publication servers.

Step 6: Continue the Relationship

This is the “1-year anniversary” part of our relationship. We check in from time to time to see how the campaign is going (granted we probably will already know), what tweaks we can make to the project and what were ways we could have improved this process to make it easier for you.