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HOW TO SET YOUR FREELANCE RATES - A GUIDE FOR FREELANCERS & CONSULTANTSThere are many factors which business owners must consider on a daily basis as it relates to the running of their business. Things such as how to find good help, where to acquire supplies and how much to pay one’s employees are all pertinent matters which must be addressed. There are a few ways to go about figuring out your rates when it comes to how much to charge the customers.Self-Employed Freelancers & Home-Based Businesses: Create Effective Brochures (Paper-Based & On-Line) for Your Small Business
by B.J. Michaels
In business circles, the value of brochures is a topic of endless debate. Are they effective marketing tools, or a waste of time and resources? The answer is that it depends very much on how they're designed. This article explores the value of paper based brochures and brochure-style (i.e. very basic) websites, and gives you some tips for planning an effective brochure, be it paper or web-based.
What Does a Brochure Do for my Freelance or Small Business, Anyway?
When you give out a paper brochure, what result do you want? When you put up an on-line brochure, what do you expect to happen?
The basic answer in both cases is that you want the person reading the brochure to take some kind of action. Most often, the action you want is for the reader to contact you and purchase your product or service. Failing that, you want the reader to take the much less obvious action of remembering your company in the future, when the reader is ready to purchase your product.How Do You Get Brochur Readers to Take Actions That will Benefit my Small Business?
How do you get readers to take action? By giving them reasons why the action is beneficial to them. Not to their friends, or their spouses, or to you, but to them. But before you can do this, you must know who your audience is and what constitutes a benefit to them.
Who Will Want Your Small Business Product or Freelance Service?The first step in successfully selling a product is to know who you're selling to. So make a list of all the types of people who are likely to want what you offer.
There may be more than one group. For example, if you are a realtor, you deal with two distinct groups: buyers and sellers. The reasons that will make one group take action (sell a home through you) may be very different than the reasons that the other group will take action (buy a home through you). In this case, the two groups have such different interests that it makes sense to have two distinct paper brochures, or two separate pages on a website.
What are the Benefits of Having a Marketing Brochure for my Home-Based, Freelance, or Small Business?
Once you're clear on who your brochure is speaking to, start thinking about the features/benefits that will make these people want to buy it your product. If you really don't know why people buy your product, find out. Ask your current customers why they buy from you. These may be the qualities you want to emphasize.
As obvious as this step sounds, it's the point where most unsuccessful brochures go wrong. Too much attention is paid to listing what's for sale, and too little attention is paid to what will make people want to buy.
Especially look for qualities that make you unique. In general, people will not travel to your business or take the time to deal with you if they can find the same thing with less effort—but they will deal with you if you offer them something unique, or something they are unaware that they can get closer to home.
Price, Product, Services Within Your Promotional Brochure
The unique element can involve price, product, service, or some combination of all three. For this reason, the most effective brochures are the ones that flaunt a company's unique points.
Content and Theme of Your Small Business' Promotional BrochureOnce you've defined your market(s), how do you decide what to say to them? There are two guidelines to follow:
The brochure must be a complete selling tool. It must contain everything needed to make people want to take action. You cannot leave important things out, trusting that you will get a chance to tell the prospective customer later.
This principle does not mean that you must include everything about your business. It means that you tell one complete story that makes the reader want to buy from you.
The brochure should have unity. The best brochures have some kind of unifying theme, and the most effective themes are the ones that emphasize the ways that a business is unique.Why is having a theme so helpful? Because people remember concepts much more easily than they remember collections of unrelated facts. When the contents of your brochure have a sense of unity, the brochure—and your business—is more likely to be noticed and remembered. For this reason, it's best to pick one theme and emphasize it. Here are some examples:
Example 1. You sell coffee. You believe that these points that will appeal to your customers: competitive price, personal service, the fact that the coffee is locally roasted in small batches.
Your theme is: Quality at an Affordable Price. Your brochure should be dedicated to showing the ways that you deliver quality at a price that gives the customer value. In other words, you use your strong points to prove your theme.
Of course, you could simply list your points (price, service, etc.) one by one, without any overall theme, but they would not have nearly the same impact they have when presented within the context: here are the ways that we give you quality at an affordable price.
The theme itself is often presented in words as a tagline.
Example 2. You sell insurance. Privately, you believe that your policies aren't much different than anybody else's—but your service is great, you can explain your policies in common English, and you're the only insurance firm in your district. Your theme becomes Down-to-Earth Neighborhood Service and you stress those aspects of your business in your brochure.
Example 3. You run a small, independent knicknack-and-doodad shop that specializes in not much of anything, really. How do you sell this? Simple: the unifier is your lack of consistency or predictability! You are the store with an "Eclectic Assortment of Goods" and your slogan (and theme) are: "Come see for yourself. You never know what you'll find."
Fire the Big Guns FirstOne last tip: your biggest selling point should be on the front of your paper brochure, and in the first paragraph of your Home page.
Why? Because people are in a hurry. If you don't grab them up front, the rest of your message is not likely to get read. But once people see something that hooks them, they will read on in hopes that there is more good stuff to come. So identify what you believe is the biggest benefit to your target audience, and feature it prominently.
B.J. Michaels is the owner of Bennaco: The Technical Writers, an Edmonton, Canada writing firm that helps businesses to communicate with their customers. B.J. Michaels may be contacted at http://www.bennaco.com bjm@bennaco.com
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