Yay for 37Signals!

Here at ProofHQ we love to make our users happy… for the most part, that involves us keeping our heads down, focussing on regular revisions of the product to make it the very best that you can be.

Up until now, we’ve pretty much flown under the radar, doing what we do rather than shouting about it.We’re all human though and when someone shows us a little love, we can’t help but get a little fuzzy feeling of satisfaction! You can then only imagine our delight when today, we were featured by 37signals as one of their highlighted partners - alongside other great services such as Freshbooks and Beacon.

It gives us great satisfaction that we’re able to offer our users integration with services such as Basecamp but that they recognise what value we can offer their users too.  We’re signing off now to go and puff out our chests in pride, but if you’re interested in finding out how you can integrate 3rd party applications with your ProofHQ account, don’t hesitate to drop us a note.

Six powerful ways to reduce marketing costs in a recession

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As the recession bites there is daily news about CFO’s bearing down on marketing with sharp implements and slashing marketing budgets to the bone (see earlier post).

Kim Collins at Gartner has just released a report which confirms how much pressure marketing is under, but does provide some great advice for managing through the downturn.

In her report, “The Top Six CRM Marketing Processes for a Cost-Constrained Economy,” Collins warns against blindly cutting marketing during tough times, as this impairs growth when the economy improves.

Learn more »

Free E-book “How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself)”

I have been reading a lot of Mark McGuinness’s work recently over at Wishful Thinking and have become a big fan.

Mark has published a new e-book called “How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself)“. Mark has been producing some great work on this subject and this book brings all of his thinking together in one place.

If you are a creative person yourself this e-book will help you:

* Understand your creative process
* Develop your creative talent
* Find more satisfaction in your work
* Influence other people
* Develop your collaboration skills

If you are a leader, manager, director or coach involved in the creative process it will help you:

* Understand how motivation affects creativity
* Get better work out of creative people
* Avoid (inadvertently) crushing people’s motivation
* Use rewards effectively
* Understand and influence many different types of people
* Facilitate creative collaboration

Topics covered include:

* What makes creative people tick
* Why motivation is crucial to creative success
* Why you can’t motivate anybody - but what you can do instead
* What Iggy Pop can teach you about management
* Why offering rewards can harm creative performance
* How to write 47 novels before breakfast
* Why some people seem so weird - and how to deal with them
* The positive side of peer pressure

Creative Critics - sound familiar?

We love Tom Fishburn’s Brand Camp cartoon series.

Tom has also published the full collection in his Brand Camp Cartoon Book which you can find in his CafePress store.

Tom is helping launch Method Products to the UK as Marketing Director.

How to survive a recession in marketing

If a recession is on its way… and let’s be positive, it is still an “if”… then marketing is likely to get hit as hard as any sector. Here’s why, and a couple of ideas on how to limit the pain.

“Let the good times roll” – it’s a mantra in marketing. We’re the party people, right? We love it when the economy is expanding. More marketing budgets, more work, more people. Busy, busy, busy! Naturally we are completely surprised when the economy wobbles (or worse). “How can they be axing my lovely budgets”, we cry. Who would have thunk it?

We expand quickly when the economy is booming. Like many other service-oriented industries economic growth leads quickly to new business and new business leads to hiring. Service industries scale by adding people. They need to add staff to win their share of the new business out there, to deliver new projects and to service all those lovely clients.

Unfortunately, whilst adding people marketing organizations don’t tend to think about more efficient processes. Times are good, right? Let’s just throw resources (bodies and time) at problems in order to get projects “out of the door”.

When a period of growth comes to an end, the “more people – no process” way of doing things bites us hard. New work begins to dry up, expansion stops, revenue stalls or shrinks and you are far less efficient with all those new people. So what can be done?

This point in the cycle is just when marketing teams should be thinking about increasing productivity and cutting costs. One of the best ways to do that is by automating time-consuming tasks with software. And a classic time-sink for marketing is managing the proofing process. Just think of all the hours wasted chasing reviews and proofs when you could be producing fee-paying work and making more of your time.

And if you are an agency, providing your clients with a proofing portal makes their lives easier and saves them time and money. Just what you need when you are looking for every point of competitive advantage.

So in a recession, investing in some time-saving software like a proofing portal could be the right move.

“Ah!” I hear you say, “but doesn’t software require a big investment?”.

Well folks, it used to. In the bad old days buying a proofing system cost big bucks. On top of the up-front software licenses you had to buy servers, consulting time, maintenance, etc, etc, etc. Lots of investment.

But things have changed. Web based software systems are growing like wildfire. Companies of all sizes are realizing that it doesn’t make sense to buy software any way except as a service.

Reasons include:

• You can try before you buy. Most systems give you a free trial. Usually 30 days
• No upfront costs. You just pay monthly as you use the service
• No hardware to buy. The service is delivered over the web direct to your browser
• Quick launch. Services are designed to be usable so you can be up and running quickly. Sometimes in just a few minutes

So, yes, the downturn will affect marketing. But it is also an opportunity to innovate and create efficiencies for agencies and clients alike.

Party on!

What is a brand?

One of the main uses of ProofHQ is brand management. That’s making sure that new design meets the brand guidelines set out by the client.

However, branding is more that just the design of makreting material or a web site. It’s more than “look and feel”.

Chris Wilson at Fresh Peel just posted a great piece on what constitutes branding. See here. He quoted a number of leading lights from marketing with their definition of what a brand is, but I liked his own definition:

A brand is a short-cut that connects the consumer-mind to a product, service or company.

He added “It’s that first, quick, burst of emotion that’s stirred up when a person thinks about a product, service or company.” I like that.

On the same subject, Matthew Stibbe at Bad Language has blogged about the part that great writing plays in branding. See here. To quote:

I believe that writing is a fundamental part of a brand. Finding a corporate voice and using it consistently adds weight and distinctiveness to a brand. Companies that neglect their writing risk short-changing their brand.

I have always believed that a brand is a perception that’s in the mind of your “stakeholders” (I hate that word, but I’m talking about customers, prospective customers, partners, employees and so on). Brand building is what you do to influence that perception. Great brand builders influence greatly, but invisibly.