Task 3

How will I promote myself? What do they want to hear?

When it comes to promoting yourself, or your company, there are endless amounts of ways to do so. The main way to promote is generally by business cards, or word of mouth. These are also the cheapest and easiest ways, and in some cases, the most effective.

1. Personal Selling

A way in which I would use personal selling to promote myself is by busniess cards. These are a very effective way to build relationships with people and other companies. Business cards can be simple, as long as they have the right infortmation on them. My name, my email address, a potential website address and my phone number would be all it needs for someone to either find our more about me, or contact me personally. Unfortunately, these things come with cons. Designing, printing and distributing business cards can be time consuming.

Another way to personally sell myself is by having an exhixition stand. Friends, family, companies, people of the streets would be able to view my work, therefore be able to interract with eachother and form opinions and views. These could then be spread by word of mouth.

Personal selling enables relationships to form between myself and companies. This tends to have high success rates.

2. Public Relations

If I wanted to use public relations to promote myself, I might use write a short ''story'' which would be placed in a newspaper. This would mean anyone would be liable to read it as it reaches a wide audience. The only problem with this, is that although newspapers are fairly popular, not everyone reads them.

I could also join a charity event. This would help build relationships and help me gain the trust of the public as they would see me volunteering and helping others. As much as doing this would credit myself, it would be extremely time consuming and expensive in the way of travel expenses.

3. Advertising

This form of promotion is extremely long lasting therefore making it very effective.

A good way for me to advertise would be through websites. Every website has adverts, whether they're small or big, at the top or bottom of the page. Clicking on links allows you to explore what else is to offer.

TV advertisements are also a really powerful way to promote. If I worked with a company, this form of promotion would be very beneficial as it has an extremely wide audience, so would reach out to anyone watching. Television is a vastly used media and is one of the most popular ways to promote. One of the main things to take into consideration when wanting to use television advertisements, is cost. It's a very expensive way to advertise. So, when pricing a television commercial, you need to weigh the costs of two seperate things: 1. The cost of producing the commercial, and 2. The cost of airing it.

It is estimated that the average cost of producing a 30 second national television commercial is nearly $350,000, which is roughly £220,000.

4. Promotions

This is a very handy way to attract new custom. Sales and discounts are what people take great pleasure in, and they tend to go all out. I haven't a clue if typogaphers have sold their typefaces for two for one's! Haha!!

I think, if I were to go freelance and design typefaces and tried promoting my work, I could offer discounts for a certain period of time, just to see how well they go down, however, I don't think this would help me an awful lot.

Working for a company, such as Creative Review etc.. special introductory offers could be included with each magazine. This could temporarily lift sales, and would again, hopefully attract new customers.

5. Direct Marketing

Sending iinvitations or mail shots to clients and the public allows you to put your own personal touch on what is being given. A free gift could be included, just so they know you're trying your hardest, and builds a trusting relationship. This method is highly effective, and is handy as the success rate can be measured, so you can figure out when thing's work and don't work, which leaves room for improvement.

6. The Internet

These days, the internet is the most commonly used media, and supposedly makes life easier with just a click of a button. It's that common, we'd rather sit in front of a laptop and type to friends rather than physically go out and see them to talk face to face.

Links are found everywhere on the internet, and can lead to whatever websites you want which can promote your work.

This is very similar to 'advertising'. If my work were to be on the internet, I'd probably put links to my webpages on the most commonly used sites, such as facebook, or myspace.

There are many ministock websites, which work can be uploaded onto and sold via the web. I'd probably use one of these to start myself off. It is also very easy to do.

This method of promotion is handy, as it is a 24 hour sales tool, and is available to absolutely anyone.

The only downfall is it needs to be updated constantly, which would take time. Any websites also need to be designed well, otherwise this would effect any potential sales.