About 36 hours before hosting a holiday party for almost 40 people from my business group Million Dollar Ladies, my hot water heater sprang a leak — of course, perfect timing right? When your hot water heater leaks there's no patching it up, you have to do a complete replacement.

Luckily, one of the members of the group is the owner of a plumbing company that does superior work and was someone I trusted. So I called them and they came to my rescue replacing the unit in a just a ... Continue Reading

Designing "just because" is no way to develop solid design. If you are a designer or someone in the business you already know this.

There are times though when clients are adamant about something that has to be in the design, not necessarily for a good reason, just because they like the "idea" of it, not because it has any real meaning or validity. This will often put a wrench in the creativity process but it's something everyone of us has had to deal with from time to time.

Consultation throughout the project ... Continue Reading

Ok so it's really called drip marketing, I also refer to it as "overtising." We've found that a lot of companies are actually overdoing eMarketing efforts to the point where it becomes annoying to the end user.

Personally, we believe once a week to your customer base is excessive (Godiva are you listening?), every two weeks is doible.

We like to send our eMarketing out quarterly or occasionally if we just want to put out an additional touch out to them we'll create a unique piece certain times throughout the year ... Continue Reading

So you did it, you thought by not marketing your company on the web or with traditional marketing collateral that you'd save huge bucks. You probably did. How much did you lose though because your name wasn't out there or you didn't polish your current marketing pieces up taking advantage of the economic situation? In most cases you'll have to work harder to get that same sale that was approved last year in a third of the time, fine.

Hitting the pavement to drum up business requires more than a ... Continue Reading

Though more and more businesses realize they need a website in today’s at your finger tips online information age, there is still a lot of misconception that surrounds having one. A major misconception is that “once I have a website, the money’s just going to start rolling in.” That’s just not the case in most instances. If you do nothing to promote the website, it ends up being like home gym equipment: It’s there, but nobody’s using it. What we tell people is that you ... Continue Reading

If you knew me, you would know I’m a Food Network junkie. I also tend to collect cookbooks, which I often read like novels. My latest one is The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, one of Ina Garten’s from the late 1990’s. In it, she repeatedly advises to use the best ingredients you possibly can.

At Effusion we decided that the best way to provide the best services to our clients was to specialize in design (which is all done in-house) and partner with “specialists” in other areas on an as ... Continue Reading

This type of thinking applies not only to graphic design, marketing, and brand strategy but really any profession ranging from landscaping to interior decorating — you name it.

If you search the web there are plenty of companies that will design your logo identity for $100 and your website for under $500, you absolutely don't want to go this route. These types of solutions are typically sweat shop off-shore design companies that turn and burn out work throwing quality to the wind.

We can't tell you how many companies we have estimated projects ... Continue Reading

In the design profession there are two distinctive types of clients. Clients that appreciate your work, customer service as well as take your pricing at face value AND there are others that take the dangling carrot approach to entice a better price.

Simmilar to spec work "carrot danglers" typically are new prospects that love your work, respect your process, and don't want to work with any other firm — but they are looking for a discount on your proposal as they are resistant to paying market value for your knowledge, ... Continue Reading

People typically come to Effusion because they’ve seen and loved our work or know people that have worked with us and want a similar experience. We sign-on new clients and referrals regularly throughout the year that trust our design expertise because of this.

Some clients are more hands on and that's fine, where others tend to micromanage the entire project which strikes us as odd since they hired us to make them look good in the first place.

Your Design Firm Are the Experts

While we can certainly appreciate our clients that have ... Continue Reading

A brand is not a logo, it's not your company's identity or even a product.

A brand is an emotional and visceral reaction or connection to a business or product. Whether the emotion is love or hate the ultimate goal is an illogical reaction. Branding attempts to manage the signals that help evoke that reaction. Branding occurs in the heart and not the head, the "I want" and "I need" connection is invaluable.

Take Coca Cola for instance. Without brand value, they estimate their worth at 50 Billion, WITH brand value they estimate ... Continue Reading