{"id":125589,"date":"2019-05-28T06:27:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T06:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetanders.com\/?p=125589"},"modified":"2020-08-25T05:40:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T05:40:54","slug":"graphic-design-budget-increase-roi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetanders.com\/graphic-design-budget-increase-roi\/","title":{"rendered":"Manage A Graphic Design Budget? 7 Ways To Increase Your ROI"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
So you have finally created a bunch of high quality, super valuable content and copy in your landing page, lead magnet, blog posts and website that nobody should miss them. But question is, how is your content able to cut through the noise to first capture your audience attention and subsequently engage them, gain their trust and lead them to buy your stuff?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer seemed obvious, you got to make them look really really good in the eyes of your target audience, and you want to do that really cheap, or even free. You tried to do it yourself, and that took away 4 hours of your time every day. You realised you are not a designer and you never wanted to be one. Then you decided to outsource this part of your workload.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even as you finally let go of your reins to fixing the colours and fonts, you begin to have reservations. I know what you are thinking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can I trust the designer to come up with something to bring me positive ROI?<\/p>
How much ROI can I get?<\/p>
How do I manage a graphic design budget?<\/p>
Isn\u2019t graphic design a cost centre? Is there even an ROI?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Ideally, you would have to receive quality design work from your designer, increase your revenue and reduce your costs. How do you do that?
Here are 7 ways to increase your ROI: <\/p>\n\n\n\nDecide your profit margin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This is one of the most important steps to increase your ROI when managing your graphic design budget. Don\u2019t decide on your graphic design budget until you have decided your take-home profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s say for this month you would like to earn a profit of $5000 to be comfortable. Next, include your average monthly taxes and add up all the bills that you need to cover for the month, including your internet, hosting, cloud servers like Google Drive and marketing automation tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Say that your tax and bills come up to about an average of $500 this month. If you are in a service-based business, the next step is to ask yourself how many people would you like to work with or able to accommodate in your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s take 10 as the magic number. If each person were to pay you at least $1000, you will get $10000. If you deduct your profit and bills, you are left with $4500 to spend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would say this is a decent amount to work with a good graphic designer. In this way, you already have your profit secured, anything else is just a bonus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barter trade with a reliable designer<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
I did this when I was just starting out and you may wish to try this out with students looking to build their portfolio. You may wish to have a chat with a designer to come up with an agreement on what items to exchange for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They can be a 2-minute video testimonial or 3 client referrals or you may wish to provide a skill you have, that could be copywriting or editing services, coaching or mentoring, business operation services and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your designer will first have to give you a ballpark of what they may charge if you were to pay. That amount should roughly match the value of the service or product you are exchanging for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve worked with my coach in this manner before. My design services came up to $5000+ and we split it up such that, she pays me $2500 and gave me $2500 worth of coaching time to cover the other half. I was happy to do the exchange and that saved her money to increase ROI for her, win-win!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Be clear with what you want first<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Whether you hire a freelance designer, monthly flat rate productized design service or a design agency. You can only successfully manage your graphic design budget and increase your ROI if you truly know what you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not knowing what you want will lead to many meetings, rounds of changes, and questions that need more time. More time also means you will have to come up with more money to pay the designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A freelance designer will invoice you for all the hours he\/she has worked for. Reduce the hours, reduce your costs. A flat rate productized design service runs on a retainer basis. The more changes you need, the more time it takes to end the subscription, the more months you may need to renew the service and pay for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Same with design agency, if they hired a team to support you, you will be charged for their days spent in the office making changes for you. Hence, do yourself a favour by just picking the most important piece of design to work on first before anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Find out what your audience wants<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
We all want to engage the right people to take action on a marketing piece we put out there. There are times we do things like giveaways or any promotional items for people to notice us. But how do you know which item is something your audience wants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order for you to successfully manage your graphic design budget and increase your ROI, I suggest that you come up with a way to know for sure which item will be adored by your audience first before hiring a designer to work on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me explain how this can be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am also planning a giveaway and as I\u2019m saying this right now, the giveaway is not going to happen now. It\u2019s a planned activity where the actual giveaway will be in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In between now and then, I am reaching out to potential recipients in my network, asking them questions like \u201cwhat would excite them most and what they would like to receive\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, I did a poll via Instagram stories<\/a> asking my friends if they would like a free t-shirt from us. See Instagram photo here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n