How to Wow Clients Through a Successful Brand Presentation
April 27, 2023
Category: Education
how to wow clients through a successful brand presentation
Spilling the tea on my number one tips to wow your clients and help them understand your design.
First let’s pause, rewind, and go back to Bri circa 2015. I thought the key to being a great designer was simply creating great work. I wasn’t totally wrong. Creating great work is obviously a huuuuuuge component to being a great and successful designer, but what I didn’t realize is that’s only the first step…
The second step, which is honestly just as important as creating that great work, is being able to convince clients and essentially sell your designs.
tip 1 | identify brand objectives
As a designer, it’s easy for us to look at a singular logo or illustration and immediately envision allllllll of the possibilities, but when it comes to our clients we have to remember that they aren't looking at a singular logo with our perspective or designer eyes.
Those designer eyes come into play again as we remind clients to look at things objectively. We start every project off by identifying the brand’s objectives and encourage our clients to think about the goal of their project through every step. Was their goal to increase sales? To attract more ideal clients? Whatever their goal may be, we remind them of their brand strategy and mood board objectives so we can work toward the goal rather than designing something solely because it “looks cool” or matches their personal preference.
Reminding them of their goals and designing with meaning and intention, sets us up for success to further explain our design choices and help them envision their branding in real life, too.
tip 2 | create mock ups and real-life examples
When it comes to creating a branding presentation, instead of simply presenting a logo or branding elements and saying, “So what do you think?” Only for clients to come back and maybe like it or maybe hate it, I mock up the branding on actual examples so they can envision how everything comes together IRL! Taking their branding presentation a step further with these real-life examples helps them to fall more in love with the possibilities of their brand and helps them to really see the potential.
With mockups, websites come alive, business cards or a cute tote bag can help them see how to use a secondary logo or submark, and social post examples can help them visualize how to truly get the most out of their branding experience. In every branding presentation we do (whether it’s the first or last), we include sneak peeks of packaging, social media posts, a potential home page design because let’s face it — it’s a lot easier for a non-designer to visualize a tangible example compared to a single logo in the middle of a PDF.
tip 3 | Utilize screen recordings
In addition to mockups, I also do screen recordings! Gone are the days of writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about the design in an email. Instead, we like to walk our clients through our exact thought process and why we landed on the solution we did.
tip 4 | prompt specific feedback
Lastly, after we send off their presentation and screen recording, we also supply them with a feedback form. The feedback form guides them on how best to give feedback throughout the design process. We recommend things like avoiding outside influences — we don’t want them getting opinions from every person they know. Much like you don’t want to ask every person you know what they think about your baby’s potential name (IYKYK). Everyone has an opinion but it comes down to the fact that our client is the lead expert for their business — not their friends and family.
We also encourage them to evaluate the brand as a whole. It’s easy to get caught up in the small details, like one specific color that’s throwing them off, or a certain font they’re not jiving with. We want to make sure they’re looking at all the pieces of the brand and reflecting on how they could be improved upon rather than just simply stating “I hate this!”.
Encouraging them to remain objective and provide thoughtful and insightful feedback allows us to step into our expert role as designers and guide them on the best creative solution for their brand.
Let’s uplevel your brand and #allthethings that go along with it! We’re here to help you with your website design, custom packaging and collateral, and SO MUCH MORE.
So reach out! The magic is waiting.
