Our Edmond Outlook magazine is nearing its 5th year anniversary (September 2010). The milestone got me thinking (and blogging) on its impact on our design firm and benefits our clients.
For 11 years, we’ve been helping Oklahoma City clients with websites, print projects and brand marketing. With up to 500 clients, many probably don’t know that since 2003, we’ve been publishing our proprietary monthly “Outlook” magazines. First, with the “Shawnee Outlook,” (which we sold in 2008) and more recently with the “Edmond Outlook” magazine (which we still publish).
How does publishing magazines benefit our design clients?
Solving Marketing Problems
With an average of 90 advertisers in each magazine, our designers strive to create unique ad designs with strong messages. Each ad is treated as a marketing project with its own set of design criteria and goals. Our designers are primarily visual problem solvers, but often act as advertising counselors and marketing resources each month, producing over 1,000 advertising projects per year.
Network of Design Professionals
Through 8 years of magazine publishing, we’ve built a reliable network of freelance writers and photographers. When a web or marketing client needs some specific content written for a brochure design or a particular photo set created for an e-commerce website, we know who to call because of our publishing experience.
Eat and Sleep Project Deadlines
We understand deadlines – from gently (but firmly) getting approvals from our advertisers, to uploading files to our printer on time. We’ve made our monthly deadlines 120 times and counting.
Trusting Intuition
You hear “content is king” in the web world a lot but I suspect the phrase originated in the world of print. By researching and determining what articles we publish, we are sharpening our intuition and messaging skills. It’s our objective to create an interesting publication that will “stick to the coffee table” beyond that month.
Long-term Relationships
Stability. Reliability. Staying power. It’s not unheard of for Oklahoma City marketing companies and web design firms to fold up shop and disappear. We’ve rescued dozens of clients from situations like this. I believe that the stability of our publishing work diversifies our company in today’s financial times. It speaks volumes on our reliability as a dependable marketing business. That we will be here for many tomorrows.
The Big Picture
The discipline of constructing a magazine every month keeps our designers sharp. Organizing and coordinating 36 page layouts, 15 stories and 90 ads every month builds excellent client relationship skills. And our team excels at “the big picture.”
Want to see these benefits in action? Let Back40 Design Group help with your next marketing, print or web design project. Contact us at (405) 478-4080. We’ll use our years of experience to get you the measurable results you are looking for.