It’s not a good feeling to invest your limited budget in a collaboration with a copywriter, designer, photographer, or illustrator, only to have them produce work that you’re less than happy with.

Let’s walk through how you can prevent that from ever happening to you again.

Creative Work is Subjective

First off, it’s important to remember that creative work is subjective. What one client adores, another client may despise. There is no such thing as a universally accepted representation of “good taste,” “elegance,” “fun,” or even what’s “professional.”

Creators are gonna create, and if you just give them a blank page and no parameters, it’s a crapshoot whether what happens next is going to satisfy you or not.

So, don’t just give them a blank page. To have a successful collaboration, you’ll need to actually collaborate.

Even When It’s Not You, It’s Them, It’s You

So, Step 1 is to pick people to collaborate with whose work and vibe you like. Then partner with them to do the work they’re specialized in.

If you’re expecting a creative to go waaaayyyyy outside of their style and skillset, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Don’t expect a sound engineer to also be a brilliant copywriter, or a copywriter to also be a world-class designer, or your social media manager to also know technical SEO. You wouldn’t hire a plumber and then ask them to also fix your roof.

And remember, if your Number 1 qualifier for who to contract with was who was the cheapest- well, you didn’t hire them based on quality. You wouldn’t expect top-tier, custom-designed, luxury couture for bargain-basement prices. Don’t expect the equivalent of marketing help.

So, in order to have a successful collaboration- you need to take care to pick the creatives you are likely to have good collaborations with. Check out their work, check out their testimonials. Do you like what you see? Would you be OK with your brand being represented by their style? OK, greenlight.

But, there is more to it than that.

If You Keep Having This Problem, It’s a Huge Hint You Need To Work on Your Messaging

If you spend any time talking with entrepreneurs, you’re likely to hear a few horror stories about investments in designers or copywriters, etc. that yielded disappointing or even unusable work.

If this keeps happening to you despite doing your due diligence upfront, it’s almost definitely not them, it’s you. No one can get you what you want, because you don’t know what you want.

If that tough love just stung, please know that this is a really, really common problem for small business owners. Many don’t really enjoy marketing (at least what they understand marketing to be), don’t like thinking about it, and just want to contract with people who will handle it all for them.

It’s true that skilled creatives can help you clarify the vision for your brand. In the absence of clear direction, they can even suggest their own visions for your brand. But they can’t give you your vision for your brand or create work in service of it. That’s your side of the street to tidy.

If you want the creative branding of your dreams, you have to know what your dreams are. 

In other words, you have some messaging homework to do.

Your Messaging Homework for Successful Marketing Collaborations with Creatives

Solid Mission & Vision

Basically, you need to know what you’re doing with your business and why.

This is more than just an intellectual exercise.

Say you’ve opened your own print shop because you’re committed to eco-friendly printing practices and living wages for your workers. 

Your marketing is going to be very different from a print shop that opened because they have the fastest way to get the local community their print orders, and the most convenient.

Say you’re a dance studio committed to helping people of all sizes feel safe, connected, and happy in their bodies. Your marketing is gonna be very different than a dance studio that opened to help women lose weight. Both of those should be very differently marketed than a dance studio that opened to preserve a cultural dance tradition or one that opened to create a community hub for social dance. 

All of those reasons would need to show up topline in the marketing for each of these very different businesses. Otherwise, customers are just picking between print shops and dance studios- not getting excited to contribute to a vision of the world they want to help create.

In marketing speak, you need to know your mission- what your business does, and your vision- what carrying out your mission will do for your community and the world. It really, really matters for your marketing collaborations with creatives.

And by matters, I mean your mission and vision inform:

• Your tagline.

• The first thing you see on the website.

• Your social media bio & captions.

• Your brand colors.

• Your aesthetics.

• What goes on the business card.

• And much, much more.

“Mission and vision statements absolutely help during design iterations,” says Designer Robert Lumsden, a frequent M.Isa collaborator. “Designing brand assets with clients is fun and exciting, and everyone involved wants to bring different concepts to the table during the ideation phase. Having a clear idea of the mission, vision and audience helps in focusing and editing the designs to ensure they are achieving the company's communication goals.”

Knowing Who You’re Talking To

Good creatives will construct very different work depending on who they’re trying to appeal to. And no, something like “women between the ages of 25-40” is not specific enough. Are you selling to FinTech execs or burlesque dancers? Are you helping with chronic pain? Are you offering to satisfy a want or a need? Who can afford you?

All of the above is relevant information when you’re asking a creative to help you market to your ideal customers.

So, you have to have a good sense of who your ideal customer is before you can expect a creative to turn out work that is going to help you get them to buy.

Clear Offers & An Understanding Of What Makes Them Enticing

How is your customer’s life improved when they buy from you? Your copywriter needs to know, or they won’t be able to effectively communicate the benefits. Your designer needs to know, or they won’t know what information to visually highlight or how to emotionally inform their design choices. (Super serious design with something offering playfulness? Doesn’t track.) Your social media manager needs to know or how are they going to post about what’s relevant to your brand and your customers? Your illustrator needs to know. Your photographer needs to know.

When you don’t know how your offers help your customers, it’s usually pretty clear from your marketing. Because things don’t look and feel cohesive. The message is wobbly and doesn’t inspire confidence.

You, you, you, oughta know… how buying your offer makes good stuff happen in your customer’s life.

Style & Tone Direction

How do you want people to feel when they encounter your brand? What’s the impression that best compliments the work you do and the transformation you’re offering?

Bold & sexy? Efficient & capable? Luxurious & high-end? Progressive & hopeful?

When I read through that list and think of how they look, they’re very different. For “efficient & capable,” I see clean lines and minimalism. For “bold & sexy,” I see sparkles & embellishments. I see elegant shades of white for “high-end,” for “progressive” I see new bud greens.

Then when I read through that list and think of tone, I hear sassy for “bold & sexy,” crisp and clear for “efficient & capable,” and I hear plenty of social justice lingo for “progressive & hopeful.”

Do you see why it’s important to know the impression you want to leave? It informs so many aspects of your marketing! And if it’s going to be a strong and lasting impression, everything from your copy to your colors, to your design, to your layout need to work in concert to accomplish that goal.

Don’t freak out if you’re not artistically inclined. You just need to know the impression you’re going for and some reference points of what you do like, and your creatives can take it from there.

“It's always great to have some reference to a client's taste, be it favorite images (Pinterest pages are great), brands, or even interior design & fashion. This helps me paint a picture of my client's taste, which is something I integrate into the design process,” says Brand Strategist & Designer Kimberly Myers, CEO of Visual Alchemy. 

Clear direction on style and tone also helps your team of creatives to work as a team. Otherwise, your designer is going to be trying to leave one impression while your copywriter is going to be trying to leave another, and so on and so on.

Lay Your Messaging Foundation

This is why we recommend that all small business owners spend some time on a messaging framework that clarifies what they do, for whom, and why.

When you, and everyone who works on your marketing is clear on that, your marketing gets a lot stronger and more cohesive. In turn, your brand becomes much more recognizable, memorable, and convincing.

No bland messaging on our watch. You can unleash your own messaging magick with the DIY Brand Messaging Framework- a gorgeous workbook designed to help you figure out exactly what to say to convince your people to buy.