Last month, I left teaching and started working as a sales rep for a very small company. So small, in fact, that they have no real marketing materials to speak of, and their website looks like someone took a dump on a Geocities page, crumpled it up, vomited on it, and added a wall of text to it. Our informational flyer is a two page wall of text designed in Publisher that I’m sure no one in our target market has ever, ever actually bothered to read. On the plus side, I got my hands on the original file and fixed all of the glaring spelling and grammar errors, but it’s still a terrible promotional tool.
This leaves me in a bit of a bind. I cold call Director, VP, and CXO level people all day to try to sell our services. Our website is so terrible and overly busy and simultaneously bland (it’s all gray) that I don’t tell anyone to look at it. When someone requests a flyer, I send it in an email with an explanation that it’s too wordy and a list of bullet-point highlights of actual important information.
I’d like to make a presentation to my bosses, who own the company, about how marketing and a proper website can generate leads for us. In this presentation, I plan on asking for a modest marketing budget in order to get new materials made up and/or the website redesigned.
My questions for you are:
- What is the process for getting quotes for marketing materials and web design?
- Should I ask to see mock-ups at the RFQ stage?
- How do I find a company that can do all of this in a cohesive manner for me?
Four months ago I was teaching high school English. This is a new world for me, and I’d appreciate any advice you all have for me here.