One Entrepreneur On Marketing: Jeremy Schultz

This is part of a series called "The Entrepreneurs on Marketing."  This interview is with Jeremy Schultz.

Regarding your approach to marketing, push or pull?

I think any good marketing approach will both push and pull, and I do both. I use several media to push content to potential and current clients, including my website, e-newsletter, social media accounts and being published at Designorati.com, CreativePro.com and InDesign Magazine. I also work hard to build a good reputation around my brand and I am involved with the local Chamber of Commerce and other organizations so I can pull people toward my services.

What do you think about branding? 

I think branding is an essential part of life, and not just in a business sense. A brand is an essence, a personality—and that applies to people as well as businesses. We all have a personal brand. Businesses that consider a brand to be just a logo and a tagline miss the point that every aspect of the operation builds the brand. I have made a conscious decision to remain independent and develop “Jeremy Schultz” as a personal and business brand combined into one. This is the norm for other professionals like athletes and fashion designers, and the most elite people in any profession can make it work.

How important is your personality to your brand? 

Personality is vital to my brand because, as explained above, my brand defines me as a person as well as a business entity. My personal qualities—hard work, helpfulness, organization and goal-oriented thinking—define my business qualities too. I use social media to invite my clients and friends to know more about me personally, and I have deliberately not separated my business and social lives in social media—for example, I have a single Facebook profile for both friends and clients. My YouTube channel has videos of my son Will next to sneak peeks from Adobe events and tutorials about Flash. My goal is to show my personality in my branding efforts and allow clients to consider me a friend as well as a design resource.

What are your top three ways to promote your business? 

My top three methods to promote my business are (1) referrals, (2) community involvement and (3) networking. Great work tends to sprout opportunities indefinitely, and a lot of my business grows naturally from happy customers and friends who spread the word. I am very involved with local organizations, especially my local Chamber of Commerce, to assist the business community and make connections there. And I also have success with networking, but not in the usual sense of making acquaintances at networking events. I do that well and enjoy it, but where I am really successful is in nurturing my current network of friends and colleagues so I can be on top of new opportunities when they arise. It’s easier and more effective to build on an existing network than to create a new one, though everyone has to start somewhere.

Any final thoughts on marketing a business? 

Marketing a business is easier than it seems—all it takes is a good understanding of a market, developing a killer product and knowing how to communicate the benefits to that market. It’s the details—branding, design, media—that make things complicated and trip up businesses because they focus on these details and lose sight of the basic strategic components. That’s one reason I always recommend businesses leave those details to professionals like myself.

Jeremy Schultz is a creative professional who specializes in design and illustration for print and the web. Since 2000 he has worked as a graphic designer, web designer, illustrator, multimedia producer, copywriter and marketing strategist for clients including Miller Bottling Company, Cargill, Briggs Corporation, ITTA and Marriott. Jeremy is also active in the design industry as a writer and reviewer and collaborates with companies such as Adobe Systems, Pantone, O’Reilly and Peachpit Press. 

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