[00:00:10.500] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:11.220] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:11.220] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:13.440] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:15.510] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With" a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have happened to us in the last seven days as business owners. Welcome back.

[00:00:26.630] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:00:27.460] - Gordon
Another busy week. My hair is still getting longer. I still haven't had a chance to get it cut anywhere. But yours is sort of coming out on top a bit here.

[00:00:37.090] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:00:37.660] - Gordon
Yeah it's got a... it's going to annoy me. There we go. So, it's been an interesting week. Last week we had news from the government that lockdown was sort of slowly coming out. So things have been sort of in high gear for a lot of people. One of the customers that I have, is a an amateur dramatic club. And they do shows throughout the year normally, and I do all their graphic design for them. So I do their website and I do their posters. And so I've been designing posters for shows that were supposed to happen last year and didn't. So we've not done those shows yet. So all the information on the posters that didn't get printed, in fact, I think some of them did, but not all of them, will need to be updated. So I've had sort of, that's sort of coming up on my radar for work that's going to be happening for me. So, I suspect there's going to be other, I do work for other dramatic clubs and theatre organisations as well. So I'm suspecting at some point they're all going to want posters and banners and everything else, all at the same time, to try and get the audiences to come back again. But I think it's going to be a hard sell. I think it's going to be difficult for, to get people back into theatres and make them feel safe. I think it's going to take a little bit of time for that to happen. Hopefully not too much because, you know, I've definitely missed theatre, both doing it and going to see it. The last thing that we saw together was...

[00:02:27.210] - Taylor
"Back To The Future."

[00:02:27.840] - Gordon
"Back To The Future, The Musical" in Manchester.

[00:02:30.900] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:02:31.350] - Gordon
And it was last February. That's February 2020, just before everything closed down. So we were very lucky.

[00:02:38.490] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:38.880] - Gordon
We were one of the few people who actually got to see it. But, you know, we normally go to the theatre or to the cinema, you know, maybe once or twice, every, sort of, four months, five months, that sort of time.

[00:02:53.850] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:54.240] - Gordon
And we've not been able to. So we've missed out.

[00:02:57.210] - Taylor
Yeah. Especially the cinema since I have a My Cineworld card.

[00:03:01.320] - Gordon
But that's been paused, hasn't it? While you've been on lockdown. So hopefully you can get back to going to the cinema again soon.

[00:03:08.520] - Taylor
Yeah, should be good.

[00:03:09.730] - Gordon
That'll be great. So what's your last seven days been?

[00:03:13.170] - Taylor
Yeah, my last seven days have been really busy, actually. I've had, I've been doing a lot of quotes for, kind of potential clients, who I guess are trying to start ramping things up for things when they're kind of released and people are kind of go back to some sort of normality and things are opening up more and more, and that. So yeah, it's mainly been writing quotes and trying to get stuff that is currently in progress, trying to get that finished for when, you know, hopefully the new stuff starts.

[00:03:45.580] - Gordon
Yeah. So getting one project finished so you can start a new project.

[00:03:48.910] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:03:49.630] - Gordon
OK, so it's nice to send out a lot of quotes, but I mean what's your take up on quotes currently, sort of percentage wise?

[00:03:59.040] - Taylor
In terms of?

[00:04:00.180] - Gordon
How many quotes you send out to how many actually come back and give the go ahead.

[00:04:04.080] - Taylor
I would say 70, 75 percent probably.

[00:04:07.620] - Gordon
OK, so three quarters of the quotes you send out come back and most of the time give you the go ahead, which is great news. Yeah. It just shows that your quotes are obviously in the ballpark for what they're looking for, which is great.

[00:04:22.530] - Taylor
Yeah. Yeah. It goes well, it takes a bit of time but the payoff is always good..

[00:04:28.020] - Gordon
Yeah. Definitely. So, what would you like to talk about this week Taylor?

[00:04:32.850] - Taylor
This week I want to talk about branding guidelines.

[00:04:35.400] - Gordon
Branding guidelines? Ok.

[00:04:36.540] - Taylor
So this is, not everyone has these. However, I highly recommend you to get them. Normally, if you have a graphic design and it does your logo and branding for you, you'll normally get something along the lines of this. And what it is, it's a document where it's all about your company and your brand. So this will include things like your logo, your branding colours, your typography, how the logos and things like that can be used. So a lot of big companies will give you specific use cases. So you have to have a certain amount of padding around the logo. You can't change or distort the logo, things like that, and basically just have everything that is to do with the branding in there and how you are allowed to use all the different assets that come along with that.

[00:05:30.480] - Gordon
So that includes the colours and normally they're Pantone colours that are used in the logos and the documentation as well as typefaces.

[00:05:44.400] - Taylor
Any business cards and any other assets. A lot of people have maybe like a mood board as well, which shows the type of feel that you have to give. So, for example, you can't put it, you know, if you've got a nice light and kind of, you know, maybe like a soap company, you're not going to be able to have, you know, clashing colours, which are very jarring, which doesn't follow the same kind of theme that your branding goes by and you have, you know, some inspirational images that are kind of something that represents your brand in an image.

[00:06:19.980] - Gordon
In fact, the the the mood board is something that's normally used to create the guidelines. They're not part of the guidelines.

[00:06:28.260] - Taylor
No, but like I said, you had the supporting images, which will show people what the type of feel that you need have to go alongside it or you have examples on top of, graphics for example.

[00:06:40.290] - Gordon
OK, I disagree completely with that. Um, only because a brand guideline are rules as to how you can use logos, typefaces and colours within a brand. So having a mood board is not part of that at all and shouldn't even be anywhere near the document.

[00:07:00.270] - Taylor
That was the wrong word then, I guess. I guess it was how pictures and graphics and things with the logo on top of it to show how...

[00:07:08.910] - Gordon
Examples.

[00:07:09.750] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:07:09.940] - Gordon
How it should be used. OK, that's very different.

[00:07:11.790] - Taylor
When I said "mood board" I kind of meant a, lots of different images, I'd show an example of how it should have been used.

[00:07:17.850] - Gordon
Because a mood board's very different. And that's something we should talk about in another video, because that's quite useful, especially for designing things. We'll talk about mood boards in the future. But, yeah, yeah. Use cases and and do's and don'ts basically. Yeah. OK, that's good. So have you been doing guidelines for anyone?

[00:07:37.230] - Taylor
I haven't recently, but I was looking over them the other day because I was trying to get the exact colour for my website because I was doing some work on it and I needed the colour and I didn't have it to hand. So I just had to check back and just see what colour it was.

[00:07:54.380] - Gordon
Right ok, that's very interesting. [Dog barking] Oh, I think we have someone at our front door. Apologies for that. Live shows eh.

[00:08:01.130] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:02.750] - Gordon
So, have you got anything else you want to say?

[00:08:06.821] - Taylor
I think that's everything on branding guidelines.

[00:08:07.340] - Gordon
OK. So the thing that I would like to talk about today is something, [dog barking] that's our dog, very excited. I think a certain member of the family has just come home. Yeah. It gets very excited when a certain member comes home. The thing that I'd like to talk about today is "Online Booking Assistant" or OBA for short. Have you ever heard of it?

[00:08:29.750] - Taylor
Yes, I have.

[00:08:30.360] - Gordon
I thought you might. So this is my software as a service. It's a service that I run and it's designed to make, to help businesses, especially sort of entertainers and magicians, convert enquiries into bookings. All right. So the way it does that, is it creates, allows you to put some code on your website, which then allows you to show a form. And the form can have as many or as few bits of information that it needs on it, as you want. Obviously, we always recommend the less information is better. So the less information you ask for, the more people are going to fill that form in. So for me, for example, when, on my, let's see, on my magician's website, I ask for the name, the email address, so I can contact them, and what it is they're looking for. And it's as simple as that because I want as many people as possible to fill the form in. And once they've filled it in, I can then contact them back and start a conversation. And that's what OBA is really good at. So the form that people fill in is called the "first contact form". And once you get that, you have an idea of what it is they're looking for. And normally the enquiries that I get, and most companies will get, are going to be along the same sort of lines. So you can create custom responses in how you respond to these and have responses that go out with chaser emails. So you send out an email, once you've got this enquiry, and you end up sending that out and it's got most of the information that you want to give them, and then maybe a, sort of two days later, you'll automatically send another email to them, just checking they received it, telling them if they've got any questions, that they can just reply to the email and it will come to you and you can help them with it. And then maybe another one, maybe two or three days later with sort of benefits, or value that you can add to what it is that they've enquired about. And you can set up as many of these responses as you like. And the aim of this is to get them to fill in another form with a lot more detail in it, which is sort of, in my case, a booking form so that you try and get people to book an event in my case. But having these responses and these automated follow ups, which are all personalised. So it's got their name in it, it's got any other information that you've requested. In fact, one of the other things I need to know in the second form is the date of their event, because without that I can't, you know, book anything in. And so as soon as they fill that one in, I can send off more information with more chasers, but I can base it on the type of event that they've asked for, the numbers they've got coming, the date of the event. And any information that I've asked for can be used in the emails that I send out. And it works really well, because people like to get personalised information. They like to see how it refers to them, how it's going to change their event and make it better in my case. Doesn't have to be events. We have lots of people using that have other uses for it. And you'll find that by having these automated follow ups, you'll end up with more enquiries that turn into bookings. And that's what "Online Booking Assistant" is really good at. It's got a lot more features. I'll just go through one more. One more is that, a year later for me, events are quite often annual. So a year later, once it's looked at the enquiry date, it knows when people are starting to think about that date so it can send an email on that, around that sort of date, a year after with a, "hello, how are you doing?" You know, "we did" or "we didn't," whatever's relevant, "get to work with you last year. We'd love to talk to you about this year's event." And again, it's all automated, so you can basically follow up with people a year later and say, you know, did you, if we did help you, we'd love to help you again, and if we didn't, you know, things have moved on, we'd love to talk to you about this year's event. And we find that, and a lot of entertainers and people that use Online Booking Assistant find that they get lots of conversions with this. And it's very little effort. To be honest, it's a lot of effort to set up because you've got to write all these emails. And the way I always recommend doing it is as soon as you get a new enquiry that you haven't had before, well, just write a response and a series of emails after that, and then it will be there for you any time you need it in the future. And you'll build up a bank of responses that you can just fire off within seconds. So I get an email, if I'm sitting in the cinema, I get an email. As soon as cinema, film has finished, I can look at my phone. "Oh, I've had an enquiry." I can click a button and click submit. It will automatically send back my responses to these people with the full customised information. I can do that in seconds and knowing that in two days time they'll get another email just checking to make sure that they've got everything they need. And if they've actually taken the step that I want them to take, which is to fill in the full booking details, it will automatically stop sending these chaser emails because, you know, they've taken the action that I wanted and therefore I don't want to badger them because they've done what I wanted. So now they've moved to the next stage. Now I can deal with them in a completely different way. So Online Booking Assistant is a really useful tool for that. It's an annual cost. You can find out full information at onlinebookingassistant.com and we'll put the link for that in the show notes. And because I run the system, if you have any questions and feel free to send me a personal email and I will answer it for you. And there's even a trial so you can just see how it works for you. Give it a go for I think it's 30 days? So 30 day trial. You can see how it works. Give it a go, see how it changes your booking procedure. You know quite a bit about it. Do you feel it works well for my customers?

[00:15:38.540] - Taylor
Yeah, I think for events or kind of entertainers and people that do work in the entertainment industry. I think it works really well because it's one of those things that you do have to keep following up. And I mean, I do it for kind of quotes although mine's, the work flow is a tiny bit different. But you know, you have to follow up. You have to give them the details, the information that they need. And, you know, making it as personalised an experience is going to be, you know, you want them to have the best experience, so...

[00:16:09.650] - Gordon
Yeah, and that works really, really well. So give it a go, and leave your comments below. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Any news this week?

[00:16:19.130] - Taylor
Not from me.

[00:16:20.060] - Gordon
No? Ok, so that's, I think, all we have for you this week. As always, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to find out more, you can follow, like and subscribe on YouTube and on Facebook. You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, where you can find all past episodes and you can search for them and things like that.

[00:16:41.360] - Gordon
And if you haven't had a chance to look at the new website yet, please go and have a look, because it's really, really good. It works really well. We're very proud of it aren't we?

[00:16:49.170] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:16:49.640] - Gordon
Yeah. So thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week at one o'clock on Friday. My name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:16:57.950] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:17:00.830] - Gordon
Goodbye

[00:17:01.250] - Taylor
Bye.

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