A Girl and Her Dragon – Marketing Part I
Dec 01, 2016Posted by Kylie HThis blog is part of a two-part series on how I’ve approached marketing A Girl and Her Dragon Pizza. I apologize for the delay; I’m in the middle of applying to colleges so things have been a bit hectic!
I am not what you would call a “natural marketer.” As you can imagine, this small deficiency presents a bit of a problem in a business that requires near constant promotion to attract new clients and retain existing ones. I don’t particularly enjoy talking about myself and, to be perfectly honest, I prefer scraping wet ash out of the oven to puzzling over Facebook’s ad preferences (somehow only the unflattering photos fit into their ad bar). However, my business is more important to me than anxiety over self-promotion or the frustration of dealing with ANOTHER Facebook layout change, so over the past couple of years I have been exploring the world of catering marketing.
When I first started, I thought that a business needed a website, a Facebook page, a charismatic CEO, and a scruffy looking guy doing flips with a sign in order to succeed. Now, two years later, I have both the first two, a decent aptitude for public speaking, a couple hundred business cards and a whole lot more (no sign flipping as of yet, unfortunately). It seems that marketing is less “build it and they will come” and more of a “grab them by their ankles (metaphorically or otherwise, depending on one’s level of desperation) and drag them inside” situation.
One dimension I completely forgot to consider was the logo. I assumed the creation of a logo was a casual thing: a couple of minutes sketching on a cocktail napkin, some idle doodling in class, a burst of inspiration in the shower…
Man, was I ever wrong.
First off, my family’s talents have been invested in business, engineering, and management for generations, so my attempts at casual logo creation went…poorly. My pizzas were vaguely rectangular, my dragons decidedly worm-like, and my attempts at sketching the human figure resembled nothing so much as the Pillsbury Dough Boy with an unfortunate haircut. (I’m not exaggerating, here’s one of the aforementioned sketches):
After that, I turned to the internet — in particular, a site called 99designs.com (no they aren’t paying me for this endorsement ). It connects people like me, who are in search of logos and other marketing materials (business cards, flyers, etc), to graphic designers, website makers, and leads to Twitter ghostwriters (yes, those are a thing now). I wrote a brief description of my business, found a picture of myself and the dragon wagon, and off we went!
Within days, designers began to respond. Some were obviously just on there for the fun of it, sending me awkward scribbles, misspelled text and at least one vaguely inappropriate image for the youngest mobile pizza oven proprietor in the country. Others submitted beautifully drawn ideas: a girl cooking in a red brick oven; a pair of children chowing down on a pepperoni pizza; and a dragon pulling a wagon behind it. Those were lovely, but tended to be complex, with too many little details to grab someone’s eye. Eventually, only a week before submissions closed, someone sent in a simple, stylized graphic of a girl riding a dragon that I fell in love with almost immediately.
Here’s the logo I ended up choosing. It’s simple, eye-catching and looks great on all kinds of
marketing collateral.
I’m not going to lie; I went a little logo crazy. And by a little logo crazy, I mean I emblazoned that sucker on every viable surface.
T-shirts
Aprons
Tents
(We’re in the back)
Business Cards
(Yes, I’m the Founder, Head Chef and CEO. Modest right?)
Also tablecloths, rack cards, towels, and invoices. Like I said, a little logo crazy (though I haven’t bought the postage stamps yet…or a baseball cap, coming soon). But a good logo is the beginning, not the end, of a strong marketing plan. To grow A Girl and Her Dragon Pizza I needed a plan and an online presence as well, more on that story in Part II.
See you next month, when I’ll talk about websites, Facebook, testimonials and more!
