When you run a business you wear many hats, especially as a solopreneur. You’re in charge of absolutely everything, from serving clients to admin. Even things as simple as choosing a brand of coffee – and going shopping for it – is down to you.
But at some point you need to start hanging up some of those hats.
Yep, we’re talking about outsourcing.
Outsourcing any part of your business is scary. Trust me, I get it; as a fellow control freak and perfectionist, I know how hard it is to let go. But I also know that getting some help is totally worth it. So if you’re going to grow your business you’ve gotta stop doing every little thing yourself.
We all need help from time to time and having someone on hand to take care of the things you don’t want to do, or aren’t particularly good at is a godsend. Even just having someone around to be a sounding board and give a little advice will make all the difference. It’ll not only give you more time to spend on the things you totally rock at, it can do wonders for your stress levels too.
Design is a common thing for businesses to outsource. That’s totally understandable; design is a specialist skill. It may look easy to whip up a blog image template or logo, but honestly, we designers just make it look easy because we’re trained to do this stuff and we do it all the time.
When you try it yourself, you’ll likely end up frustrated with how long even a simple design takes you and ultimately dissatisfied with the results of all your hard work 🙁
So when it’s time to stop getting frustrated at your DIY designs, you need to find a designer to support you with all your creative work. Someone who can make your branding and marketing visuals look amazing. And if you need regular support, working with a designer on retainer can really give your business a boost.
[Tweet “If you need regular design support, working with a designer on retainer could make a huge difference to your business”]
What is a design retainer?
A retainer – or support/care package – is an agreement between you and your designer to work together for a longer period of time than just on a one-off project. The agreement can last for a set period of time, eg one year, or it can be on an ongoing rolling contract. Often there is a miniumum signup period, so you’ll need to commit to working together for at least 3 months.
Retainers usually involve regular weekly, monthly or quarterly work, and your agreement reserves time for that work in your designer’s schedule at a set rate.
What type of work is done on a retainer?
Design retainers are great for tasks that need to be done regularly – such as creating social media graphics or performing website maintenance.
But depending on your needs and the scope of your support package, they can include all sorts of other things. Creating business cards, flyers or banners, or setting up landing pages and email funnels on your website are all ideal tasks for design care packages.
Before setting up your package, you and your designer should have a chat about the kind of work you need and how often you need it so you can get a support package that fits your needs and budget.
[Tweet “Design retainers are ideal for tasks that need to be done regularly, like creating social media graphics or website updates”]
What are the benefits of working with a designer on retainer?
Retainers have obvious benefits for the designer: things like getting a regular and predictable income, and being able to spend less time chasing new clients and more time on design work. Plus, getting to work with your favourite clients over and over again. Nice!
But what about you, the client; what’s in it for you? Let’s take a look:
[Tweet “What are the benefits of working with a designer on retainer? Find out here”]
You get a simpler working relationship
When you work with a designer for the first time, you spend time getting to know one another. Your designer needs to familiarise themselves with the style and personality of your brand before creating any visuals. And there’s a risk that they won’t get it right first time and you need a bunch of revisions to get the design spot-on.
And if you work with a different designer each time you need some creative work done, you need to go through this process over and over again. Le sigh.
But when you work with a designer on more than one project, you can skip a lot of that. The longer you work together and the more projects you complete, the more familiar with each other you’ll be. You’ll get into a groove of working together so your designer can create things on-brand and get to the spot-on stage way faster.
Plus, you’ll be familiar with how your designer works and how to give them effective feedback. So the longer you work together the more smoothly the whole process should run. It’ll almost be like you’re reading each other’s minds!
You might also like: 7 things to consider when choosing a designer
You get consistent style and quality
Every designer has their own style and way of working. Sure, some designers can do a decent job of imitating other designer’s style, but is that really what you want? Or what they want? That’s probably not playing to their strengths.
If you work with a different designer for each part of your branding and marketing visuals, you could end up with a jumbled mix of design styles, ideas and – eek – quality.
That could, at best, dilute your branding so that it’s not quite as awesome as you’d like it to be. Or at worst, it could be a confusing, customer-repelling mess.
But when you work regularly with one designer, the style and quality of the design should be consistent right across all your branding. And consistency is a big part of making your brand a memorable one.
So rather than getting a customer-repelling mish-mash, you get branding and marketing that attracts loyal customers and – you know you really want this bit! – that makes your competitors jealous of how awesome you are.
[Tweet “When you work regularly with one designer, the style and quality should be consistent right across all your branding. And a consistent brand is a memorable one”]
You might also like: Why your business needs strong branding
You get to skip the queue
A good designer can get booked out weeks, or even months, in advance – my own schedule typically gets booked up 8-12 weeks out. Which means if you email your favourite designer on the off chance that they can fit in your project sometime soon or even immediately, you’ll probably be sorely disappointed.
Either their schedule is full already and they can’t possibly squeeze you in for ages, or they’re willing to work overtime to help you out but you’ll be charged a rush fee to make up for them giving up their evenings and weekends. And if your project is time-sensitive and you can’t wait that long you’ll have to spend time finding someone else.
But with a retainer, you get to skip the queue – yay! You’ve already reserved time in your favourite designer’s schedule, so you get that immediate (or short notice) start on your project. It’s near-instant gratification.
Note though, that the terms and conditions of your care package will probably set out just how short notice your designer can be expected to work. If you’re a chronic last-minute type of person, make sure you cover this in your chat so your designer knows to expect that and can allow for it in your package and their schedule.
You get peace of mind
As we’ve just seen, one of the main benefits of having your favourite designer on retainer is peace of mind.
You can breathe easy knowing your branding is in good hands, with someone who’ll do a good job for you. Plus, when you skip the queue by having pre-booked the time in their schedule, you can be confident that deadlines will be met and your project will be completed on time. So that’s one less thing to worry about!
You get simpler budgeting
Budgeting, bookkeeping and accounting is boring (unless you’re a bookkeeper or accountant, of course, hopefully you folks enjoy your work!). For most of us business owners though, it’s a necessary hassle. And anything you can do to simplify the whole finance thing is fab.
When you have a designer on retainer it can really simplify your budgeting. You pay a fixed amount each month, quarter or year. It’s regular and it’s predictable. Unlike with sporadic one-off projects, you know exactly what you’ll be paying and when, so you can stay organised and plan out your budget.
You get less paperwork
Staying on the theme of being organised, having a designer on retainer means you have less paperwork to deal with. Yay!
When you work with a designer, or multiple designers, on a series of one-off, occasional projects, each one comes with a multitude of quotes, contracts, invoices and so on. That’s an awful lot of documents to keep track of. It can start to feel like you’re drowning in paperwork.
But with an ongoing support package, there’s much less paperwork to deal with. Once your package is set up, you’re probably just looking at one invoice or receipt per month. So you get to spend less time filing paperwork, freeing up more time to spend on the fun stuff.
You can get a discount
Many designers offer you a discounted rate when you sign up for a retainer package. Because you’re pre-booking and pre-paying for hours they’re happy to give you preferential rates over their standard fees.
Some designers even use a sliding fee scale on their packages, giving you a bigger discount the more hours you reserve. So the bigger support package you sign up for, the more time and money you save.
Is a design retainer right for you?
[Tweet “How can having a designer on retainer boost your business? Find out here”]
Working with a designer on retainer isn’t right for everyone. If you don’t need regular work, then sticking with occasional one-off projects may be more cost-effective and efficient for you.
But if you need or want regular help, there are many benefits of working with a designer on retainer. A support package can save you time, money and give you peace of mind that your brand is in good hands.
If you think a retainer might work for you, why not start small. Pick a few small-ish jobs that need to be done regularly and use that to create a mini support package with your designer. As you grow more comfortable with each other, you can increase the scope of your package so that your designer is handling more and more work for you, and you’re gaining more and more time to spend on other parts of your business.
If you’d like to try a design retainer for your business, I’d love to hear from you. I offer support packages tailored to your needs, covering design work and/or WordPress website maintenance. I love doing this stuff so you get the time to focus on the stuff you love!
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