Tweet

Asking for Feedback

Guest post by: Faith Seekings

Article Overview: It is always wise to encourage clients to ask for feedback from an advisory board or their ideal clients when delivering new creative, be it for a web site, a brochure, a new logo or even a rebrand. It is also important that the client provide the creative team with background re who their audience is, how the piece will be used and what they are trying to achieve. In this article, I include tips on how to get useful client/peer input on everything from logos to web design, to content.

Asking for Feedback

My favourite writer related a story about a client of ours for whom she's writing a brochure. After the initial direction and draft was approved, he took it to his advisory board for feedback. The varied responses left his head spinning.

Encourage clients to run creative by an advisory board or their ideal clients at exactly the stage our client did. However, simply saying "what do you think", is too open-ended. Below are tips on how to get useful input on everything from logos, to web design, to content.

Background is Essential

It is important for them to know who the audience is, how it will be used and what you are trying to achieve. Is it going to a specific audience like financial controllers in large corporations? This approach will be very different than if it is going to the head of HR at a smaller company. Tell them what specific result you are after, like calling directly versus sign-up through your website.

Background on what led to the approach taken should be shared with your creative team, eliminating questions that can have you second-guessing yourself. Pre-empt questions like 'why didn't you just do a tri-fold brochure' by saying 'we discussed doing a tri-fold brochure but realized it would be inserted into large folders and emailed so...'

Share the market research to put it in context, i.e. 'our clients indicated that what is most important to them is ______'

Make a List of Specific Questions

Is there a certain message you want the piece to get across? Is there specific action to be taken at the end? Does it build a feeling of trust and stability and make people feel warm and fuzzy? Use this as a guideline to come up with specific questions. Like, 'did it make you feel warm and fuzzy?', 'or is it too corporate?'.

Think about what you are sure of and don't intend to change when framing questions. If you like the design but are not sure about the colour, ask them specifically 'what do you think of the colour?' Tell them what message you are trying to convey and ask them if they get that from the design or copy. If not what did they get from it?

It’s OK to ask Broad Questions

'What was the one impression you got from this piece?'

You may want to have follow-up questions ready. If they got that you want to convey your services are delivered quickly because of the technology you've developed - ask, 'does it make our service sound cheap because it's so fast?'

Community Feedback

Related Articles
  Help Me Keith: My Feedback Makes People Defensive!
  Basic Feedback Should Be BASIC
  Brevity and Clarity
  Using Freebies To Get Consumers Feedback
  How To Give Effective Feedback
  Now You Can Have Super Motivated Staff with these 8 Proven Tips
  Providing Positive Feedback Can Improve the Bottom Line
  How to Give and Receive Excellent Feedback
  The value of assessment & constructive feedback
  I Miss Upward Feedback
  Why I Love to Hear From Clients and Why You Should Too
  How Appetizing Is Your Feedback? (How to Motivate Your Team with Positive Communication)
  Employee Success 7 Ways Feedback Works
  Should you accept feedback in your business?
  Emotionally Intelligent Job-Related Feedback
  The Power of Feedback for Online Business
  Why Employee Suggestion Boxes Don’t Work
  7 Tips for a Positive 360 Feedback Experience
  Recognize Success
  The Value of Feedback

Article Tags: advisory board, audience, brochure, creative team, emailed, financial controllers, folders, framing questions, initial direction, large corporations, logos, market research, second guessing, smaller company, web design



Related Forum Posts
Re: How Important is Feedback in eBay? - Feedback is VERY important to me when purchasing on eBay and similar sites. If they don't have several transactions and a 100% feedback (or close to it) then I most likely will not purchase from them.
Subject Line Etiquette - For myself, it's not so much "etiquette" as common sense. If you're emailing someone with a business offer or to strike up a relationship, you do not put "Hello" or "Hi" or something cryptic in the subject line. You make it clear what your email is about - just as you would on a message board. So instead of "wff" for example, the guy who emailed me a couple of days ago should have said, "Feedback on Your WFF Article" - so that I would have known what it was about without having to look at it and try to think...


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why Use an Advertising Agency

Reverse Mentoring

The True Cost of Employee Turnover

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.