The best way for creatives everywhere to make their brand or designs stand out and to win more clients.
(Image credit: Crikle)
For creatives everywhere, video calling has become an integral part of showcasing work, whether it’s for making a pitch, applying for a job or walking clients through ongoing projects for feedback. And when faced with so much competition, creatives need to treat video calls as a crucial tool in order to win more clients and better projects.
There are lots of video conferencing platforms out there, and it might not seem important to consider which you use with clients. But with so much competition in the creative arena, such a key part of the connection with your clients shouldn't be left as an afterthought. Why pour so much effort into creating the perfect portfolio site only to let your work down with poor quality screen sharing that’s plastered with the brand of a big tech player?
So how can you make a more memorable and professional impression? In steps Crikle, a video calling service that functions as an extension of your own brand thanks to its in-built portfolio and customisation features.
Unlike other platforms, Crikle is designed specifically with creatives in mind. Just like you might use Squarespace to show your work in a portfolio that does it justice, you can use Crikle’s powerful presentation features to show your work at its best during a video call. It has a unique range of features specially devised to help creatives stand out from the crowd, including customised branding, high-resolution presentation functionality and simplified content transfer.
Stand out with personalised and branded video calls
Crikle allows you to make video calls an extension of your portfolio (Image credit: Crikle)
One of the standout features Crikle offers for creatives is the ability to brand and personalise the platform. You can replace all Crikle branding with your own logos, background images and brand colour. This includes using your own website domain, which effectively makes it look like you’re using your very own video conferencing app.
If you’re a professional creative, you probably wouldn't want a web builder’s branding all over your website, so why accept a video conferencing provider’s branding on your video calls? Zoom allows you to personalise links on its higher plans, but Crikle lets you replace crikle.com with your own business domain as standard. Whether you’re a solo freelancer or a boutique design agency, this ability to apply your own branding in this way can really help you to stand out from the competition in the eyes of potential clients.
Present your work in high-resolution
Whether you’re a photographer, graphic designer, motion designer or web designer, you need to be able to show clients quality images of your work, both to win business in the first place and to present work in progress in a professional way. Often the standard screen share options offered by the usual video calling platforms just aren’t up to that job. You wouldn’t deliver 4K video on a VHS, but you’re doing something fairly similar to that if you use Google Meet or Microsoft Teams to present quality work to clients.
Crikle provides an alternative, offering the highest quality of any video meeting solution with perfect colour and clarity every time. You can showcase your portfolio images, videos and more in full HD with no pixelation or lag, and no flaws in colour representation.
Share content in a professional way
Often when you finish a call, you’ll want to send work to the prospects or clients you spoke with. Crikle allows you to do that seamlessly with a simplified content transfer feature. This allows you to send images and video quickly and easily on a branded website that’s personalised with your own logos, background images and brand colour palette.
This easy way to send images, storyboards and concepts keeps everything looking highly professional and can make your business feel bigger than it actually is. You’re effectively getting file transfer and web design rolled into one neat feature since you can send full-quality versions of files without having to use a third-party transfer service. Again, just as operating your own branded video call looks more professional than using Google Meet or Zoom, a branded site for file transfer makes a much better impression on clients than using one of the standard third-party transfer services like Wetransfer or Dropbox. The webpage even automatically updates when you make changes to the content in your presentation.
With so much competition in the creative industries today, investing in the right tools can help you stay ahead of the pack. The “that will do” approach no longer holds weight since the top designers are constantly finding new ways to showcase their work and expertise. Creatives no longer have one single calling card but a range of channels to get clients’ attention, from a portfolio site to social media. Personalised video calling fits right into this expanded ecosystem, making every call an extension of the shop window you present. Crikle offers video calling that compliments your portfolio website and showcases your creative work in a highly professional way to make a big impression on the best clients.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Crikle and use the exclusive discount code CREATIVEBLOQ33 to claim a 33 per cent discount for Creative Bloq readers after that.
Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
