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I have a notoriously bad sense of direction. Anytime I drive into downtown Detroit, I inevitably get lost trying to get home. Then comes the call to my husband and the very frustrating, “I’m not sure exactly where I am” which makes it that much harder to even figure out how to begin to get home. You have to know where you are now to figure out how to get to where you need to be. This holds very true for driving. It also applies to marketing your company.
A marketing plan serves a number of purposes. One of the first and often underappreciated is that it helps you get an accurate look at where you are in the market right now. What services or goods are you really providing and to whom? Who are your competitors? How do you stack up against them? How much business are you doing? How much are you spending on marketing? What are some of the challenges you are working against? What are your strengths? Weaknesses?
Before you even start planning out what you are going to do to market your company, it is crucial that you can answer these questions. Much like it takes driving past a landmark to orient me and allow me to make my way home, you have to know where your business is now in order to take it anywhere.
What sorts of questions do you use to gauge where your business is now?
I spent this morning buying and then spreading mulch – again. Despite the fact that I spent several hours and sore back hours doing this just a few weeks ago, the beds are teaming with weeds. The reason… I was cheap. Instead of going with the 3″ of mulch the bags said it would take to fend off weeds, I used only half that amount. I saved money then, but ended up having to spend just as much money, with twice the amount of work and back ache. Cheaper isn’t always better.
The same holds true with graphic design. Say you know someone’s nephew who can “design” a logo in Word or put together a brochure. You might save some money on design fees, but is what you are getting worth those savings. You get that logo done in Word… chances are that it’s not the type of quality you’d get with a real designer. Also, you’ re not going to be getting a logo in the format you are going to need (high and low resolution, as well as vector). So in the end you’ll end up paying someone more to recreate your logo in the right format anyways.
If you scrimp on your other marketing materials, you might have all the information you want clients to see, but if it’s not designed well, chances are they won’t look at it. And so you may have saved money on the materials, but if they don’t get the message to your customers, and actually help market your business, you’re wasting your time.
Where have you been cheap that came back to haunt you later?
Is it important to plan out your marketing initiatives and the graphics you are going to need in advance? Short answer… Heck yeah! If you plan out your marketing initiatives somewhat in advance, you may potentially save work and or money on your graphic design.
I recently attended a short seminar on home based business best practices, put on by the Brighton, Michigan Chamber of Commerce. One of the topics they very briefly touched on was the importance of a marketing plan. While I won’t get into the specifics of marketing plans here, there are a few points on how your marketing plan should apply to your graphic design needs.
- If you know in advance that you are going to be putting out a series of mailers or ads, you can come up with coordinating graphics all at once … saving time and money. You can also potentially save on the printing costs by upping the quantity you are buying.
- By planning in advance you can work your mailers or ads together and be sure that they will graphically relate and have a bigger impact (coordinating marketing materials lead to more brand recognition)
- If you know in advance that you are going to be updating something large with your marketing – say your website – you can work with your designer on how to time the updates. Perhaps it makes the most sense to design anything you send out in the meantime to coordinate with what will end up being your website.
- And last but certainly not least, if you plan in advance that you will put out so many ads or so many marketing pieces, having the actual plan will force you to actually do it, thus keeping regular contact with your potential customers, and making sure you stay front of mind.
How far in advance do you plan your marketing initiatives? Do you include any graphic design updates as part of this planning?
Your business card can arguably be your most important piece of marketing material, yet many entrepreneurs really don’t take their card seriously. Maybe they are opting for a generic template from an online print house, or even printing even more generic cards from their home printer. What’s wrong with this? Well mainly it sends entirely the wrong message about your business. It says you’re not serious about your business. And while the following is a repeat from a post last year, after attending a couple recent business expos here in Brighton, Michigan, I feel it is definitely worth repeating.
Online print houses can be a great money saving option for entrepreneurs – if they’re used for printing. However, far too many small business people are using these services to also “design” their marketing collateral. Your marketing collateral should reflect YOUR business and personality. This is especially true with your business card. While a stock photo of an outdoor scene might be pleasant enough, it is incredibly generic – only saying something about you or your business if you happen to be an outdoor outfitter.
A business card with a generic background blends into oblivion with your potential clients. Nothing makes it stand out from the crowd, and even worse, it sends a subliminal message that your business isn’t a serious, “real” business. Think about it, let’s say you get two business cards from a potential service provider – say a financial planner. One of them has a stock photo in the background while the other one has a unique, professional logo or graphic. Which one are you going to take more seriously? Which one looks like it’s associated with a legitimate, established and experienced business professional? Who are you more likely to trust and do business with?
Another downside of using the ready made templates – chances are someone else is using the same one. I was recently at a Brighton networking event where I received the same card, from two individuals in two vastly different businesses. And the design of the card didn’t say anything meaningful about either of them.
Putting together a professional, unique business card doesn’t have to break the bank for a new small business, but it does need to be something that has some time and thought put into it. Pay the small amount extra to upload your own logo or images to that online print house. Strongly consider working with a graphic designer. The one time expense to come up with a card that truly says what you mean to say to potential clients is more than worth it – especially considering the negative message that you might otherwise be portraying.
In today’s highly competitive marketplace, we all need every advantage we can get. Do you want to be the one with the card that blends into the background? What are some of the worst business card “sins” you’ve encountered?
What do you do graphically if your company serves a variety of markets with very different demographics? Probably your best bet is to develop separate marketing materials. While it might be tempting to put everything you do for everyone you do it for into one piece for simplicity sake (and to save a little money), in the end you risk not hitting the mark with any of your audience. I also look at this as the “jack of all trades, master of none” phenomenon.
As an example, Howell, Michigan photographer Noreen Owens recently came to me looking for brochure design. She wanted to reach high school seniors for senior portraits and she also does specialty themed photography of smaller children. Although she is providing basically the same service (portrait photography) to each market, there is a different twist and need for each client. She already knew she was going to have to do two different brochures so we started there.
Both types of portraits are ultimately going to be paid for by parents, but the actual target market is different. For the senior pictures, she needed to actually appeal to the seniors who would have a large say in who took their pictures. The brochure design needed to be a little edgier and contemporary to appeal to teenagers’ sense of independence and individuality. For the children’s portraits, the target audience is the parents, particularly the moms. This brochure needed to be classy while also appealing to the emotional and sentimental side of the mothers.
For the senior brochure, I developed a folded brochure featuring a mix of senior portraits ranging from traditional to fun – which showcases the variety of styles seniors can find with Noreen. These photos were put on an industrial, painted metal background image with screws scattered about the page. I also chose an industrial, chunky font for the main headings with a contemporary font for the body text.
For the children’s themed photography brochure Noreen wanted a multiple page, small square booklet. The book is arranged by month, featuring the different themes she has developed (bunnies in March, ducks in April, snowmen in November, etc.). The background of the brochure is a nice stationary type paper image, with the appearance of a ribbon across the page for photos to be placed on. The effect is of a formal photo/memory book.
In the end, Noreen was happy with both brochures that accurately reflect her company while also appealing to her different target markets.
Cover of themed children's portrait brochure
Cover of Senior Portrait Brochure
Interior of Senior Portrait Brochure
I’ve worked a lot with Brighton, Michigan based InSights Group, a very hard to describe and very helpful group of people who assist business owners grow their business through coaching and gosh… just a whole bunch of cool stuff. One of the big things they speak to is persona marketing, or the act of marketing not your business, but you. One important part of this persona branding is to include your photo on your materials (business cards especially).
Now before you say “Whoa… I don’t want to put my picture on my business card”, hear this. I too was a little hesitant until one of their seminars where they threw a fish bowl of business cards out on the floor and asked everyone to pick their favorites. Everyone in the room picked out a card with a photo on it. Now imagine your card in a stack on someone’s desk. Do you want it to stand out? A photo is a great way to do this.
So… once you’ve made that jump to including your photo on your card, here are a couple of tips.
Consider using a professional photographer. Headshots can be found for considerably less that you might think, and will look a heck of a lot more professional than the picture of you cropped out from your vacation photos. There are a number of qualified and affordable portrait photographers here in Brighton, Michigan as well as most any community across the country.
You may want to ask your photographer to use a white background rather than the traditional cloudy portrait backdrop. Should you want your photo cropped in interesting ways or not want that traditional background, it is considerably easier for your designer (and your pocket-book) to crop you out of a white background than a “noisy” colored one. If you do decide later you want that traditional background, it is much easier to add a faux background back in than it is to take it out.
Make sure the photographer is giving you full rights to the headshot. Most will for professional headshots, but you want to make sure you’re not technically supposed to pay them for each time it is reproduced.
Make sure you get a high-resolution version of your headshot. Most of the time this is a given, but be on the safe side. And even if it’s a rather large file, make sure to save that high-resolution image for when you need to down the road not only put yourself on a business card, but perhaps large format trade show materials.
I have a new small business client based in Brighton, Michigan who is looking to develop a brand and wanted to know if I consider a logo to be a brand. Quick answer… No. Longer more explanatory answer… Your logo is not your brand, but rather a representation of your brand. It’s the visual representation and something that is used to convey your brand and gain recognition for it.
So what’s your brand? Businessdictionary.com defines branding as the “Entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service)” . This is an okay definition, but the one I like a lot better is from John Williams at Entrepreneur.com. His definition is that your brand is “Who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be” .
Everything you put out from the product/service you sell to your marketing materials to the way you answer your phone should support your brand or how you want to represent your company and how you want customers to perceive it. Your logo is only one part of this (albeit a very important part of it).
When developing your logo, it is crucial that you know your brand, your target market, your business personality and how you want to be perceived. The logo should accurately reflect this. Which is why it is important to work with a graphic designer you trust and connect with. Having a logo put together by an online printer who offers free logo design most likely won’t accomplish what you need your logo to be.
How do your logo and marketing materials reflect your brand?
I’m sure you’ve seen the ads from printers offering to design “free logos” along with their business cards. Or maybe you’ve got a web person who put some sort of logo together for you on your website. Or maybe you know someone who wants to put together a logo in Word or Publisher. Sounds like a great deal right?
Wrong. Most likely these great deals aren’t going to give you a logo you can use for anything other than that business card, or that webpage or Word doc. I’ve run into this with several small business clients here in Brighton, Michigan who want marketing materials designed, but only have a low res logo on the website, or they only have it printed on their cards. Then in order to put together a print quality design that includes this “free” logo, I have to recreate it. Now this free logo ends up costing them extra in design fees and it might not be possible to recreate it exactly like what they have. I’ve also seen scores of ads looking for designers to recreate a logo that some unsuspecting business thought was a good deal.
Ideally, when you have a logo designed the final product you receive should include a vector file as well as high and low res images of your logo. Not only will you need these formats to design other materials, often the companies who sell promotional items like pens will want a vector file. Sign companies and trade show vendors will also most likely want a vector.
Save yourself trouble down the road. Get a real logo designed to start out with and don’t bother with the free options. Not only will you get the right formats, chances are you will also be getting a better and more original logo.
I’ve been eating a lot of oranges lately. This is a big deal for me, because even though I really like oranges, I didn’t eat them very often because I’ve always been ridiculously picky about getting all of the white stuff off the orange. It could seriously take me a half hour to peel an orange.
What does this little tangent have to do with graphics? Well, unlike the folly of spending too long peeling an orange, most of us actually should spend more time paying attention to the details of our marketing materials and campaigns. Too often, marketing materials go out with all the metaphorical white stuff all over them, because we don’t want to take the time or effort to get them really right – and clean.
One of the details that many small businesses here in southease Michigan and beyond miss, is getting a standard way to convey their brand. Even if a business has a logo, they might use it one way in one piece, with one font here, one color there and very little that is consistent. Big companies know this is a no no. They know that in order to most effectively keep control of your brand, you need to have consistent standards. Many larger companies have very detailed written out guidelines for everything from how a logo is to be used to what font letters are to be written in.
Do most small businesses have to go this far? Probably not quite this far, but we should all pay a little more attention to the consistent use of our brand. This consistency goes a long way towards gaining recognition. For me, I think I am going to spend more time on my brand and less on peeling my oranges. Because there is a time and place to be ridiculously picky.
Colleen with Dream Kitchens of Howell, Michigan came to me looking to update her marketing materials by creating a logo and a cohesive look. She had previously been given a pseudo logo as part of an ad she purchased with a Michigan publication and we originally went with ways to update that logo, which was her company name inside an oval. I came up with 4 concepts on this theme. 
Her initial preference was for the top two logos, but after some additional thought, she decided she like the bottom right logo with the monogram, only she wanted to see it with both the initials D and K. She also wanted to decide if she wanted the monogram on top, or behind the company name.
In the end, we decided that just because the initial ad she had purchased created a logo within an oval, that she didn’t have to keep the logo and the final logo was the monogram watermarked behind the company name, without the enclosure.
Next post… how this logo was developed into cohesive marketing materials…
