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What You Need to Know Before You Spend Money on a Logo or Business Cards.
| Guest post by: Janis Pettit |
Article Overview: Don't make the same mistakes thousands of small or solo business owners have made that have cost them hundreds of dollars on disappointing results when they started putting together marketing materials. Here are some tips that will give you an edge.
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Free Download - Are you hiding behind your computer? Three Offline Marketing Strategies that Work By Janis Pettit |
What You Need to Know Before You Spend Money on a Logo or Business Cards.
Whether you’re just getting your business started or you’re thinking of a logo facelift, you’ll want to consider these tips before you proceed.
As I’ve often mentioned, all offline and online marketing and materials need to be coordinated Here’s what you need to consider before plunking down a nice payment to a graphic designer.
Think about your target market and what type of visual image you want to project.
Images invoke emotions and reactions. Do you want yours to be light and fun, or serious and weighty? If you’re updating your company logo, why are you doing so? Be clear about your objectives, because any good graphic designer will want you to tell them who your target client is, what type of image you had in mind, and some examples of existing logos that appeal to you. So do a bit of research before you proceed.
Make sure that your domain name and e-mail addresses are the best they can be for your business.
Finding and buying a domain name that directly describes what your business does is important. For example, even though my business is called SmarTrack, and I bought the smartrack.net domain name some years ago before I realized how important it was to have a dot com, I now also own a host of other domain names, including http://smallbusiness-bigresults.com, which is my business tag line. This new domain name describes my business much more clearly.Also make sure that you set up an e-mail address with your business domain in it—so instead of sue@hotmail.com (unprofessional) you have sue@mydomain.com (looks good).
Decide which color scheme will work best for your type of business. This involves doing some internet research to see what colors your top competitors are using and finding logos and websites that appeal to you. Remember that certain colors elicit certain emotions. Dark blue, for example, represents stability and trust. You’ll want a color palette of two or three colors that can be easily matched by a printer and which you can carry over into your website.
Decide if you need stationary and envelopes.
Not every business needs these. But if you do, you’ll need to have them designed as well. Before choosing colored paper for your stationary or business card, consider the extra cost involved each time you print them. White paper is less expensive and the easiest to find.
Consider whether you want the colors to “bleed” off the page or card.
Bleed costs considerable more to print. Because the color goes all the way to the border, printers must use more paper to print them.
If you’re on a budget, don’t be talked into the highest or thickest grade of paper.
Having the thickest, most costly paper will rarely have any impact on your customers’ decision to do business with you. You want your marketing materials to look professional and meet the standards of your industry, but you don’t have to agonize over getting the fanciest paper or card stock.If you already have a website, consider how you will make the website match your logo and business card design If you make a drastic change you’ll need to factor in the cost of doing a website makeover as well.
Shop around!I can’t tell you how many clients have gone to the first graphic designer they found, then ended up paying too much for a design they were unhappy with. Shop around for graphic designers. Ask to see their work. Ask how many different renderings they’re willing to give you. Here’s what I recommend to my clients when they need a new or updated logo, business card or stationary design. I’ve gotten rave reviews about the pricing and quality of the work
http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-2102842-10446649.
Shop around for printers as well. Online printers generally charge much less and often do a decent job. If you decide to go with a local printer, prices vary widely, so talk to several and ask for recommendations.Here’s the online printing company that I use. I’ve been quite happy with the business cards they’ve printed for me.
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-2102842-10287912
When you’re starting a business and searching for vendors, NEVER sign on with the first one you meet. A little research can save you lots of money and disappointment.
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About the Author: Janis Pettit RSS for Janis's articles - Visit Janis's website Click here to visit Janis's website   Is Delayed Decision Making Keeping You Stuck Why Some Small Businesses Fail or How to Get to Oz 10 Ways to Use an Autoresponder Service as a Valuable Marketing Tool Are you hiding behind your computer Three Offline Marketing Strategies that Work How to Get More Leads from Your Website |
Related Forum Posts
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Startup blogs
- It is true that we are all told to write a blog, and I'm with Tim Ferris on this. Spend time on your product development, sales, service etc before you think about a blog.
Re: Which would you start: a Blog or Online Community?
- It is a difficult decision to make.
Lets start it this way - What are you more interested in? Money? or Friends? or Both?
If its purely Money, then Blog might be an appropriate answer. But consider this - It will be people (visitors) that will bring traffic to your blog and then Money will follow. This will be possible after a time and during this time it will be your friends who will be the starters.
If you are looking for friends only, then its true that not many will be interested in knowing how you have beaten them in the game or the other way round. So it will be preferable to have a Forum where they can share ideas with you and others.
But you can share your insider knowledge with them and invite comments from your Blog. You can also put up information on what others (including your friends) don't know about Tennis. The blog you create can provide News, Inside Information and also Techniques that can be used by the new entrants in the world of Tennis.
Top 19 Copywriting books
- 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley.
2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner.
3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill.
4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin.
7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books.
9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association.
11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books.
12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books.
13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books.
16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books.
17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall.
18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop.
19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley.
This should keep you busy for at least a year.
Enjoy!
Making Money in 2011
- Hello forum members! As we draw closer to the new year I thought it would be appropriate to change the title of our forum category "Making Money in 2010" to "Making Money in 2011" - I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions and wish everyone a prosperous New Year!
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