Help, I Can’t Afford To Advertise
I often talk to small business owners and many of them say, “I can’t afford to do any marketing.” And then I respond by saying, “Are you kidding me? How can you afford not to?” This is about the point that I would ask if they pay for phone service or electricity for their business and I get a reply of, “Of course.” You need marketing and advertising just as you need electricity and phone service. Marketing is not quite as cut and dry as the necessity of power and phone; however, it is just as real.
Marketing is one of those mandatory business investments if you want to succeed and grow. Notice that I said a business investment and not a business expense. I don’t care that the IRS classifies marketing as an expense, because it is an investment. Now hear me out because marketing can be an expense if you are the type that just shells out money to various marketing schemes without tracking the results. For instance, if you continually spend money on a newspaper ad and never get any response, should you continue to print that ad? Absolutely NOT! That’s when it becomes an expense.
So how do you know if your marketing is working? Well, that can be tricky sometimes, because it’s not always feasible to get a straight answer about how a customer heard about you. I know in my business I most often receive vague responses such as I found you online. Well most of my marketing is “online” so that doesn’t help me much. I want to know specifically where online; however, most customers can’t tell me because they have been to hundreds of web pages already that day. So a great trick is to use a unique tracking code or coupon code that the customer has to use in order to receive some sort of discount or special gift. At the end of the month, I tally up all the sales and profits tracked to that unique coupon code and I can determine if my marketing is making money or losing money. If it’s making money, then my next step to increase that advertising. If it’s not making money, I will analyze the ad and determine whether or not it could be improved. If not, I stop wasting money on it.
There is sometimes an initial period of trial an error with many forms of advertising to find out how to best reach your intended audience. After all, many businesses have a certain type, genre, class, or age group of people that makes up the bulk of their business. In order to have the most success from the start, it’s best to determine who you want to target and develop an effective ad or campaign that will capture their attention. The important factor often comes down to design. Shell out some dough and have a well designed ad. It’s a great investment to spend several hundred dollars on an ad that is not only visually appealing but also effective. Effective = $$$, resulting in a well spent investment.
Can I Borrow Someone’s Back?
The other day I had to go by the water and sewer department to fill out an application to have my payments auto drafted from my account. When I arrived, they gave me a form and a pen and told me to come back to the window with the completed form. So I start looking around the waiting area for a hard surface to write on and there’s nothing. Not a desk, not a table, not even someone’s back. This is a prime example of someone who needs custom clipboards. Clipboards can be personalized with your custom imprint on the front of the board, the back of the board, and even on the clip for some styles. Some of our clipboards can be printed with a vibrant full color imprint. You can can even get customized clipboards with a dry erase finish so you can write directly on the board with a dry erase marker. There are many uses for personalized clipboards, especially for waiting rooms with no hard surfaces to write on. So if you require customers to fill out forms, please give them a clipboard to do so. Below are a few of our most common clipboards that can be printed with your logo.
Mini Footballs At Super Bowl XLVI
Mini Footballs
Well, once again, the Super Bowl has come and gone. The long anticipation of the 2011-2012 season led us to the World Champion New Giants. Congratulations to Eli and Company for the exciting win in the 4th quarter.
This doesn’t, however, mean that all football stops. Indeed not. Now kids of all ages, including those “older kids” of 30 or 40 or even 50 years old, are now
throwing footballs with their fathers, their brothers, their friends, and their sons. Mini Footballs that were caught or bought at the spirit items booster clubs from previous football games are now being tossed all around the house breaking lamps and getting kids in trouble. Football excitement is higher than ever. It will eventually dwindle down only to pick up steam again toward the beginning of August when high school football season begins. Then the excitement will ramp up even further when College football starts. Will it be yet another SEC National Champion next season? I hope so.
So all of you kids (a.k.a. Dads), if you break a lamp throwing footballs around the house after your wife has already fussed at you, just blame it on your son. So now we just have to wait another year for the next Super Bowl. Congratulations again to the Giants as well as the Giants fans (of whom I’m sure many are still hung over from the celebration last night).
What Most Designers Don’t Consider With Logo Design
A logo for a business is a critical component for branding and every business, no matter how small, needs to brand themselves. You may only brand yourself locally, or you may brand your business regionally, nationally, or internationally, however, your logo is a vital part of your company image. Therefore, a lot of thought should go into this process. Logo Design is not slapping your business name under a piece of clipart. Clipart should never be used in a logo, as everything should be completely custom and unique. There are many “graphic designers” who claim to be designers with years of experience; however, many only have what I call tinkering experience. They have played around with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and think they are now graphic designers. That would be like a nurse who has a few years of experience saying, I think I’m going to be a doctor tomorrow. You will know amateur designers if they offer some kind of ridiculously low rate such as $100 for 5 designs or anything unreasonably cheap. With these cases, you will get regurgitated designs which either use stock clipart or rejected designs from past clients. Just know that great design and effective ad layouts take time.
When designing a logo there are many aspects such as color combination, to keep in mind to create a visually appealing logo and most experienced graphic designers can do a decent job with this. However, I want to make light of a few key areas that most inexperienced graphic designers fail to take into consideration when designing logos for companies, which can cost the client dearly in the future with increased or ineffective printing costs.
Key Logo Design Elements That Most Graphic Designers Fail To Consider
- Height and Width of Logo – You have to think of how logos are used for business. Logos are printed on apparel, letterhead, business cards, promotional products, brochures, postcards, etc. In my days the the graphic design business, I have seen many logos that are very wide or very high. And while they may look great on the computer screen, don’t forget to think about the practicability of that height/width aspect. When doing printing on most items, there is a maximum imprint area and if your logo maxes out on width way before it maxes out on height, it will print very small. Sticking with a square, circular, or small rectangle, will help to make sure the proportions of the logo print well on most media.
- Logo Colors – You can get really crazy with colors in a logo and use many different color that make the logo look great. However, is this the practical thing to do? When printing on paper products such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, and postcards, full color is always an option. But what about printing newspaper ads or printing on promotional items? Full color is not always an option, and if it is an option, it can be much more costly. If you choose to have a full color logo design, make sure you have a version designed that can also be used to print in a spot color form as well as a black/white version.
- Small Details – Logos can be designed with great detail and look amazing; however, what happens to those details when your shrink the logo down in size. If you plan on printing your logo on products such as promotional pens or other promotional products, will your logo lose detail at small sizes? Really detailed logos will actually bleed together when pad printed or screen printed if they are printed too small. So really think about the long term aspect of your logo. Ideally, the simpler the logo the better. Look at some of the big brands such as Apple, McDonalds, or Nike. All of their logos are incredibly simple, yet very powerful.
During the logo design process, I urge you to think about all of the future issues you might have with actually printing your logo. Will the shape of your logo fit on most items that you will print in the future? Are you willing to pay more in printing costs should your logo be full color? Will your logo print well at small sizes? Good designers can design nice looking logos, but only great designers can create both beautiful logos AND practical designs.
If you want great Logo Design, check out some of the packages below:
$195 Basic Logo Design Package -3 Unique Designs-Up to 2 Revisions of Selected Design-Supplied in 5 Popular formats (.eps, .ai, .pdf, low res .jpg, high res .jpg)-1 artist working on your project
$295 Bronze Logo Design Package -4 Unique Designs-Up to 2 Revisions of Selected Design-Supplied in 5 Popular formats (.eps, .ai, .pdf, low res .jpg, high res .jpg)-Business Card Design with your new logo-Black/White version of logo-2 or more artists working on your project
- $495 Gold Logo Design Package -6 Unique Designs
-Up to 2 Revisions of Selected Design
-Supplied in 5 Popular formats (.eps, .ai, .pdf, low res .jpg, high res .jpg)
-Business Card Design with 1000 full color business cards
-Letterhead Design
-Envelope Design
-Black/White version of logo
-Style Guide
-2 or more artists working on your project
The Other Day I Was Drinking and Driving
Whenever you want to put out a product that has your business name on it, you should always think it through thoroughly. You should always think about how your customers and potential customers will view them. You have to put aside your knowledge of your specific industry jargon and think like a customer. In a way you have to dumb down your thinking, because in most cases, your customers don’t know nearly as much about what you are selling or offering as you do. Design is one of the most important factors for any marketing piece. It doesn’t matter if you are thinking about business cards, brochures, banners, promotional products, newspaper ads, posters, or a new logo design, you should always have a layout that is both visually appealing AND effective. Both must be present for it to work. Your small investment in graphic design will pay off big dividends over a poorly designed ad.
Now, this isn’t necessarily graphic design, but it is a form of design. I needed a little pick-me-up a few days ago, so I stopped at a convenient store and bought a Pepsi Max. They have a fair amount of caffeine in them, and that is just what I needed on that particular evening. So at first I didn’t really think anything about it until I pull into my kids school and I’m taking a drink and notice that people are staring at me. Then it dawns on me that this bottle looks just like a beer. So there are now several of my kids parents who now think that I go around drinking and driving. As I thought more about this scenario, I started thinking about how often I pass by police officers, Sheriff deputies, and State Troopers. What are the chances that they mistake this bottle as a beer? Drinking from that bottle just made me a bit self-conscious while driving. At home or work, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
The above story is just a real life example of how you have to think about your design. In this case, it was the design of a bottle. In the case of most day-to-day business applications, it would deal with graphic design. Make sure you have professional designs on all of your business literature and giveaways. Your business image is extremely important for the success of your business and that is one area that you should not be cheap.
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