Promoting your business

Producing a business card, a leaflet, brochure, advert or website.

Good design sells. As does interesting copy and attention grabbing images.

Poor design can damage your business and your brand. If you design a flyer yourself, in a desk top package like publisher or word, people can tell you have done the job on a budget, which may give off the wrong impression!

Spend more on the design and buy a lower quantity of a higher quality product. Or combine the two by taking advantage of our monthly offers, our skills and knowledge, to produce products you’re proud to be associated with and comfortable handing out to clients.

PRODUCTION

One of the biggest obstacles with design for print or the web is getting the content together. Here is a checklist to help you gather information for a designer to weave their magic and create print or web ready files

PLANNING

1) What are you looking to produce?
A business card for networking?
A flyer explaining your products and services or courses
A website or blog. Do you need to regularly update the content?

2) Why do you need this product?
Is it to enlighten?
To remove confusion about what it is you actually do.
Or just to sell more stock

3) Who is it for?
Existing Customers or New customers or both?

4) When do you need it by?
Remember to factor in additional time for the designer and printer to be able to produce it in time! And include additional time for errors or reprints!

SETTING GOALS

Sometimes it helps to start at the end and work backwards. This can help with timescales, to see if you have time to meet a deadline.

1) What are you trying to achieve?
Is it just to understand your business better or to gain more loyal customers

2) How will you measure this?
Ask how the customer found you? i.e from your Website, your flyer, or a recommendation?
Does your website have stats or Google Analytics installed?

3) Do you need help?
for example a copywriter, a designer, a distributor

4) How realistic are your Goals?
Will you struggle to gather the content?
Do you have the budget for the product you require?
Is it fit for purpose?

CONSIDER YOUR MESSAGE

1) Who is your audience?
Anyone?
A specific age group or sex?
Is it a fun or serious product?

2) What do you want your visitors to do?
Buy from you?
Recommend you?
Complain to you?
Learn from you?
This is where you need to provide a call to action, either emailing a sales or service contact, or calling or completing an online form or transaction.

3) Why are your products or services better than another businesses?
are they value for money?
Are you a local, reliable service?
Will your products be effective and provide the solution the customer is looking for?

PRODUCING THE ARTWORK

1) Supplying Content
If you can supply the following, LW design can produce your artwork and send you a pdf proof.
A print ready logo
Content: written text, supplied as a word file or in the body of a email.
Images, graphics or photos.
Or you can supply print ready pdfs.

Don’t worry, if you are missing some of the above, we can produce them for you or locate stock photography.

Quite a lot of information to consider but if work through the above list, you will either achieve your goal or realise you need help. Or maybe you’ll find it’s just better to wait for the right time to market your products and services, and do it properly…

Why Use a Graphic Designer?

First impressions really do count and none more so with all forms of marketing material which represent a company or organisation. If well designed and of good quality such material will present your business in a favourable and professional way and, if required, help you to build your brand image.

Graphic design is essentially a visual problem solving exercise. With the use of different typefaces and graphical illustrations the designer’s challenge is to create something that is not just pleasing to the eye but also functional and memorable.

By functional we mean it must clearly convey the message or information required by the client and do so within the image and tone desired by the client. An attractively designed instruction manual for a product may look great but if it is confusing or difficult to understand you will soon forget its attractiveness!

Graphic Designers have an understanding of all these issues which affect presentation through extensive design training and experience of what “Looks Right”. Without this training and understanding it is very easy, with all the means available nowadays, both to “design” and get things very wrong (ie wrong use of colour, typeface, layout and size of text etc) creating a product which is both unattractive, of little use and a waste of money!

Everyone can afford good design – An Example
What is more important to you? How many leaflets you hand out or how many orders you get? You could mail 5,000 badly designed leaflets and get no orders. Or, you could send a thousand with a clear and interesting design and win say a dozen orders. The difference is design. So unless your budget is zero, you can definitely afford good design – see it as an investment, not an extra cost…

Brand Identity

Brand identity design is concerned with the visual aspects of a company or organization’s “Look or Feel”. A brand identity design is the visual element that represents how a company wants to be seen; it is the company’s visual identity, and is how a company illustrates its ‘image.’

A company’s brand identity can be represented in terms of design through a unique logo, or signage, and is then often integrated throughout all the elements of a company’s materials such as business cards, stationery, packaging, media advertising, promotions, and on the internet. Brand identity may include logo design. Brand identity development is usually a collaborative effort between graphic designers and the client.

The benefit of Brand Identity can be fully understood within large organisations where the brand is so strong (Coca Cola, Nike, Shell etc) that one only has to see a small part of their logo to recognise the company. Their Brand constantly reinforces their image, name and what they represent

Brand Identity is just as essential for small businesses operating in a competitive environment, it will give an advantage over the competition by constantly reinforcing the identity of the company through all of its communicated material (marketing, stationery, website, advertising, recruitment etc)

Can a new Brand Identity assist your company in these difficult times for businesses?

Would a new Brand Identity help with your customer recognition and lift you above the competition?

Business Card Design

In this digital age of laptops, PDA’s and mobile phones etc it seems that the humble business card has proliferated. It has become more than just a source of contact information and become an enticing glimpse into the business culture
“the more memorable the card, the more memorable the contact”

Our eyes are constantly bombarded with attention grabbing information and in this context the business card has become more eye catching and elaborate. Limitations of “look and Feel” exist only within the designers mind. Some of the most memorable can be developed within the tightest of budgets.

These little, unique “company salesmen” often travel from individual to individual and can become many times removed from the originator. The can make their way into the hands of distant but potential contacts. All this because of good memorable design to reflect the personality of a company.

What difference does good graphic design make to business card acceptability and where is the best place to purchase business card printing ?