Now that you’ve committed yourself to being a “Doer”, let’s see if we can get your message out there in a way that gets attention and effectively tells your story. Once you have discovered what your point of differentiation is, chances are your next biggest hurdle is going to be delivering that message. You are going to want to present yourself as professionally as your budget allows and I believe that any budget can deliver effective results.
Even if it is as simple as a one page flyer, you can deliver a very professional image. If you yourself do not have design talents then hire that out and have it done properly. When you see flyers distributed in your markets you can immediately see and appreciate who is local and who is national simply from the design and positioning of the material you are looking at. If your materials have a very professional presentation it will immediately give you the confidence of the reader. The public trusts success or what appears to be successful…
(That is not to say you will be guaranteed success – nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. People will only bite once if it doesn’t deliver on the brand promise.) The public have been clamouring over successful ideas for years in this fashion – they love to follow.
Case in point: Facebook. Everybody gets in line to join Facebook. Now, their numbers are waning and Nextopia are climbing. One thing both have in common are good professional design and superb positioning. There is room for both, but each will have to identify their differentiation and sustain their market based on that difference. Professionalism got them noticed.
All of us in business have a marketing strategy that we use to get our story out there. Myself, I rely heavily on networking, referrals, direct mail, blogging and old fashioned customer service. I thought that I would share with you a nice simple printed piece that I have been using for a number of years now that gets recognition and allows me a lot of flexibility. It is the miniature presentation folder shown here.
Actual folded size is 4″ X 8″. It has small pocket inside to hold my case history inserts and a business card slot. It fits nicely into a #10 envelope or a shirt or suit pocket. The color and message consistently follow my brand so that once a customer leaves this piece and heads for my web site or blog, they will find the exact same brand image and positoning there. Consistency is the key.
I, like most of you, tire of it from time to time, but I fight off this impulse to change and soldier on. I know that longevity pays off. Trust your brand.
I am developing a mailing piece with another customer who is delivering their brand story in the form of a small hard cover book. In their industry this kind of effort is unheard of, so their brand will benefit nicely once the effort is launched in the spring.
No matter how you decide to tell your story, do it with as much enthusiam as you can. Spend the extra few dollars to make an imapct. If your budget is tight, at least buy an hour or two from a good designer to critique what you have designed to be sure that it is on target with your brand. Most of all be consistent with your brand.
Hi Ed, this is great advice. I made the huge mistake, a little while back, of trying something different to our usual flyers.
I’d just got Adobe photoshop and thought it would be fun to make my own postcards. They were a huge flop and we quickly reverted back to the original flyers.
Spot on. If I see another company send their salesmen out with material designed in MS Word…*shakes fist*
Agree totally Ed, no matter what size company you are it’s worth spending a little on good presentation. It doesn’t have to cost though, my clients still like my simple bound documents that I take to meetings!
It IS astonishing to see even large companies sending their sales teams out with marketing materials that are output on office printers. Their Power Point presentations look as thought they were designed by 8th graders. They appear to have no appreciation for what damage this does to their brands. My only explanation might be they they view brand as logo and the information is more important than presentation. What is the point of great info if it is communicated poorly. Lost opportunity.
Thanks for commenting Eric.
Informative post, I agree that no matter how small your business is, branding is crucial. With the internet and all the servics you can utilise by outsourcing cheaply, the small business owner can achieve today what was only available to large corporates previously.
A comment to Eric’s comment… I see so many companies with the pyramid logo that Microsoft has on word and powerpoint templates. It’s crazy.
Brand is trust in colors, words and feelings. Bank of America recently changed their colors to dominate with Red (power?) Slogan wording needs to be short and succinct, I use a tool like Glyphius for this. Are you trusted or are you Enron- How do people feel about you.
Lots of power in a brand!
Catherine, ‘I made the huge mistake, a little while back, of trying something different to our usual flyers’ – I don’t think ‘trying something different’ has to be a ‘huge mistake’. The mistake you made was in the design not in ‘trying something different’!
Absolutely!! Ed is bang on in saying so. We try and convince our clients of the same but none understands.