What Does Your Marketing Say About Your Company?

Your marketing says a lot about you, not just your company. A bad bit of literature says as much (or as little, rather) about your professionalism as a wrinkled suit or lipstick on your collar says about your character: lacking in tact and responsibility.

If you think about it, the entire point of marketing is to introduce yourself to the world. So do the world a favor and spare it the sweaty handshake that is bad marketing. Follow these simple do’s and don’ts and you’re off to a great start:

Don’ts

• Don’t use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel to produce marketing materials. The programs are not meant for professional marketing design! Microsoft Publisher is barely acceptable and should be used with discretion.
• Don’t use standard clipart (i.e.: that which comes free with Microsoft Word). Using graphics and stock clipart is encouraged, but chose wisely or else it looks too much like a middle school book report. Be sure you’re legally allowed to use the image, as well. Saving an image from a Google image search is intellectual property theft if you don’t have the owner’s permission!
• Don’t use Comic Sans or Times New Roman fonts! All computers come with a handful of fonts installed, but there are literally tens of thousands of fonts available for free on the internet. Just because Comic Sans (or Curlz, or Stencil) is cute, it doesn’t mean you should use it. Just because Times New Roman is the default in most programs, it doesn’t mean you should use it. Just because everyone else uses it, it doesn’t mean it’s that fantastic, it means everyone else lacks creativity and their marketing looks exactly the same as everyone else’s! Find fonts that reflect the mood of your piece and are easy to read, then never look back!
• Don’t use cheap paper because it’s flimsy, creases easily, and the print will bleed through on the other side. Choose high quality paper (at least 24 pounds) or heavy card stock. Never use prepackaged stationery like perforate business cards, postcards, or the like — they look cheap and unprofessional.
• Don’t print marketing materials on an inkjet/officejet/bubblejet printer. Unless you’re printing a very small run, you should never print on these kinds of printers. The quality is poor, it makes the paper wavy and saturated with ink, and it bleeds in water. Plus, it’s terribly expensive! It is well worth the money, and may actually be cheaper, to have it professional printed on a laser or offset printer. But if you’re pretty technologically savvy and you want to do your own printing, invest in an inexpensive, small office color printer. They’ve been around for a few years now so they’re coming down in price ($250-500) and they pay for themselves quickly.

Do’s

• Use homogenous designs. This is all apart of brand management — a whole other can of worms for another post — but in this case, the concept is simple: create a set of designs, styles, colors, fonts, etc. and use it on everything you create from business cards to websites. It will give your marketing, and thus your company, a memorable look that sticks with the public.
• Print in color! Unless you’re going for a monochromatic minimalist look, black and white should be left to the word processor. Spend the money for color, it will make you marketing more visible and appealing. Photocopied black and white just looks downright cheap. But remember to use color wisely! Use contrasting colors and make sure it’s easy to read. Light on dark or dark on light. None of this yellow on orange or pink on red stuff!
• Every document that leaves your office should have your logo, name, and all current contact info. Chose one e-mail address and phone number and stick with it. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to keep track of three different e-mail addresses for one person, or even worse, having them bounce back undelivered! If your contact info changes, update your marketing information! It’s ridiculous to pass out info with a wrong address or phone number, but it happens all the time! If you have just too many documents with the old info and can’t print new, then neatly stick a computer printed label on them.
• Be sure to publicize your professional affiliations and memberships as it creates visibility and establishes your credibility. People like to patronize “one of their own,” as well.
• When writing your marketing, make sure to put the emphasis on the customer and what you can do for them. Talking about yourself will only bore them. If you want to talk about your experience, specific education, etc. make sure to relate it to how it will help solve their problems.
• Use vocabulary that anyone can understand, especially those outside your industry. No jargon!
• Consider your market. If your target audience includes immigrants, offer documents translated into their languages. If you work with senior citizens, make sure the text is large and the colors are easy to distinguish.
• Proofread your marketing! Have a dozen different people (including those outside of your field) read your marketing materials. Look for spelling and grammatical errors, as well as readability. It needs to make sense to anyone who reads it.
• Distribute your marketing! It’s no good if no one sees it! Carry it around with you everywhere you go, pass it out to as many people as you can. Let it work for you!

Regardless of what your business is, you need to market it. No one likes to spend money, but this is a necessary evil and it’s one which will pay for itself in time. Consider that $500 in marketing will be paid off by one or two good sales!

While I agree that one can’t judge a book by its cover, there is still credence to first impressions. The Catcher in the Rye has an infamously minimalist cover but it conveyed what it needed to: it has a fantastic title and simple colors (original edition was red with yellow type). If it had been printed on cheaper paper with a binding that was falling apart, with tiny type that was blurry, would you take it as seriously? Probably not.

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