Marketing your product or service can be an expensive exercise and sometimes it is temping to do things cheaply. Buy a computer package and create the newsletters yourself, make your own brochures to save on a graphic designer or ask a family friend to put the website together instead of a web developer. A perfectly rational solution in theory. However, when potential clients and consumers see your home made production they won’t be so forgiving. Marketing collateral that looks home made, gets treated as cheap and nasty and your brand is judged negatively. If you really want to succeed with your brand and catch people’s eye – make sure it’s for the right reason and budget accordingly to invest in professionals for your marketing materials and collateral. Generally, there are areas not to skimp in your marketing swag. These include: • Brochures • Stationery • Website • Flyers • Promotions • Generally, any external communication between your business and an existing or potential customer Similarly, all the marketing materials should look consistent. Your logo, colours, slogan should be the same on every marketing communication. There should be no variation in the images or text and there should never be any fuzziness in your logo. Your logo particularly, should always present clean and sharp. Whether you mean to or not, a lack of consistency in your marketing not only reeks of an amateur but looks sloppy and gives the impression of a lack of care. So how do you afford to hire a professional marketer and a graphic designer? The simple answer is choosing to budget. Any business wishing to get ahead with its marketing should be budgeting between seven and ten percent of sales. If you break it down into monthly goals you will find it is easy to achieve and the difference of professionally presented materials will really make a difference to the perception of your brand in the market place. Using a professional marketer will make a real difference to your brand, image and overall public perception. Say goodbye to those competitors who are still creating home made materials; you are already ahead of them. Say hello to new opportunities; you are presenting professional marketing of your brand; product and/or service now and people will sit up and listen and take you seriously. MKTG did a rebranding project for a payroll solutions business in 2007. Prior to professional marketing influence, they had sporadic marketing attempts, several versions of a company logo, a home made newsletter (waffle and recipes on the back) and a non engaging website. After a ‘MKTG Marketing Makeover’, all of the collateral was branded consistently, a new logo created, new suite of marketing tools, new brochures and sales materials and amazing new website. So what were the results? The company was rebranded and repositioned in the industry. It was now in the top three for Australian payroll outsourcing and competing with the industry big guns; instead of the bottom three (where they previously were perceived and floundering with the small fish). Their competitors were shocked (and then they started to change their marketing to compete), potential clients contacted the newly rebranded company and asked for quotes and invited the company to tender. The website (which had previously averaged 4000 visitors a year) had over 10,000 visitors in the first three months of rebranding and now average 3000 visitors to the site per month – plus the new website has become a lead generator, totally free and enquiries straight into the company inbox. All fully track able, all fully accountable. To view the references and/or contact this client regarding the success of the rebranding and general marketing management, please visit our company website where you can view our clients, case studies and contact details. www.mktg.com.au So the next time you think about just doing your ‘home made’ marketing yourself, just dont! Stop. Now think about the impression you are creating. What do you want your materials say about your company and brand? What impression do you really want to give? Top tips for your business marketing success: • Create a marketing budget • Engage a professional marketer • Never use any more home made marketing materials again! • In case the point was not clear enough, never do any more home made marketing!