Wednesday 1 November 2017

Six Reasons Why Good Design is Essential for Small Companies

Resources can be limited when you’re starting in business. Making good decisions about your marketing material is key and in the long run it always pays to use talented design professionals.

In fact, there are six great reasons why good design is absolutely essential in helping your small business grow:

1. It creates a great first impression

You know what they say: you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. Whether it’s your logo, an email signature, your business card or website, potential customers will judge your company in just a few seconds based on visual appeal alone.

Designers are great at putting themselves in the potential clients shoes, this can be hard to do when it’s your own business! Let them give you feedback on how they think your brand should look and feel.

2. It builds confidence

As you grow your company it’s important to inspire confidence in your customers and prospects. Who are they going to give their money to? Probably the company that looks experienced, professional, trustworthy and established.

Designers ensure you communicate your brand’s culture, character and personality with your marketing. This will inspire trust in both your consumers and employees, creating solid long term foundations for your company to thrive.

3. It makes you stand out

Small businesses all have one thing in common. They face stiff competition. They thrive or they die. To make themselves stand out and have a better chance of success, they can use high quality, good pricing, excellent customer service, rapid response, or something else entirely.

They can use creativity. In fact, your company image can go a long way towards making your business unique. The problem is, many business owners seem to shy away from the bold design that will set them apart from their competition. They don’t want anything out of the ordinary. So they go for the safe option and their business just gets lost in the crowd.

Anything you can do to make your company more memorable is crucial. So hire a professional design agency to develop a unique image for your business. They will use colours, typefaces and imagery to create a unique mood for your business. Then, your customers will have the same experience reading your brochure as they do browsing your website. It will help you become recognisable and memorable.

In short, give your customers or visitors something to remember and talk about. Then they will not only buy from you and keep coming back, they will recommend your brand to other people.

4. It helps you sell without selling

Good design and consistent branding also makes referrals easier. New customers are like gold dust for any small company and the better you are at catching their eye and bringing them in, the more your business will grow. In fact, professional design makes your company and its image memorable without you having to use any hard sell.

What’s more, high quality design helps you to turn first time shoppers into loyal customers. An eyecatching, memorable logo, well-designed website, emails, ads and brochures all with a consistent look can be the difference between someone coming back to you or choosing a competitor. You need to make the act of looking at any of your marketing materials a pleasant and consistent visual experience.

5. It saves you time and money in the long run

You can almost guarantee that when a company doesn’t commission proper graphic design in the beginning, they will definitely have to do it properly at some point down the line.

The irony is, good design has longevity and it can often work out cheaper to pay for great graphic design once rather than paying for inferior design many times over. As the old saying goes, ‘Buy cheap, buy twice.’ Worse still, redesigning a company’s image over and over again wastes time and money and can disrupt and disjoint your brand image.

6. It can become a valuable financial asset

So with good design at the heart of everything you do, you can really build a successful brand. How successful?

Well, here are a few statistics that will give you some food for thought. According to Forbes’ annual ‘The World’s Most Valuable Brand’ list, Apple’s brand is worth $154.1 billion alone, while Google comes in at $82.5 billion, and Microsoft rounds out the top 3 at $75.2 billion.

As you can see, your brand can be a valuable asset in a number of ways, not only building up your brand awareness but instilling confidence and professionalism for both existing and potential clients. Building a business doesn’t happen over night but developing your own brand with its unique design style and aesthetic is a great step in the right direction. All it takes is a call to a good design agency.

For some design inspiration head over to our website or to see this months special offer.