Page 33 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

afford at the time. People will form an opinion of your
company based on your promotional material. Successful
businesses have good quality promotional material that they
are proud to hand out.

Promotional material covers everything from business
cards through to brochures, flyers, signage, uniforms and
websites. The most common marketing weakness I have
observed is that small businesses generally have very poor
promotional material. Brochures are cluttered with masses
of information, poor choices of colour and a complete lack
of excitement. They are hard to read and they are boring.

It doesn’t matter what your product is, more people will
use it if it looks interesting and exciting and your company
looks professional and secure.

There is a misconception that to produce flashy bro-
chures costs a lot of money—it used to. Today there is a
lot of technology around that has made producing promo-
tional material a lot cheaper. If you don’t know what you
want, try to find samples of promotional material that you
like and copy the format or the layout (beware of copyright
laws that make it illegal to copy items exactly). Take the
sample to a designer or desktop publisher and get them to
style your promotional material around the sample that you
have provided.

At the end of the day it costs the same amount of
money to produce a lousy brochure as it does to produce
a good one. Take the time, get the advice and make your
promotional material the best quality that you can afford.
Be proud to show people your flyers, business cards and
brochures.

Another point to remember is the old saying that a
picture is far better than a thousand words when it comes
to selling products. Always use photographs where possible
and try to make the pictures the best quality available. An
example of this is portraits. It really is relatively inexpensive
to have photographs taken in a studio and the results are

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