Picture yourself in your office. You’ve just received two promotional mail items advertising the same product or service. One of the items is a tri-fold brochure, obviously printed on a cheap printer. The other is a full size, printed presentation folder, containing a variety of professionally printed marketing material. Before you read a word, you’ve probably already decided which you’d prefer to do business with. It may seem shallow, but that’s how people work. We instinctively want to associate with quality.
The thing is, you’re entirely in control of that image. If your material looks like you printed it at home in your basement as though it were high school assignment, that’s your choice. If your marketing material looks like you took out a second mortgage, drove to the printers in your fifth BMW, and paid in gold bullion, you’re on the right track. The key is that the collateral is consistent with your brand identity.
I haven’t really touched on anything more than the quality of your marketing material, but the content is important too. You really don’t need to spend a million dollars. What you do need to do is consider whether saving a couple of thousand dollars on some quality collateral is really a saving at all. Investigate hiring a marketing consultant who can help you establish your brand identity, and develop some collateral that is consistent. It’ll pay for itself many times over.