There are tens of thousands of small printing houses in this country. Any of them can churn out a church bulletin or a menu for an ethnic restaurant. Many of them even specialize in such things.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that every Chinese takeout menu in America looks exactly the same.
If you’re dealing in high volume, low margin food that’s cut from exactly the same mold as everyone else’s version of it, that’ s acceptable. But you, sir, are a business owner. You were not made from a cookie cutter, and you need to differentiate yourself from the seventy-five other businesses in your town working in the same industry.
You’ve made a concerted effort to build your buisness from the ground up, and you likely started with nothing.
You still qualify legally as a small business, but the SBA doesn’t want to help.
You need printing, certainly, but more importantly, you need design services and marketing. You need brilliance. You need a designer. Most of all, you need someone you can trust for printing and design, to ensure that your campaign succeeds and draws in business. You need someone in the same time zone as you to help you build your image, your reputation, and your brand.
Designers from oDesk or designers from eLance are great, up to a certain point.
They work for a comparatively small amount of money, and they generally produce pretty good work. Here’s the rub, though. Gary Larson (yes, that Gary Larson, for those of us of a certain age) once famously said that you ‘can’t tell a cartoon.
Do you remember that comic where the kid is trying to get into the school for smart people and he pushes when the door has a sign that say pull?’
Yeah, so do we. It’s hilarious if you see it, but not quite so funny after you’ve spent twenty minutes trying to explain a one-frame comic to someone who doesn’t get it. We’ve all been there – you see the funniest thing, but then when you try to convey it in words, it just doesn’t work.
Half a page later, what in the world does this have to do with marketing your small business? Plenty.
It turns out that the American public has extrapolated that when businesses look and feel substantially similar, they don’t need to know or care who’s behind them or which one they choose.
Sure, McDonald’s and Rally’s have nearly zero crossover, and fans of one are generally loyal, but what about McDonald’s and Wendy’s? Other than a few die-hard Big Mac fans, not one person gives even a tenth of a care where they cram down lunch on the interstate, so long as it’s fast and easily accessible for the on-ramp.
You can’t afford to be tied up in a brand war with another business that does what you do in the way that you do it. You need to be different. Different is not only good, it’s necessary. In Miami Beach alone, there are 482 companies selling widgets, and that’s a product that doesn’t per se exist.
How do you brand your small business in a way that makes you stand out and drives business, without spending a fortune?
The answer is to not use offshore designers who don’t understand the way people in your market think. The answer is Print Farm. We have designers in-house, and when those designers clock out for the night, they buy groceries, beer, and oil changes just like you do in the same economic and social conditions as you. They know what works and what doesn’t, and how to create a small business brand identity that will make an impact.
Using a graphic designer who isn’t directly connected with your printing company can result in disaster.
If the person designing your brochures, flyers, posters, and other marketing materials doesn’t understand your market, success is implausible. Print Farm has designers in house who understand the market and your needs. Whether you need a digital printing short run, cheap presentation folders in 48 hours, or an marketing and mailing campaign managed from end to end, you need Print Farm. Reach out today to see how we can help you with printing and marketing, while reducing expenses and increasing ROI.
