QUESTION: Do you risk permanently damaging your brand by choosing services based solely on price?
Let me start by saying I am a small business owner. Very small (by design). I get it. Budgeting is always a big deal, and most days it’s one of the biggest sources of stress. If I can cut corners and get by with the least expensive product, I’m usually all for it. To a point.
Your brand is the personality and spirit of your company. Don’t skimp when it comes to how you present it to the world. Nail that first impression, and play bigger than you are; it may just be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Invest in your brand. That means your logo, your tagline, your website, your business cards, and essentially anything that could be a customer touch point.
Saving money by having your neighbor’s college kid design your logo for a few hundred bucks usually gives you, well, a logo that looks like it was designed for a few hundred bucks. That’s who your company becomes to the world. Does that accurately portray what you’re bringing to the party? I’m guessing no.
LIVING THE CLICHÉ
We’ve all heard the clichés about buying on price alone. My personal favorite: You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick any two.
In general, you really do get what you pay for. Case in point: I recently worked with a great client—a fellow small business owner— who was operating on a pretty tight budget for a few tradeshow banners. The banners themselves weren’t going to be cheap to produce, but to help seal the deal the vendor offered free design with the purchase.
I normally handle the design directly for this particular partner—we had worked together re-branding his company with his website serving as the cornerstone, and a certain look and feel had already been established. My schedule was a little tight that week, and it seemed a fairly straightforward design assignment for the vendor.
After a few days, he received the digital proof for the banners. As you may have guessed, the design was butchered. As in the headline may as well have been in Comic Sans.
Especially in a setting like a tradeshow, where a lot of potential customers would be exposed to the company and products for the first time, showing up with the banners in that state would have been more damaging to the brand than if there were nothing in the booth at all.
While being considerably short on time, I was able to redesign the banners and the tradeshow ended a success. In truth, the win was due more to his salesmanship and great line of products, but the banners helped set a certain tone that established his company as a major player.
MORE SNIPER, LESS SHOTGUN
I suspect nearly anyone working within a set budget finds themselves in a similar quandary: a lot of materials produced cheaply and of low quality, or a few materials produced at a high level. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; you’ll have to experiment and find the right mix for your business.
While that solution is usually a moving target, it helps to have a partner that understands your budget, and works with you to make the most of it.