In part 4 of 5, we talk about your stationery and making sure you have a consistent brand identity across all your printed materials. We also look at another important task that needs prioritising – data backup!
Stationery designed
A business is not a business without good stationery, or a business card at the very least to give out to potential clients – and don’t skimp on this, spend a bit extra to get the very best business cards you can – handing out a thin, tatty, poorly designed business card will send out all the wrong signals about your business – remember first impressions count! More on print below.
So most, if not all businesses need a selection of branded stationery so make sure you provision for this. Typically, most companies have / use the following main stationery items:
- Business cards (essential!)
- Letterheads
- Compliment slips
- Some sort of general information leaflet (only needed in some instances)
A word of advice; make sure that whoever designs your stationery does it professionally. There is nothing worse than blurry images or poor design, and just like cheap print can give a negative first impression, bad design can also have the same adverse impact on your business.
PS … Don’t forget your email signature!
It is also wise to have an email signature designed as it rounds-off your emails nicely and looks professional. In case you aren’t sure what an e-mail signature is, it usually consists of your business logo, your name, position in the company and your contact details along with any Social Media links, and is found at the bottom of all emails you send / reply to.
Vaccoda can design your stationery and email signature – more info can be found here: https://vaccodadesign.com/design/
Printing
Just as important as your stationery design is the print. So many businesses skimp on printing when they really don’t need to.
There is nothing worse than receiving a flimsy, bendy business card that feels as though it’s been printed on toilet paper – and as mentioned above, that’s not the sort of first and lasting impression you want to leave with potential clients and customers.
With professional printing so affordable nowadays, it won’t break the bank to go for more luxury print finishes, such as 450gsm business cards (450gsm stands for the weight of the paper / stock material used to print on – the higher the gsm, the better quality the paper / stock material is) or 120gsm letterheads and compliment slips. For flyers go for something nice and thick, like 400gsm, and for leaflets something a bit thinner, so 170gsm will work just fine.
Did you know that Vaccoda offers luxury printing services at low prices! Find out more here: https://vaccodadesign.com/design/
Data backups
When you setup a new business or even if you have an existing, established company, have you ever given any thought to what would happen if you were burgled, your office burnt down in a fire or if your hard drive failed?
If you haven’t then you are not alone. Many business owners seem to completely overlook or not even think about the consequences of complete loss of data. Imagine you have worked hard to build your business and have produced hundreds, if not thousands of documents that are vital to the day-to-day running of your business, only to lose them in a fire, hardware failure, theft or through accidental damage (such as dropping your laptop or external hard drive). You are then faced with the monumental task of having to re-create all the documents again – or most of them – from scratch.
It might even be a case that you save all your business files and data to USB sticks, however this method is not recommended due to USB failure that will inevitably happen as the device reaches the end of its working life and begins to fail – in this situation it can be difficult to recover files from failing USB devices and in most instances, impossible to recover any data.
This situation for some businesses can be fatal, however you needn’t have to worry about losing any vital documents or data if you take the necessary steps to back up the data first.
Data backup doesn’t have to be expensive and the cost should be considered as a monthly business overhead due to the importance and necessity of backing up your valuable data to ensure it is kept safe and secure.
The cost of backing up your data is a small price to pay when taking into consideration the amount of disruption and time that would need to be spent recreating all the lost documents and data again from scratch – the financial implications of this can be huge in some cases.
The safest and most efficient way to back up your data is to use a cloud solution, like Vaccoda OwnCloud, which backs up your files securely to our private cloud environment in real-time. More information on our Vaccoda OwnCloud data backup service can be found here: https://vaccodadesign.com/vaccoda-owncloud-data-backup/
Other options include backing up data to USB sticks or external Hard Drives, however this method is not recommended due to hard drive / USB failure that will inevitably happen as the devices reach the end of their working lives and begin to fail – in this situation it can be difficult to recover files from failing hard drives or USB sticks.
In short, it is wise to prioritise data backup right from the start, so you never have to worry about data loss.
Coming up in part 5
In part 5 of 5, it’s time to think about marketing, and how you can make best use of both online and offline marketing activities! Read part 5 here!