Welcome to En Pointe’s first e-newsletter. In this edition:
- Current special
- Internet usage growing
- The meaning of En Pointe
- Consistency a key to good marketing communications
- Colour in marketing communications
- Website creation
Current Special
Don’t forget to take advantage of En Pointe’s current offer of $50 off the cost of all business cards and letterheads, $30 off envelopes and with compliments slips (templates excluded), and 20% off all web design costs.
These reductions mean that you can get, for example, 1000 double-sided business cards with full-colour front for only $230, 1000 two-colour letterheads for as little as $220, 1000 one-colour envelopes for an amazing $160, 1000 two-colour with compliments slips for only $185, and a web site, with all costs included, for a staggering $200.
This offer ends on 30 June 2008 so be quick!
Internet Usage Growing
According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics, 63% of Australian households reported that they had an Internet connection during the last Census. That was a rise of 28% from the figure in the 2001 Census.
One of the messages in these statistics, particularly for businesses, is that households are now using the Internet to search for and choose service providers. This means that if your business doesn’t have a web site, or the quality of the web site is poor, you may well be missing out on potential customers.
Contact En Pointe today to discuss web design and find out how you can join the Internet marketing revolution.
Reach Your Highest Point
En Pointe is a French term and one of its meanings is to reach the highest point. En Pointe Business Consulting can help your business reach its highest point by providing a range of marketing materials designed to your specific needs.
Consistency a Key
One of the easiest ways of making your marketing material look professional is to be consistent.
This means ensuring your business stationery (such as business cards, letterheads and envelopes) and material such as brochures and your web design have a similar look. This can be achieved by using the same colours, fonts and artwork, particularly your logo. And it can be enhanced by putting elements together in a similar way.
Take a look at En Pointe ’s marketing material to get an idea of the use of consistency and the professionalism this can provide. As well as looking professional, being consistent helps customers identify your marketing material – a handy advantage when you consider the amount of business communications most of us look at each day.
Colouring your marketing communications
Colour can be a powerful marketing tool and can instantly convey a message, that’s why the colours you choose should reflect your business.
For example, if you’re a lawyer you probably won’t use hot pink as one of your major colours. But if you’re Paris Hilton you might!
Choosing the colours that are right for your business is important and these colours should appear on all your marketing material, including your logo, web design, email marketing and business stationery. When choosing colours consider some of the things below:
- Blue is strongly linked to the sky and sea, is serene and universally well-liked. Blue is a popular choice for financial institutions as it conveys stability.
- Red is aggressive, energetic, provocative and attention-grabbing.
- Green is generally linked to health, freshness and serenity. Darker greens are associated with wealth or prestige while light greens are calming.
- Yellow is associated with the sun and communicates optimism, positivity, light and warmth.
- Purple is a colour favoured by creative types and evokes mystery, sophistication, spirituality and royalty.
- Pink is associated with energy, youthfulness, fun and excitement when used in hot tones. Lighter pinks are linked with romance.
- Orange is exuberance, fun and vitality and is viewed as gregarious and often childlike.
- Brown is an earthy colour that conveys simplicity, durability and stability.
- Black is serious, bold, powerful and classic. It creates drama and connotes sophistication. White is simplicity, cleanliness and purity.
Website Creation
To create eye-catching, informative websites that people will look at and come back to you need to have a range of talents.
Being able to write good copy, take photos and produce artwork are obvious, as are being able to develop web design (knowing how to make the text and artwork look good together) and having the skills to build a web site using html language or an html editor such as Dreamweaver.
But there is something that is less obvious, is often forgotten and should come before any other work is started: That’s pre-planning. Making key decisions such as what you want the website to do and who the key audiences are that you are trying to reach is vital. Miss this step and it’s a bit like building a house without a foundation.