Perception is Everything
The truism of "perception is reality" is well known in retail sales. It means that whatever the customer perceives is more important than what is objective fact. Your retail associate may only be trying to conform to a new company policy, but if a customer perceives that his or her business is unwanted, you will lose sales. Disorderly shelves and cramped aisles can have the same negative impact as a grumpy salesperson. The same can be said for your printed materials or company website; if you are perceived as being thrown together on a shoestring, homemade or hard to use, then that is reality, despite the objective facts of the situation.
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and customers are surprisingly astute when judging you. Inexpensive color printers and amateur-level design programs have not eased the burden of making a good first-impression; on the contrary, they have raised the bar. If a customer's first thought when seeing your collateral is "I could have done this at home," you probably have not made a good first impression. Sure, there is a certain segment of the population that needs your product or service and doesn't care what the brochure looks like. You'll always have a certain number of baseline customers, but you can sell only so much product or services to them, and then you've got to win new customers.
Twenty years or more ago, when a businessperson needed printed materials, he or she had to, as a matter of course, work with a printer and/or a graphic designer. Most routine business work was handled by printers, since it fell into what is called production work (see here for more information about what production work means). The fact that the work was done by a printer did not mean that it automatically gave a good first impression, but it significantly increased the odds.
Consider a tri-fold brochure, a fairly typical piece of business printing. When a lot of people create one on their home computer, the resulting front panel often ends up with color on the left side and bands of white on top, right and bottom. Working on the computer, the limitations of the printing process are not visible, and people often run everything together, putting important elements on fold lines, creating uneven margins and off-balance work. Now consider the same brochure done by a printer. The printer must also fold the brochure and is responsible for the appearance of the finished piece. So you can be fairly sure that the brochure the printer creates will have even margins, no important items hanging across the fold lines, and even if poorly-designed, will still be correct in its techniques. This will create a better impression.
Now consider the same project as approached by a graphic designer. The focus will no longer be on the piece, but on the problem. You will approach the designer with a problem (“I need new customers“ or “I have a new product that I need to tell my current customers about”) and the designer will present a solution. When you go to a printer or sit down at the computer to create a tri-fold brochure, you will get a tri-fold brochure. When you go to a graphic designer, he or she may recommend that a postcard or a newspaper advertisement is a better solution for your problem. No matter what, your final piece will be professional looking. It will (if it ends up being a tri-fold brochure) have even margins and clean fold lines and a well-balanced design. What’s more, the designer should be able to tell you why each element is there and what business impact the design will bring to your business. This design will create the best first impression.
Now, let’s be honest. Not every project will require the attention of a graphic designer. The sign advising employees to keep the fridge in the breakroom clean can be done at home. Regular business materials (once your logo and stationary are designed) can be created at the printer’s. It is the customer-facing materials that drive your business and create sales opportunities that will benefit the most from the touch of a graphic designer and it is where you will most easily be able to see a return on your investment. Your customers will perceive that they are treated as the most important part of your business, and perception and objective fact will agree.
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