Why Your Small Business Needs a Corporate Identity Package

If you are like many small business owners, you may be wondering  what a corporate identity package is. And if you already know what it is, you may be wondering why  small businesses need it. After all, you are just a small company, not a large company. What is it for you? As the name suggests, the Corporate Identity Pack identifies your company to potential customers, suppliers and the general public. This includes your company name, your small business logo, your logo (how you place things, the fonts you use, spacing, etc.), your company motto or  slogan, and related printed matter - your business. . . . Cards, forms, envelopes and letterhead. When you started a small business, you may have dreamed of becoming something that is not another small business. Perhaps you have dreamed of becoming a large corporation someday. And even if you're an average entrepreneur and you don't have that dream, you need to attract customers  to keep running your small business. Corporate Identity Packages can help. Write a couple of big corporations, ask a question and request a business card. Theyll send your answer on their letterhead, in their company envelopes, and include a company business card. If you take a moment or two to look at big corporations identity packages, youll soon notice a few important things in common. Their corporate identity package looks professional. What makes a big corporation look professional? I think one key is simplicity. Generally, a large corporation has a simple symbol or even just graphically represents their name as their logo. Take the Cocacola logo for example. Or Toyota. Or Cameco Corporation. All of them are very simple. When you look at a company's identity, you see quality. They use only high-quality printing services and paper. It costs a little more, of course, but  in the end it's worth it because it provides a unified image for your small business. You can print your own branded packages using  home printers, thin paper and business card templates, but what do they look like? Will that produce the professional image youre after? Their logotype is consistent. Big businesses use exactly the same color for their logo and their background every time. They use consistent fonts. Their slogan for example, would consistently be in Times New Roman, never a different font or even a similar font, but exactly the same font, and always in the same proportion to the logo. Spacing is consistent. Spacing between letters and between lines is also always exactly the same proportion. Their secret is designing in vector form so their logo can be enlarged or reduced without changing proportion. Their corporate identity package matches exactly. Their letterhead, envelopes, business cards all match. And if you ordered something from them, the invoice and the statement youd get at the end of the month would match too. Perfectly. Heres another reason to take a little time to look at big corporations identity packages: you can use what they do to create an identity for your own small business. What they do works, and they do big business, so if you want to do big business too, why reinvent the wheel? Copy what theyve done. No, I dont mean you should copy another companys logo. Just copy the way theyve done things. Take their ideas and use them. You probably dont have the luxury of spending the amount of dollars a big corporation does on their identity. In fact, they sometimes spend millions on their corporate identity. So, how do you get a professional-level view of your small business's pricing? You can do it yourself or hire a professional designer, sometimes with minimal or no cost. Here's one idea. Sometimes you can find a great student graphic designer to design your logo for you in exchange for putting it into your portfolio. After all, if they  charge you, it's a  lot less than  a professional graphic designer. Besides itll feel good to be helping a poor student. So, why should you have a small business identity package? Whats in it for you? If you do it right; if you have a corporate identity package that looks professional, is of high quality, has a consistent logotype, and matches perfectly, youre going to look just like the big guys even if youre the smallest business in town. And if you look like the big guys, you just might have a chance to play with the big guys. And what if, just what if, your corporate identity package helped you, even just a little, to realize the dream you had of someday owning a big business when you started your small business?