Cookie Cutter Advertising for Cookie Cutter Small Business?

The digital age has made our lives so much easier. Sad part is that it also has made our lives all look and feel alike. We now live in a “cut and paste” world. Whenever we want something all we have to do is cut and paste it from some source. Doesn’t matter that a million other people have done the same thing. After awhile all information, advertising, news, etc., starts to look a like on some level. Nothing stands out and really grabs our attention.

Enter the cookie cutter

Now we have sites that are all template driven. You can now choose a template for your website, your business card or brochure, your blog, and on and on. The fact of the matter is that so do millions of others. Why not? It’s easy; it’s inexpensive, and hassle free. These are all great reasons why to use templates. Here are a few reasons why not. 

Templates don’t ask the hard questions

When you use a template to, let’s say, design your business cards here’s what you get. You get to choose from maybe thousands of ideas all generated in a vacuum. The templates know nothing about you or your business. You choose the template based on what you like not what is good for promoting company. A good designer on the other hand will ask a lot of questions about you and your business so they can design a card that reflects what you and your business is all about. When you present your card to a potential client they will immediately get that feeling as well. A template card may look fine but will it really tell your story?

Standing out in a crowd

Effective advertising is about standing out in a crowd. When that crowd is millions of template websites its pretty easy to stand out. Here again a good designer will ask the right questions so that she/he can design an effective site that will draw clients to your site. Not only will they be drawn but they will also want to stay there because they like what they see and can find the information they are seeking easily. Templates may give you options as to fonts and colors and even box shapes but a well-designed site will give you so much more…increased traffic and that’s what it’s really about isn’t it.

Easy isn’t necessarily good

Just because it’s easy to do doesn’t mean using templates are the best things for an effective advertising strategy. A strategy is well thought out. It’s about asking lots of questions and digging deep for the answers. Being effective takes a little time and effort but pays off in big dividends like increased sales and profits. Just throwing up a template site or passing out template business cards and hoping you’ll get a call is a crap shoot at it’s best. The small businessperson who plans his advertising with the help of professionals and then works his plan takes fewer risks, is more effective, and in the long term makes more money.