How a Professional Letterhead Improves Your Small Business Image

If you are a small business, you might have not spent much time thinking about what your image on paper is like.  After all, there are the day to day business tasks to take care of, clients to talk to, emails to read, and phone calls to make.  However, having a professional letterhead for when you do need to send a letter is a great way to help establish yourself as a professional.

A letterhead is often part of a stationery package.  This package will include the letterhead itself, along with envelopes, business cards, and labels.  The idea is to coordinate these items so that no matter how you contact a client, you are always putting a professional foot forward.

Letterhead Considerations

When you are designing your letterhead, there are some considerations that you need to make.  Thinking about these will make it easier to come up with a logo and a design that will portray the correct message to your reader.  These include:

•           What type of business do you run?

•           What are your main products and/or services?

•           Who are your competitors and what are they doing to attract clients?

•           Do you have a letterhead now, and what do you like and dislike about it?

•           How will the letterhead be used (mostly for printing, fax, handwritten, etc.)?

•           What type of budget do you have?

•           Do you want to use color?

With these considerations in mind, you can start to work on a design that will give you a professional image.

Establishing an Identity

It is important to keep in mind that you will not meet every client of yours face-to-face – at least not initially.  For this reason, your letterhead should create your professional identity.  Therefore, it is important to choose graphics and text that are clean, simple, professional, and portray exactly what you do.

The most important part of this is your logo.  If you do not have a logo yet, you may want to design one.  There are numerous graphic artists that can help you to come up with an image if you do not have the skills.  If you are on a budget, you can use the combination of clip art symbols to create an image that portrays your business.  Make sure that you choose images that match your business and branding strategy.

Sharing Your Benefits

A letterhead instantly shares what you have to offer.  A small slogan or benefits tag line will allow readers to see exactly what you have to offer, even if they have never heard of your business.

Keeping Designs Simple

Remember that your actual design is part of your professional image.  This means limiting the number of fonts and colors that you use in your letterhead and other stationery.  Keep fonts in the same family, and limit the colors to one or two basic ones that tie in with your logo.

A professional letterhead will do many things for your business.  It will help you to keep up the appearances that your small business is professional and successful.  In addition, when tied into your other forms of stationery, it can help to advertise your business to people that you have never met.

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