A small business's letterhead is one of the most critical marketing pieces. A letterhead enables you to send your company's brand out on all of your communications with your clients and vendors. This not only gives you the opportunity to build up more recognition of your brand, but it also makes your business look established and credible.
But many small businesses don't wind up sending out a lot of printed communications--instead, they'll send out an email with their document attached. And if they do need to print up a piece to mail, it will often just mean printing a few documents over the procedure of a year. Which brings us to the inquire of whether it's authentically worth the cost for your business to invest in a stack of printed letterhead.
Letterhead
The disadvantages--and advantages--of print letterhead
One disadvantage of printed letterhead is the cost of getting it printed. Many original printers will begin to print with a minimum order of 500 pieces of letterhead. The price per-piece of letterhead will often be very high at this low of a quantity. It makes more sense from a pricing standpoint to print at least 1000 or 2000 pieces of letterhead.
Another disadvantage of printed letterhead is its' permanence. Once you've printed those thousand pieces of letterhead, you're stuck with them as they are. If you move or convert any of your other sense information, your letterhead immediately becomes outdated. The same goes if you convert your tagline or your logo--all of those high-priced printed pieces head directly to the recycling bin.
The advantages of print letterhead are that it often looks more expert than printing up a particular copy of a digital letterhead on your home printer. When you create a expertly printed letterhead, you can also have bleeds--where the ink goes all the way to the edge of the page--whereas on a digital letterhead, you have to leave space colse to the edges for your printer's margin allowance. Bleeding the ink off the edge looks more sophisticated.
The advantages and disadvantages of digital letterhead
A digital letterhead's biggest advantages come from the fact that it is a digital file. That makes it easy to convert sense data in a digital letterhead; you just make changes to the header image file and pop the new file into Word. A digital letterhead also doesn't have the added up-front production cost that printing corporeal copies of a letterhead has; so it's less expensive to create a digital letterhead. And with a digital letterhead, you can choose to whether print out the ended piece or you can create a Pdf of the document and attach it to an email. If you choose to attach the document to an email, then your document will get to its' destination more swiftly than it would by mail. Plus, it's more eco-friendly to send a digital file than to use a piece of paper.
The biggest disadvantage of digital letterhead is that it is digital--and if you're printing it out, it will look like a digital letterhead. Clients will be able to tell that you've printed the letterhead on your home printer (though, if you invest in a nice printer and some high-quality paper, this can be less obvious). And, as mentioned before, you'll have to compose the letterhead to take the margins of your home printer into account. If you're planning to email the document out, you may want to make the margins pretty large so that the recipient's printer won't cut off your sense data when they print out your document.
The other disadvantage is that if you're emailing a Pdf to man who's not technologically savvy or who is having computer problems, it can be difficult or even impossible for them to get the document to open. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it can be frustrating for the recipient.
With all of these advantages and disadvantages, how do you conclude which route is the accurate path for your business to take? Do you need a printed letterhead, a digital letterhead, or possibly both?
How to outline out which form of letterhead you need
1. conclude how you plan to use your letterhead. Common uses for letterhead include:
Writing personalized letters and other correspondence
Direct mail and letters of introduction
Invoicing (though if you use an invoicing agenda such as Quickbooks, you'll just need to insert a digital copy of your logo or a digital page header into the template invoice design)
Creating estimates and proposals
Formatting contracts and other client intake materials (such as questionnaires or forms)
Reprinting your articles
Creating speech handouts
Submitting orders to vendors
Think about how many of these uses (and any others you can think of) apply to how you run your business.
2. conclude if you're more likely to send a corporeal mail piece or an email. Matching your letterhead format to your business preferences can help to streamline your business. For example, it may help to speed up your client acquisition process to have a digital letterhead for your contracts. Or, you may get paid faster if you have a digital invoice, since clients won't have to wait to receive their bill in the mail. But if you give talks frequently, you may want to get printed letterhead created so that your handouts will look fabulous.
3. Think about which format your clients would prefer to receive your communications in. The easy step of inspecting your clients' transportation preferences can help you to create a better--and smoother--client relationship. If you're catering to eco-friendly businesses, they will appreciate the discount in paper that digital correspondence brings.
4. Weigh this data along with the advantages and disadvantages of each type of document as listed above. For example, if you know you'll be intelligent soon, then creating a digital letterhead may be the way to go so that you can convert your address when the time comes. But, if having every piece of transportation that comes from your business look as expert as inherent is prominent to your business's success, then reconsider creating a printed letterhead so you'll make the best inherent impression.
Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of printed and digital letterheads, and then going straight through the process of evaluating what you need in your business can help to make sure that you get the right kind of letterhead designed to serve your business's needs.
Does Your Small business Need Digital Or Printed Letterhead?
