Top Promotion Mistakes

1. Using an email address without your business website name in it. Your email address is an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Never use free email accounts, like Hotmail, for your business email. It’s unprofessional.

2. Being too literal when designing a logo.

3. Using trendy typefaces. These not only become dated very quickly, they become trendy because everyone else uses them. Comic Sans and Papyrus are examples to be avoided in promotional pieces.

4. Using too many typefaces on one piece. Typography and color palettes should be thoughtfully considered as part of your brand. Use only one or two that work well together.

5. Talking only about yourself or your company in sales literature, including websites. Remember, clients really want to know how the product or service solves their problem. Let them know you understand their problem and have solutions.

6. Trying to say everything possible about your product on one brochure, sales sheet, or postcard. This guarantees the piece will look cluttered and unfocused and will not serve its intended purpose. Identify one key message your client needs to know and find an original way to communicate that message.

7. Using clip art. Most clip art is cliché, overused, outdated, or just plain ugly, so professional designers typically avoid it. Your piece will be more professional without it.

8. Lack of focal point. Every communications piece, whether printed or online, must present a visual hierarchy of information.

9. Using animated graphics and ads on websites. Unless you are in the motion graphics business, or unless your target audience especially responds to flashing images, any animation on your site is likely to be distracting.

10. Designing a website that is not customer-focused. Visitors must immediately know what’s in it for them and exactly how to navigate quickly to the information they are seeking, and “quickly” is about 1 second. Check your web statistics to see how many visitors you have, how quickly they leave, and whether or not they ever go past the home page.