CVAC

by Karen Saunders

It’s almost 5 o’clock on Friday afternoon. Do you know where your newest marketing pieces are? If you’re a small business owner, they may be buried on your desk because you’ve got so many other important details to handle. Or they’re still sitting on your assistant’s desk where she’s staring at them hopelessly. She’s an admin assistant, for heaven’s sake, not a designer, and she knows what she’s produced so far is not very memorable or effective.

All of us would like to think our product is so good, our services so unique, they’ll simply sell themselves. Not so! Strong branding, powerful images, compelling web pages and outstanding marketing pieces make or break that upward sales curve you crave so urgently. In today’s market, your customers and clients are influenced more than ever by the visual presentation of your marketing pieces. If they are well designed, they’re likely to be read, remembered and respected.

Here are five simple, but essential tricks of the designer’s trade that you can use immediately, at little cost, and with excellent results to profit you both short and long term.

1. Take advantage of quality clip art and stock photos
Chances are you’re not an illustrator or photographer, but that shouldn’t stop you from using professional illustrations or photos in your marketing piece. You can use clip art–sometimes at a very low price–to enhance your layout. Check out the Internet for sites that feature clip art or stock photo libraries that provide a wide variety of quality and prices to choose from. Use the same style of graphics throughout your piece to create a consistent look.

2. Add dramatic contrast
Using contrast means having clearly apparent differences among the design elements that come together on a page, business card, or computer screen. These include contrasting colors, shapes, fonts, and sizes of text and graphics. A high degree of contrast helps create dramatic interest and draws the viewer’s eye to specific areas of your page. White space also provides contrast, aids legibility, and gives the reader’s eye a resting point. Controlling the amount of white space you use affects the overall page design.

3. Repeat certain elements
Good design calls for repeating certain elements throughout your piece to make the whole piece come together visually. For example, use the same color, shape, and size for all your bullets. Also make all your headers the same size, color, and font. Go for more and repeat specific graphic elements (e.g., boxes, banners, rule lines, etc.) throughout the piece.

4. Pay attention to proximity
Proximity refers to the exact spatial relationships between elements. For example, you create visual relationships between photos and their captions by keeping the captions close to the photos. For subheads, a pro positions them closer to the text below than the text above. Apply this principle of exact spatial relationship to all other graphic and text elements where appropriate. When you review your work, make sure you’ve applied this spacing consistently throughout.

5. Know when to use serif and sans serif fonts
In general, when you have a large amount of text, it is best to use a serif font because it is easier to read than a sans serif font. Serifs are the tiny horizontal strokes attached to the letters which help the reader’s eyes flow from letter to letter. Bold sans serif (without serifs) is good for headlines and subheads because they slow the reader down thus bringing more attention to each word or concept. Some examples of serif fonts that are good for body copy are: Times, New Century Schoolbook, Garamond and Goudy. Some examples of sans serif fonts that are good for headlines are: Arial Bold, Helvetica Black, Univers Bold and Trade Gothic.

It’s 9 o’clock Monday morning. You’re smiling because you have incorporated these important design elements into your marketing strategy. You’re ready to face a new week with vastly improved opportunities to keep smiling at a growing bottom line.

Copyright © Karen Saunders

Karen Saunders is the owner of MacGraphics Services, a unique design firm for today’s entrepreneur.  Karen’s book, Turn Eye Appeal Into Buy Appeal: How to easily transform your marketing pieces into dazzling, persuasive sales tools! is a comprehensive resource that teaches you how to create effective marketing materials, give marketing projects a professional appearance, and execute projects using ready-made checklists to immediately begin assisting clients with the planning, developing and creating of marketing materials.  To learn more, visit http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/?af=1090208.  You can contact Karen at 888-796-7300, or Karen@macgraphics.net.

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by Sharon Alderson, CFP, FDS

Your chances of success are heightened by clearly defined objectives and a strategy for reaching your goals. So to get the most for your money, you need a plan. But how should you go about formulating an investment plan?  The following steps will get you started

Establish goals: Consider why you want to build investment wealth.  Is it to accumulate money for retirement, to buy a house, to start a business, or for some other purpose? Determine how much money you need to realize those goals. Above all, make sure your expectations are realistic and specific.

Decide how much risk you can take: In the investment world, as a general rule, the higher the risk, the higher the potential return.  If you can tolerate risk, you could potentially experience greater investment growth – but you also increase your chances of fluctuations in the value of your investment.  Consider whether you have the psychological makeup to tolerate ups and downs in the financial markets.  If market movements are going to keep you up at night, that much risk is not a good thing for you and comfort is a very important aspect of any investment plan.

You also need to consider your age: You don’t want to take extra risk with money as you approach retirement.  At this time you should consider concentrating on capital preservation through more conservative investment strategies. Fixed income investments such as Government and Corporate Bonds, or Real Estate and mortgage funds fluctuate less than equities, and Guaranteed Investment Certificates and Segregated Funds offer a guarantee, but remember no or low risk equals lower returns. You should always maintain some equities investments to provide protection against inflation.

Establish your portfolio: Mutual funds are an excellent way to diversify among the three basic asset classes – cash, fixed income and equity.  As a rule, your portfolio should have a high proportion of equity investments to build wealth while you’re young; as it has been proven volatility is reduced over the long term.  No matter what your age or investment experience, make diversification, geographically as well as over the asset classes, a part of your investment plans.

Regularly review your plan: Once your strategy is in place, your plan should be  reviewed at least once a year, or more often as required by significant developments in financial  Once your strategy is in place, your plan should be  reviewed at least once a year, or more often as required by significant developments in financial markets or major lifestyle changes.  A good financial plan allows for the unexpected by utilizing an emergency fund and protecting your income and assets.  Making adjustments and re-balancing your portfolio back to its original asset allocation will greatly improve returns while keeping within your comfort level.

“Most Plans Fail Because Most People Fail to Plan”

Sharon Alderson CFP, FDS Investors Group Visit Sharon’s Blog at: http://sharonalderson.terapad.com

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