Your Competitive Advantage: Great Graphic Design
Why professional design is a competitive advantage that will instantly increase your credibility.
Businesses compete on the basis of three things, what I call the “Holy Trinity of Marketing”: price, service, and quality. These three things are exalted in most advertising as providing a competitive advantage, and rightly so. If you don’t have a competitive price, amazing customer service, and a quality product, you can’t really compete. If your product or service looks and performs like the competition's product or service, and costs the same amount, then what makes you different? Why should a consumer pick you over your competitor?
The answer to the “why pick me” challenge has been understood by big businesses for years, but small businesses have struggled to understand that design is the new competitive frontier.
All other things being equal, design is the best source of competitive advantage you have that can enable you to stand out among your competition. Management guru Tom Peters calls design “la difference” in today’s crowded marketplace. He tells us, “In a world loaded with stuff that looks like all the other stuff and performs like all the other stuff, design is the best way to stand out.” Why? Because great design promotes instant credibility.
Brand awareness has not yet become a small business mantra. Many of the world’s most profitable companies consider design to be their most effective business tool. If you execute it properly and apply it consistently, design translates to higher brand equity and a healthier bottom line.
Design may be the last way left for your product or service to stand out.
Bob Hayes, a Harvard University manufacturing professor, noted that during the 1980s businesses competed primarily on price. The ‘90s saw a quality revolution, but design, Hayes predicted, is the new competitive frontier.
“Being consistent with your message and visual style communicates that you are credible and can be trusted. ”
Small business must come to understand that graphic design is immensely important. Today’s business models demand that the message companies send across all media be consistent in quality and content. The message consumers receive when they pick a product off the store shelf should resonate with their experiences shopping online or viewing a billboard on the highway.
You might have an amazing product, but if you don’t take responsibility for its overall identity—from brochures to websites to packaging—it won’t succeed. All the touch-points of your product have to work hand-in-hand to support the brand’s image. Think of some of the bigger companies that use design as their main competitive advantage, like Target, Starbucks, and Apple.
You should manage expectations by using a professional designer, not your friend's uncle's cousin. Design doesn’t just make a statement about you–it also makes a statement about the way you perceive your customers. That postcard you mailed and thought, “wow, I got this really cheap on fluorescent paper,” communicates how much you think your customer is worth. You're maybe saving a few bucks, but at what expense?
The era of small businesses seeing design as an investment and not an expense is at hand.
