From higher margins to leaping off a crowded shelf, an investment in professional graphic design services can give your business the boost it needs.

As a partner at a small business, Famous Folks, I get the desire to rein in costs wherever possible, but as the creative director of that same small business, I want you to consider the many ways in which professional graphic design is a necessary investment that can benefit your business.

From increasing your credibility to boosting sales and engagement, design can have a major impact on your bottom line. Not to mention, it’s a cost-effective way to improve your marketing efforts. Professional design is good design and good design is good business.

Credibility is the currency of business and in a world where we are constantly bombarded with choices, first impressions matter now more than ever. Good design tells your customers that you care about quality and attention to detail and that you’re invested in your product. The subconscious cues people experience from your brand—from how it looks to what emotion the colour is evoking—are essential when building trust with your target market. So whether you’re starting a new business or revamping an existing one, professional designers can help you reach your goals and build a successful brand.

Every detail in the design of your website, business cards, and marketing materials sends a signal to your potential customers about the quality of your product or service. A well-designed logo can convey in a moment that you are a credible business while a carefully crafted package design can help overcome initial doubts consumers may have about your company. Design helps to build trust with potential customers by conveying all of the things you want them to know about you in an instant.

After a rebranding process and packaging redesign, our client Black Wolf went from a start up men’s skincare company making a couple of sales a week to routinely celebrating high six figure months in sales. A little polish goes an extremely long way.

Good design is not just about making something look pretty. It’s about understanding how people interact with your product or service and using that knowledge to create an experience that satisfies an emotional need by communicating a consistent message. Consistency helps communicate a brand message by creating a recognizable look and feel for all of your marketing materials. When potential customers see that your design is visually consistent, they will be more likely to remember who you are and what you offer. Consistency also helps to create a feeling of trustworthiness, which is essential when winning over new customers.

When it comes to receiving a message, emotion is everything. Good design can evoke an emotional response in customers that can result in increased sales and engagement. In fact, effective design can communicate a wide range of emotions, from joy and excitement to belonging and passion. Studies have shown that when customers feel positive emotions, they are more likely to make a purchase. For example, many studies find that when people see happy faces in advertisements, they are more likely to buy the product.

As anyone in business knows, standing out from the competition is essential for success. In a world where customers have endless choices, design is often the difference between struggling and thriving.

Good design can help you stand out from the competition in several ways. Obviously, if your design is better than that of your competitors, it will be noticed. But design can also help to differentiate your product from others on the market, even if it’s not necessarily better.

Good design can help you stand out from the competition online as well as in brick and mortar stores. In fact, good design is even more important online because customers can’t pick up your product and examine it in person. This is where your website design, logo, digital ads and the presentation of your products come into play. If they are well-designed and consistent with your branding, they are more likely to gain an all-too-critical edge over the competition.

One way quality design can help improve your business is by increasing the visibility of your product on store shelves. Well-designed products are more likely to be picked up and examined by customers. They tend to spend more time looking at them and considering them. A product in hand is one step closer to the checkout.

While the upfront cost of good design may be higher than that of bad or DIY design, it can actually help you save money in the long run and even increase your margins.

How does it do that?

Design is often associated with quality and luxury, so it can help to increase the perceived value of your product, making people more willing to pay more for it. Consumers are simply willing to pay more for products when the design appeals to their emotions or is perceived as luxurious. Many products today are essentially the same product with different packaging and branding. In personal care, for instance, many shampoos use the same base formula made by the same manufacturer. Yet, one may sell for twice the price as another and with greater frequency.

A product with good design will sell itself. People are drawn to products that are beautifully designed, and they are more likely to recommend them to others. On the other hand, a product with bad design is likely to languish on store shelves. Even if it’s priced competitively, customers will be turned off by its poor appeal.

Good design also has a dramatic effect on the valuation of your business. Coinberry, a Famous Folks client, experienced at 13X increase in valuation as a result of our rebrand of their company. Overnight they went from a $1 million valuation to over $13 million. That same company recently sold to Kevin O’Leary backed WonderFi for $38.5 million. A truly astonishing amount.

In the long run, good design always pays off. It may cost a bit more up front, but it will more than make up for it in sales, valuation and customer satisfaction.

In the digital age, good design is an increasingly important tool for businesses of all sizes. With so much noise online, it’s essential to have a strong visual presence that captures attention and drives results.

Design can be used to improve the look of your website, make your email campaigns more visually appealing, create more engaging social media posts and even build immersive in-person experiences. Well-designed marketing materials communicate benefits and outcomes faster and more clearly, resulting in more clicks, higher conversion rates, and the hallmark of all digital marketing, lower costs-per-action (CPAs). In order to be profitable, online businesses need to keep their CPA as low as possible. The lower the CPA, the more money a business can make with the same amount of traffic.

Avoiding the initial investment in professional design services can result in marketing that performs poorly and ends up costing your business more in the long run.

So, the next time you’re thinking about design, remember that it’s not just about aesthetics—it’s about bottom-line results.

In a world where good design is more important than ever, it’s essential to make sure your business takes advantage of all the benefits it can offer. Having a professional design team, like Famous Folks, on your side can help you stand out from the competition, increase your margins, and improve your marketing efforts. It may cost a bit more up front, but in the long run, good design always pays off.

Learn more about Famous Folks and how we can help your business succeed.

Get in touch.