Marketing with a big corporate look on a "mom-n-pop" budget

Now, more than ever, mom-n-pop businesses can have refined, professional corporate signage and displays without a huge marketing budget.

The key ingredients to creating professional signage or displays are 1) good design, 2) good imagery and 3) quality printing.

1) Good Design - many small sign shops have designers that can create effective marketing images.  And in many cases, the sign shop will include the design work at no additional cost when producing the signs or displays.  If you are not receiving satisfactory designs try finding a freelance designer at elance.com.  Elance provides a marketplace where you can post your project and have people bid for the work.  You can review their credentials, portfolios and read reviews.

2)  Good Imagery - Quality images used to be very expensive (model fees, custom photo shoots, royalties, etc.).  Now you can obtain professional, quality imagery from sources like istockphoto.com that are very cheap and easy to shop for.  

Check out this basic design and notice how the stock image of the lady shopper makes the design appear much more professional.

3) Quality Printing - With advances in the large format digital printers found in most sign shops you can now get quality indoor displays and point of sale signage, window graphics, vehicle wraps or outdoor signage for very low rates.  And the print quality can be excellent and durable.