Establishing and developing your company brand and image is a process which takes a great deal of time, energy and money - it is only very high spending, big corporate and government entities who can afford to establish a brand identity overnight with millions in a PR budget. Smaller companies must use every opportunity to promote themselves and your company stationery is an ideal, hard working sales representative for you 24/7!

Just think about your stationery - everyone will get to see it at some point; customers, employees, suppliers and professional service providers, the government, competitors and the public at large - what they see will say a lot about you as a business and how well you operate.

Sloppy or boring stationery will paint a picture of "we don't care" or "we have no imagination or initiative"; neither view is likely to favorably incline viewers and readers to want to engage with you to resolve their own needs and demands for your product or service. The stationery must be present a professional appearance and be printed to the highest quality standards and on good quality paper you can afford.

Consider your stationery portfolio - a small to medium sized business will as a minimum require the following:

- Letterhead;

- Continuation sheets for letterhead;

- Business cards;

- Compliments slips; and

- Invoices.

All of these items should have the same information on them - your company name and brand logo, a website and sales number - though how you will include other information will vary depending on what the stationery will be used for. Invoices will contain your name and logo but probably have details of your accounts receivables office and details of any special terms for future orders. Your business cards are particularly important as they are used so widely to introduce your business - they must make an impression so they are not discarded or hard to find in a desk drawer full of other same old, boring designed cards.

The key with using your stationery as part of your brand identity development is to establish a uniformity of message across the different items of stationery you are using and just as importantly across other media such as television and media advertising. Your logo and tag line should be the same throughout so people become accustomed to it and know automatically who they are dealing with when they see it.

Image is everything in this regard and you usually only get one shot at impressing someone with first impressions; your stationery is usually the very first thing a new prospect is likely to see whether it be a marketing mail shot, a referral using your business card from another customer or a marketing flyer with a quick message on how to get a discount that week. You must invest thought and energy in getting the design right and ensuring you adopt an homogeneous approach to promoting your brand - paying a little extra to have better looking paper can make the difference between signing a deal or having your company consigned to the trash basket as soon as a prospect sees the stationery.