Voices

Marketing Minutia

If you’ve visited my website, you will notice I love using the color pink. On my home page, there is a big pink box, all my hyperlinks are pink, even my Client Log-in button is pink.

This color is untraditional for a financial advisor, especially a male one.

As much as I love it, the color pink has been driving me crazy over the past six months.

To start off, did you know that there are over 50 shades of pink? This has driven my web team, graphic designer, printers and myself in circles trying to get the colors to match.

For example, you can specify a color on a webpage, but depending on contrast and brightness settings, it can look different on two separate screens. When you send this to a graphic designer (for business and greeting cards, sell sheets, etc.), the color will seem different in Adobe Illustrator and eventually on card stock.

In dealing with this headache, I have become close friends with a local print shop as we go through various proofs to decide which pink looks as close to my “website pink” as it can be. As I have changed my mind on card stock for business cards, it has meant that the CMYK colors have to be translated to PMS colors (Please note: I have no idea what this means), and having these materials in hand gets delayed a little longer.

This is one of the last “major” tasks that I have to deal with in getting set up. I’m looking forward to taking these materials to meet with clients and providing them to seminar attendees. Until then, it feels like I’m going into meetings and networking situations unprepared. I guess I could whip out my iPad and show people the design.

Dave Grant, CFP, a Financial Planning columnist, is the founder of Cary, Ill.-based planning firm Finance for Teachers. He’s also the founder of Fee Only Consulting, which focuses on developing the skills of Gen Y planners. In addition, he’s the founder of NAPFA Genesis, a networking group for young, fee-only planners.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
RIAs Sales and marketing Practice management
MORE FROM FINANCIAL PLANNING