4 September 2024 · Karabo
Plenty of small businesses can design a social post. Far fewer should design the thing customers use to decide whether the company is real. The useful question is not “Can I do this in Canva?” It is “Will a weak version of this still be in circulation in two years?”
Spend on the assets that persist
The logo, the website, and a basic identity kit (colour, type, a few rules) get copied onto vans, invoices, ads and WhatsApp headers. A weak version of those is expensive because you will either live with it or pay twice.
A website in particular is not only a picture. Structure, speed, mobile behaviour and the enquiry path are commercial decisions. Template builders can be a start. They are rarely the finish if you care about search or operations.
Save on the things you will replace anyway
A once-off event poster, an internal slide, a temporary promo graphic — these can be done in-house if someone on the team has an eye and a template to work from. That is often the better spend: pay once for a system, then produce the small pieces inside it.
A practical middle path
Commission the identity and the site. Ask for templates you can actually edit. Keep a retainer for the moments when the next campaign needs to look like the last one. That is usually cheaper than a string of disconnected one-offs.