Archive for November, 2007

Marketing and Promotion - you can do both at the same time

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

When most people think of marketing.  They think of pushing a specific product in various different ways such as full color catalog printing, full-color brochure printing, color flyer printing, color postcard printing. Generally when using these various different products you’ll push a specific event, and/or a specific special that you are running for a limited time only.

I do think that when most people think a promotion they think more at the level of branding. You see various different con parties do this such as Geico, Coke Cola, HP etc. this is more to make consumers aware of the product through frequency. It generally is not pushing any specific product or any specific event.

I personally think that there is marketing materials that if done correctly.  You can pursue both branding as well is taking advantage of promoting any specific events that you may look to promoting near future, as well as pushing any specific product that you may have a surplus of as well new product launches.

You can also use a grass roots promotion or do both as well. One of the things I used to do when I was opening up a nightclub years ago.  If it was a grand opening of a new location.  What I would do about a month and a half prior to actually putting out the grand opening color flyers.  I would start to distribute teasers. The way that this would work as are actually create a flyer that would just have the logo on it and then it would say something to the effect is coming. I remember I did a 40 few ars ago called industry in Island Park Long Island. In a month and a half before the grand opening I put out these teases that said industry is coming. There are no telephone numbers, no addressed nothing that would have people realize what the specific event was more or less like a secret for people to try and figure out.

Then three weeks before the actual events I would start a massive Blitzkrieg. I would order someone an area of 50,000 full-color flyers.  Usually these would be somewhere in the area of a 4 x 6. I would distribute these everywhere. I would also send out press releases, as well as have people calling my mailing lists and creating VIP Flyer parties. It was not uncommon for an event like this for its grand opening night to do someone an area of 1500 to 2000 people.

So when you think about why can’t you do the same type of technique for virtually any business for any grand opening.

You also have the ability to this same type of thing through an e-mail blast type teaser followed up then with a full color postcard in the mail promoting the actual event. This is obviously what’s known as a marketing next, the more impressions that you can put them from the client the more likely you are to actually in sure your actual sale.

Another technique that I like to use is to order a full color rackcards and put them in a clear Lucite plastic holder on the different desks of the hotel managers, as well as hotel lobby entrances. He’s also work well in high traffic retail locations.

And last but not least another great technique that I like to use is to order some large full-color posters.  Usually those of a 24 x 36 and tape goes up in various different places.  Obviously high traffic places to promote my events, whether it’s a retail outlet or the grand opening of a nightclub.  Effective way to do some marketing and promotion for your company.

Make money the free-way - have customers find you instead of you finding them!!!

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

This is a very good way to get some free marketing and promotion out there for your company. As well as a practice that I’ve been doing probably for last 8 years in my own full color printing and graphics company.

If you print it tag it!!!!

One of the things that we do on virtually every single printed material that leaves are factory we tag. What this means is we put a small tag on the bottom of all of our printed pieces that say where it came from our website address, as well as our 800 number. It’s very similar to when something is made in China or its main Japan.  Product is stamped with it meaning its place of origin, where is made.

 This is the way, there are tag looks –

Need Printing???  www.preferredprint.com 1-800-329-0005

this tag generally appears on every single printed product that we produce from our full-color pocket folders, full color postcards, full-color brochures as well as our 1 and 2 color ncr forms.

 One of the things I do on a regular basis is walk around my office and speak to my graphic design is an estimate they’ve tagged their designs. My slogan is, if you’re working on and you’re designing you should put design imprinted with an 800 number and where they can contact you if they would like to purchase your product.

That’s why resist my people and answer the phone the police find out whether people came from the bases on how advertisements. Did they find us on the Internet when they were searching for a full color printing. Or did the person pick up a postcard that they received in the mail from a direct marketing campaign. Or did they pick up a flyer that they got on their car from a full-color flyer from a nightclub. You’d be surprised how many people call us after picking up one of our customers flyers and then contact us to actually get their next full-color printing job.

This is one of the ways that we keep her advertising course down we can pass that savings to the consumer.

Step into your consumers world.

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Here’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about most recently.  Very often we think about selling a product we think of it from the standpoint of what it is that we would like to get accomplished in the world. In our particular case, obviously we want to sell as much printing as we possibly can as well as service our existing client base. The problem is that only think about it from the standpoint would inevitably ends up happening is, we find the customer being resistance. In my organization, I had a sales meeting this week.  I have been listening to the book made to stick on audio tape in my car. There was an article about a newspaper in a small town that a subscription base of 110%. When asked the editor replied the reason that he was so successful is because they were great at doing local news and putting local people newspaper which had their readership.  Always focused in on the papers much as possible see if they were being mentioned in today’s newspaper. In my particular case, as I said before, I want to sell as many full color letterhead and envelopes as I possibly can. I want to sell as many $99 full color business cards as I possibly can. I want to be the leader in full-color pocket folders throughout the whole entire nation. I want people in the printing industry throughout the whole entire world to notice my business and its ability to grow in an ever-changing marketplace. I want all customers in people when thinking of a full color printing comp and he thinking of our company. So now that I got that one across the point is that these are the things that I want and not necessarily what the client wants. I sat down myself staff, on Tuesday this week, I told them to start going local. What I mean by this is to actually find out what’s going on in some of the communities where we have our customers or potential customers. A great way doing this is one of the things you can do is just get an RSS news feed through the Internet for the specific state or city that you’re looking to do some potential business in. That’s what I mean by getting into other people’s world.  I told myself people that you need to be able to call up a person and be able to make a comment about something is going on in their local newspaper. Maybe a new governor was elected or new politician of some sort may lose some kind of big bicycle race.  Or maybe it’s just something as simple as their team won the Super Bowl or the World Series. My point is I think you’ll find at the level of cool: that’s for sure that people will be very interested in talking to if you can bring down that first screen of resistance. So there you have it, think less of what it is that you want to do and more about what the customer might be interested in, and I think he’ll sell times more product. This goes for cold calling, direct-mailing, the full-color catalog that you’re about to produce. All I can tell you is that for full-color printing business on loan to bring this whole concept into all of my full-color printing and graphics products

Up selling your and existing customer base and new customers..

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

One of the things that I like to do as an owner of full color printing company is to consciously train my salespeople or customer service people as we like to call him today. Is that constantly speak to them.  In regards to up selling clients on various different printing products.

One of the things I like to point out to people on a regular basis is we have to sell 5000 full color postcards for $99. The thing you have to get is when we sell 5000 full color business cards for $99 were actually losing money, if that’s all they buy. But the thing is we know something that the average consumer doesn’t know.  We know that when someone comes in on a deal for 5000 color business cards.  More times than not, they don’t usually get those 5000 business cards and hit the road. They end up spending on average, probably $500 to $2500 dollars. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s a good idea to create some type of throw away as they call it. This is what’s known in the marketing world as a loss leader. Meaning, you lose money when you sell it but by having the customer comes to the door your visibility to upsell him very as different products.

One of the things we’ll do is actually will create a direct mail piece.  This piece may be anywhere from the size of a 4 x 6 full-color postcard to a 6 x 9 full-color rack card. When it comes to direct mail and though I do have to say size is important. The smaller the direct mail piece, the more likely it is to get lost in the now. As a person of those printing and also direct mail services I know that the biggest unit that you can go before the postage ends up making a dramatic upswing is 6.5 x 11, we refer to this as a jumbo postcard.

The other thing that we like to do is if businesses want to refer to his guerrilla marketing.  This is basically a hand-to-hand distribution or are what the refer to his car to car. We usually do is we’ll go to a parking lot in any given place and depending possibly put them on people’s cars or end up doing hand-to-hand distribution to different crowds of people.