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Marketing Materials Tips
Business Marketing Materials
Business marketing materials are important for developing a brand equity. A brand is any name of a unique business, like Tom's Towing or Smith Technology. Brand equity is formed when a customer places a certain amount of value on the name of the business or company. Traditionally speaking, the more a customer gains positive information about a brand name, the more the customer attaches a relative value to that business.
Business marketing materials are important for any large or small business because they help a customer associate a product or service with a name of a company. For example, many people associate software with Microsoft or car insurance with State Farm because these companies have consistent business marketing strategies that are customer focused and innovative (offering new products and services) in a consistent form.
If you have been thinking about increasing your brand equity and forming a wide and positive customer perception, consider using any forms of business marketing materials. These can be simple, unique and originally designed with your business name and logo. With an online business marketing materials service like VistaPrint.com, you can use your own designs or have logos created for you. These can then be printed on post cards, pens, mugs, t-shirts and invitations.
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VistaPrint Tip: Four Types of Brochures You Should Know About
If you’re thinking about creating marketing materials for your business, you should first know about the types of brochures you can create. Depending on the type of marketing you plan on doing, one of these types of brochures might be more suitable to your needs.
Direct Mail: Use direct mail brochures when you’re sending out marketing materials. This may include a package which has a sales letter as well as the brochure which highlights the aspects of your product or service.
Point-of-Sale: These are informational brochures that you want your client or customers to read so that they can find out about products or services they wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise. Make these brochures with eye-catching headlines and attention-grabbing graphics.
Post Sale: After a marketing pitch or presentation, these types of brochures are effective at clinching the sale. You’ll want to summarize the main points of the presentation and the benefits of the product or service.
Inquiry Response: Sometimes, you may encounter a situation where a qualified buyer is interested in a particular product or service. Because they’ve contacted you, you can be more assured that they’re already aware of what you offer. These brochures help cinch the deal by emphasizing all the positive aspects of a particular product or service and give a means for the client or customer to conclude the purchase.
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Custom Marketing Materials
Creating custom marketing materials should not be a complex, time consuming process. In fact, with a great custom marketing materials service like VistaPrint.com, you can design your own and receive them in less than a week. Or, you can use a custom marketing materials design service to develop a business marketing package for you. Items to include in your custom marketing materials are envelopes, post cards, letterhead, t-shirts, mugs, pens, calendars and even sticky notes.
If you have a special business event that your company is sponsoring such as charity walk or a 'Customer Appreciation Day', you will want custom marketing materials that showcase the event. This is a great way to get your custom marketing materials and your unique business message out to customers, generate excitement about your business, and increase the number of potential and returning customers.
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VistaPrint Tip: All The Elements You Need to Create Eye-Catching Flyers
Flyers make an affordable, effective way to advertise for your business. You can choose from a design template and input your information or create your own flyers from scratch. Here’s a simple, straightforward guide to creating your own flyers.
1. Use a bold headline to capture your audience’s attention. 2. Crate text that summarize your product or service. Remember to keep it short, snappy, and simple. 3. Include all the necessary information that a client or customer would need to know about the product, event, or service. 4. Add some graphics to make the flyers stand out. The design can be as simple as a photo and border pattern or a graphic pattern throughout the page.
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Printing Marketing Materials
Even ten years ago, printing marketing materials was time consuming, expensive and complicated. You had to have a logo design made up, drive it to the printers, wait weeks for the printing marketing materials, and then drive those over to the postal office to ship them to customers. Thank goodness for the Internet! Now, printing marketing materials can be done in just a few days--without you even having to leave your office.
Great online printing marketing material services like VistaPrint.com have revolutionized the way small, medium, and large businesses market to potential customers.
Simply design your message, logo or image.
Select the type of printing marketing materials you want--post cards, brochures, flyers--and upload the design. If you do not know what type of printing marketing materials or designed logo and messages your business needs, talk to a custom service professional who will design these for you.
Once this part is done, you simply order the printing marketing materials.
You can have these shipped to your office or home, but an easier idea is to have the printing marketing materials shipped directly to a customer or bulk mailing list. You can upload your own customer list or purchase a bulk mailing list from several online services like VistaPrint.com.
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VistaPrint Tip: Send Postcards with Mailing Services
An easy, cost effective way to spread the word about your business is through postcards. But don’t think that you’ll have to go through the task of addressing and mailing all the postcards yourself. Mailing services are available that will make your job easier.
Mailing services provide the benefit of handling the address labels, calculating postage rates and shipping off your postcards to potential clients. You can also realize the benefit of discounted postage rates with mailing services. If you have a list of targeted clients available, you can simply upload the data. For those of you who don’t have an existing list, you can even purchase a list from mailing services so that you can send postcards to get new business.
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Brochures and Flyers
Brochures and flyers are printed marketing materials you can use to showcase your unique business offerings. Brochures are trifold pamphlets with simple, easy to read information, and are normally, information intensive with simple paragraphs. A brochure should show your business logo or image (like a photograph of your facility) on the front fold, followed by succinct information on the inside folds.
For example, a small family owned bed and breakfast in a historical building may want to dedicate an inside page of the brochure to the history of the building. A larger service business, like a sole proprietor investment service may want to explain the history of the owner and any special memberships or accomplishments.
Similarly, a flyer is a great way to showcase your business expertise, history, and special offerings. The difference is that a flyer is a single page of 'tight' information such as location, products, services, and special events, while a brochure is more useful for all-encompassing information. Both can be given directly to customers, passed out to potential customers (like at a business fair or sidewalk sale) or mailed directly to people.Creative online printing services like those found at VistaPrint.com can also design your brochures and flyers for you, then mail them to you or to a customer list.
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VistaPrint Tip: Choosing Type for Post Cards
If you’re designing post cards, you’ll likely also be adding some text as part of the design. Because of the limited space you have to create a cohesive design for your post cards, it’s important to keep a few considerations in mind when it comes to type.
1. Keep the type simple: Unless you’re going for an eclectic effect, ideally, you’ll want to keep the number of types to a minimum. 2. Use serifs whenever readability is an issue: Serif type fonts are more readable, so whenever you’re putting in type to inform the reader, keep that in mind. 3. Keep the message short: The average person takes in three to four words at a time with each eye movement. Keep the reader’s attention by making the message straightforward and direct.
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Presenation Folders
Presentation folders are often overlooked as a marketing tool for small and large businesses, when in fact presentation folders can serve business marketing in a variety of ways:
First, they are imprinted with the business character on the front cover, so this is the first thing a potential customer sees.
The inside of the presentation folders can then be filled with wealth of business information. For example, a service oriented business can send customers presentation folders with a packet of service offerings and a brochure.
Or, presentation folders can be given to customers and investors during a business meeting, showing your professionalism.
Presentation folders are easy to design and print with an online printing service like VistaPrint.com. You can even get matching letterhead, brochures, and personalized pens to place in the presentation folder, giving you a tangible marketing product that you can hand out or mail to customers.
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VistaPrint Tip: Appropriate Photographs on Postcards
Most postcards utilize some photos as the main element or part of the background. If you’ll be using a photo as the main element in postcards, you’ll want to make sure they pass the test for quality printing. Here’s what you need to look for:
Sharpness – Make sure all the important features of the photo are sharp and in focus.
Grain- The photo should print without any graininess.
Contrast – You should see a good range of contrast between highlights and shadows in the photo.
Color – The photo should look saturated and rich in color. If the image you've chosen is Black and White, the Blacks should be very rich and saturated as well.
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Postcards and Mailing Services
Postcards designed with your unique business name and logo can show customers new services, products, sales and specials in one easy to receive and simple to read format. Postcards can also be used to remind customers of your important business services. For example, local car dealerships usually send winter auto check-up messages to customers to remind them to check their tires and anti-freeze.
Whatever your message is, postcards can be easily designed and created with unique messages for you customer base. Once you have designed your postcards, you'll need excellent mailing services. Both are available from VistaPrint.com. Mailing services also use bulk mailing, which is less costly than sending each postcard individually. Postcards are great because customers actually read them--the customer doesn't have to mess around with opening junk mail, so your postcards are instantly noticed and read marketing tools!
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VistaPrint Tip: Package It with Presentation Folders
Marketing brochures, business cards, sales letters and flyers can stand out on their own, but sometimes you need to put them together in one complete package. Presentation folders can be the solution that lets you streamline a marketing package. Presentation folders tell clients everything from how to contact you to the highlights of a particular product. When creating presentation folders, you have a few options for getting the final product made:
Choose from a design template. You can work with a printer that carries template designs and then customize the presentation folders to represent your business.
Upload your own design. Design a presentation folder in-house to the specifications you want and then have the printer create the final product.
Have a graphic designer create the final product for you. That way, you end up with a professional presentation folder, custom-made to represent your business.
