Creating PDF Files in QuarkXPress 7

The newest version of QuarkXPress makes it easier than ever to create PDF files.  This is a very useful ability to have, because many commercial printers want you to send your designs to them in PDF format.  Quark allows you to create all kinds of products – brochures, postcards, etc. – into PDF with just a few steps.

Here is a rundown of how to create a PDF file in QuarkXPress 7:

1. The first thing you have to do is to QuarkXPress’s Resource Center (on quark.com) and download the ICC files.  You have to have these to download the PDF style that you want.

2. Then, download the PDF styles archive from http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/resourcecenter/pdf.html.

3. Now you have all of the files that you need downloaded.  From here, you can do all of the needed steps from within the Quark program.  From inside the program, choose the File menu, and select Output Styles.

4. From this point, there will be more options from which to choose.  Select Import.

5. Here, you have to choose the PDF style that you want to use.  Here are your choices:

Press_HighPDF.xml
Print_MediumPDF.xml
Screen_MediumPDF.xml
Screen_LowPDF.xml
PDFX1a.xml
PDFX3.xml

6. Once you select the style you want, click Open.

7. If you want to input more PDF styles, simply repeat steps 4-6 for each desired style.

8. When you are down importing all of the styles that you want, click Save.

This process is actually much easier than it looks.  Once you have done it, it will be a piece of cake.  However, if you import all of the styles you want on your first session, you will not have to do it again.
Do these 8 simple steps and start creating PDF files right from QuarkXPress 7!

Using Podcasts in Your Marketing Strategy

With technology ever-evolving, some of your old marketing strategies may not be working quite as well. Direct mail postcards, brochures, television ads and radio ads don’t have the same punch if people aren’t looking or listening to these avenues for information.

You’re competing with streaming video on a personal computer, television shows sans commercials on a cell phone and online news sites that have their own advertising avenues. How can you keep up with hippest technology to make sure you’re getting to your target market?

One word: podcast. Podcasts are video or audio files that are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players, like the iPod, or computers. The term is a mash up of the words “iPod” and “broadcast” since the Apple iPod is the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasts were developed. These scripts are downloaded and then transferred to a mobile device to listen to or watch.

Podcast topics are as varied as the Internet – news, industries, trends and anything else you can think of have been podcasted. There’s even a For Dummies book on podcasting! Podcasts can last from a few minutes to a few hours (although the longer ones are less popular).

Podcasts appeal to people because
• they allow people to multitask. Many customers and clients are busy people. They don’t have time to read your latest book or your magazine article. But they can listen to your podcast while driving to work or while they’re exercising.
• people can get advice and info that feeds their self-improvement needs. Clients enjoy listening to CEOs and other experts that they can learn from. Podcasts are like their own personalized lecture.

Podcasts are great for establishing yourself or your CEO as an expert. Podcasts that share industry info, advice and insights create an impression that your business is filled with people the public can turn to for advice. Podcasting only takes a few hundred dollars to start for the equipment and distribution costs, so it’s a marketing strategy that can bring in a high ROI.

To create successful podcasts, your broadcasts must be concise, casual, clear and consistent.

Concise: Focus on one topic for each podcast. Remember they can be a few minutes long to a few hours long. Shorter ones have better success because, well, if people had a few hours to read a book then they would! Don’t get too longwinded in your discussion, but keep it chatty and …

Casual: Use real-life examples and simple language to get your point across. Don’t use jargon that people will need to look up in a dictionary or online. Don’t use too many statistics and “academic” talk. Talk like you’re talking to your best friend.

Clear: Make sure the volume of your recording device is up high enough to capture your voice and nothing else. Be sure to record in an area where you are free from distractions (a bar or a kid-filled living room is not a good idea).

Consistent: Pick a podcast schedule you can stick to. If you can only get to it once a week, fine. Just make sure you do it once a week, preferably on the same day each week. If you can only get to it monthly, that’s fine too. Just make sure you’re on a consistent schedule so that your listeners know when to expect you.

Once you create a podcast, you need to make sure to promote it. Include a link on your Web site and add a link to your email signature. You can also include your podcasts in your print advertising in magazines or newspapers. Just get the word out because people can’t listen if they don’t know it exists!

A Collection of Unique Business Cards

I have been looking around the internet lately for unique business card designs, and I can tell you that there are plenty of them out there.  I have been amazed by what some people have done to their cards.  But I’m not complaining; not at all.  I think it’s great to have unconventional cards to get attention and to make them stand out from the millions of others out there.

I want to share some of the best ones I’ve seen on a few different sites.

From Dotcommogul.net:
This site has a nice collection of crazy business cards.  One such card was designed in the form of a cardboard cut out.  The customer could cut out a piece of cardboard in the shape of a car.

Another interesting card I found on this site was in the shape of a box of over the counter medicine.  Get what kind of company designed that one?  You guessed it: a prescription medicine company.

I saw another card that had a big bite taken out of it, quite literally.  It was designed (by a restaurant, no less) to look like a piece of paper that someone had taken a bite out of.

And perhaps the most unique of all the business card featured on this site was one designed in the form of a blood bag.  It looked just like a bag that would be attached to an IV in a hospital.  And it was used by a designer, no less.

From http://static.iftk.com.br/mt/2007/11/coolest_business_cards_ive_eve.html:
This blog post listed a lot of very unique business cards as well.  One of them looked like an x-ray showing a broken thumb.  It was designed and used by a debt recovery agent!  What a poignant message to get across, is it not?

Another business card was designed in the form of a very small piano.  This innovative card was used by a piano repair company.

And a locksmith had a business card designed in the shape of lock picking tools.  How fitting is that?  I love it when people find ways to make their business cards fit right in with their business.

And yet another business card featured on this site was in the form of a fully functional balloon.  I’m not sure what kind of company was using that one, but that sounds like a great idea to me.  If a customer blows up the balloon, they could end up looking at that business card for a week or more.

How Well Does Your Direct Mail Campaign Work? How to Measure Success

A direct mail campaign is one of most cost-effective ways to market your business. According to a study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association last year, direct mail brings in approximately $10 in sales for every $1 invested. That’s a pretty good return on your investment, eh?

With everyone talking about high gas prices and how to save money, direct mailing is one of those ways your company can save money. The U.S. Postal Service is giving us a bargain, really, when you think of how much money you could spend trying to reach thousands of people in a week’s time. Compare that with the approximate $1 cost it takes to create and mail postcards and you’ve got yourself a deal.

The best way to measure success of a direct mail campaign is to measure the cost versus gain
ROI stands for return on investment. ROI is basically a measurement of how much money you made or lost on an investment. To calculate ROI, you use the following equation:

ROI = (gain from investment – cost of investment) / cost of investment

I won’t go into the particulars here, except to tell you that if you Google ROI you’ll get a lot more info than you probably wanted to know about ROI! It’s a popular buzz word when it comes to finances of any sort. Basically, ROI tells you how much money you made in a percentage format. Whatever your ROI number is in the equation above, multiply it times 100 and you’ll get a percentage. That percentage will tell you how much of your investment cost you got back.

Another way to measure your cost and gain ratio is to measure your cost-per-piece or cost-per-lead and compare that with your sales numbers that resulted from the direct mail.

Measure how well you’re doing with test mailings
Direct mail enables you to control your marketing efforts better than other forms of marketing. You get to decide who exactly sees your direct mail pieces, when they see it and what the direct mail piece looks like.

When you first develop a direct mail piece, you should send it to a small group of people on your mailing list to get a feel for your response rate. You can use subsequent mailings to try out a new design, new headline copy or try a new mailing list to see what works and what doesn’t.

By testing your direct mail pieces before you send them out to your entire mailing list, you can gauge the probability of success so you know how much money, time and effort to sink into the direct mailing.

Entrepreneurial Lessons from Indiana Jones

With the fourth installment of Indiana Jones out in May, it’s an appropriate time to see what we can learn from Indy about being an entrepreneur.

The great movie heroes are great because they don’t follow the rules, according to Mark Stevens, self-proclaimed movie lover and author of Your Marketing Sucks and God Is a Salesman. “Nobody wants to see a movie about someone who simply abides by the rules.”

Let’s take that rule-chucking theory and apply it to entrepreneurship. What can we learn?

Indy does his homework
Indy’s whip and gun get lots of play in the movie, but it’s his smarts that save the day. Without a Dr. Jones, Indiana Jones would have ended up dead a long time ago!

In the same way, entrepreneurs need to do their research – before they start their business, before they launch a product – generally before any kind of large undertaking. Going into a situation feet first instead of brain first will generally backfire. Make sure to do homework on your target market before you begin marketing to them and do homework on the market itself. Adding another similar product to a crowded market is not the road to a successful business venture.

Adventurous – take business risks, but not stupid risks
I believe these are referred to as calculated risks. You need to calculate the risk potential of business ventures, whether that’s to take a risk introducing a new product or trying to target a new market. Indy is adventurous, but he is also sensible. He takes risks where the outcome is more likely to be in his favor. Not a bad characteristic to try to copy.

Show your human side
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” moans Indy. This one line shows that Indy isn’t a robot – there’s something that shakes him up! In the same way, you need to show your customers that you are human. Don’t talk like a corporation in your marketing materials, talk like a person. Use “you” a lot and “we” or “us” when you talk about your company. Starting headlines with “you” on postcards will grab people’s attention because you’re talking right to them.

Entrepreneurs find creative solutions
Indy would tell you as well as anyone else that no matter how much planning you do, you need to be ready for the unexpected. This includes setting up a plan B, but also being able to think on your feet. If you can’t come up with a solution to a problem, try brainstorming with colleagues to come up with something off the beaten path. Don’t strike down any ideas because oftentimes one idea that is way out there will spark the right idea later.

Don’t forget your hat
Indy always has his hat with him. When it gets punched off, blown off, however it gets off his head, he always manages to get it back to him. In much the same way, you can’t forget your hat, which is your brand. People know the Indiana Jones movies by a silhouette of Harrison Ford in the fedora – it’s the trademark of Indy. Whether you’re working on marketing materials, your annual report, producing a new product – don’t forget to include your brand on everything.

Lastly, don’t give up. Indy never gives up – once he’s found one artifact that’s not enough – he needs to find the next one. And the next one. If you have a roadblock in your way, find a way to get around it. Indy keeps forging ahead despite setbacks, and you can too.

I know what you’re thinking … where can I get a fedora?

Which Marketing Mix of Strategies is For You?

There are so many different ways to communicate to customers through marketing – you’ve got everything from postcards to billboards to television commercials. Generally, companies divide themselves into who they sell to – businesses or consumers. Business-to-business (B2B) companies reach their customers differently than business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. Here’s an outline of which kind of marketing mix is best used for each type of business.

In B2B selling, customers are reached through the following channels:
• Mass media: print, fax, email, Internet, broadcast
• One-on-one: presentations, email
• Trade shows
• Customer referrals

In C2B selling, customers are reached through these channels:
• Mass media: commercials, Internet, print
• Display: building, signage, billboards, location, counter or shelf displays
• One-on-one: door to door, letter, telephone, email
• Follow up: in person, email, letter, telephone

You’ll notice that there are some overlaps. That’s okay – when it all boils down, you’re still selling to people. Businesses are made of people and the people are who make the buying decisions.

Let’s talk about a few of these options in greater detail:

Mass media: Many marketers think mass media is the end all and be all of marketing. And don’t get me wrong – mass media is one of the main marketing channels for B2B and B2C companies. But, mass media is generally reserved for sales (meaning discounts) and to introduce new products or services.

Display marketing: This works best for B2C marketing because most consumers will travel to your store to buy your product. Many businesses will not. Businesses are too busy to travel from store to store to pick up goods, which is why they generally have everything shipped to them. Displays also encourage impulse buying, which businesses are somewhat immune from because everything they purchase is preordered.

One-on-one marketing: One-on-one marketing works for both types of companies because it’s the most personal way to build a relationship with customers. You talk with them and there’s rapport there. You can also personalize your presentation or lineup of products for each consumer or business. This tactic is most time-consuming, but it can pay off in ways that impersonal marketing can’t.

Speaking of impersonal and personal marketing, these broader categories can also determine your marketing mix:

Personal marketing
• One-on-one: presentations, email, letters, telephone, direct mail
• Your selling environment (your store atmosphere)
• Networking
• Trade shows

Impersonal marketing
• Mass media: print, broadcast
• Display: billboards, location, signage
• General email

Generally, personal marketing is aimed at current customers and impersonal marketing is aimed at prospects. You don’t want to get all up in a prospect’s personal space (real and virtual) because they don’t know you yet and aren’t comfortable with you. If you send an email that has the prospect’s name on it, like “Dear Molly,” Molly’s going to think “You don’t know me so don’t call me by my first name.” However, Joe who is your customer already, will welcome your email opening of “Dear Joe.” He’ll think nothing of your personal greeting.

Now that you know the categories of marketing, you can make your own marketing mix based on whether you want to go personal or impersonal, or based on your type of company. If you’ve already used mass media to reach your customers, you can try some one-on-one marketing to mix it up. There is no right way to market to a group of customers because each group is different. But you can find your own effective marketing mix from these lists and tweak it as you go along.

Drip Marketing

Drip marketing is a direct mail strategy that means you send out many direct mail pieces for weeks or months to a portion of your sales leads list.

The phrase “drip marketing” comes from a farming and gardening term called “drip irrigation.” When gardeners do drip irrigation, it means the gardener waters plants using small amounts of water over a period of time. Drip marketing is a deliberate and planned sequence of marketing messages set out over a set period of time.

What’s the need for drip marketing?
Well, it was created in response to the “Law of 29” which states that an average prospect won’t turn into a client until he or she has viewed a marketing message a minimum of 29 times. Not all marketers believe in this magic number, but all marketers agree that you need to stay in touch with prospects over a period of time to gain their business. Statistics show that between three and 30 repetitions are required for a message to be remembered.

What are the advantages?
You get a steady cash flow from a steady rush of business. By consistently sending out brochures, flyers, letters and other direct mail pieces, you end up getting new customers throughout the drip cycle, instead of all at once, like at Christmas.

You are always promoting a right time to buy. For realtors and other businesses, like car dealers, whose services or products are only purchased when it’s the right time for the consumer, drip marketing works well because it’s always the right time to buy. You build recognition and awareness over time, and when your product is needed, you’re there. Most people take a few months to buy a car, and they start to slowly pay more attention to car sales ads. Since car dealerships are always promoting their product, they’re ready for whoever is in the frame of mind to buy a car. They do this year round. Consider Toyota – the Prius is selling like crazy right now – there are actually wait lists to even buy one and to test drive one – but Toyota hasn’t pulled all their Prius ads. Not everyone has jumped on the Prius bandwagon, so they keep putting out Prius ads to catch the next wave of people who want it. When you use drip marketing, you’re riding the waves and you take the new customers as they come.

You’ll have a plan in place to follow that can be easily adjusted. By creating a plan, you’ll be consistent with your marketing. But, with drip marketing, it’s easy to change your plan depending on the results of your last mailing. You’ve already got the marketing materials printed, so just change which type of direct mail piece you’re going to send next.

What kinds of direct mail should you send?
Postcards
Newsletters
Sales Brochures
Flyers
Letters
Anything else that can be sent through the mail! (like free samples, for instance)

Your plan of action
Decide on what niche of your target market you want to send direct mail to
Develop your timing plan (how often you’ll send out your materials) in conjunction with what kinds of materials you’ll send out at which interval (postcards every two weeks? Brochures every other month?)

Execute the plan
Evaluate your results after each mailing, or after a few mailings (if postcards aren’t working and brochures are, alter your plan to send out more brochures)

Your drip marketing plan should be a way for you to foster relationships your current and potential customers. You can keep them updated on your products and services, and you’ll gain great memorability.

Technical Considerations for Brochure Printing

Small business owners are finding that brochures can be easily created nowadays in their office on their own computers. With desktop publishing software on the market like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and Microsoft Publisher, it’s easy to design your own brochures and only use a printing company to do the actual printing.

Here are a few technical considerations that business owners who aren’t savvy graphics developers need to know.

Design for your print size
One of the most frequent errors do-it-yourselfers make when designing brochures is to design for the wrong print size. If you are planning on printing on 8-x-10-inch paper, don’t build your layout on an 8.5-x-11-inch palette. Many printing companies will return your file to you if it’s not sized correctly.

This is one of the hardest errors to correct at the printer – if they stretch or shrink the design to fit the paper size, your graphics and images will look funny and your text will be hard to read.

Allow your brochure to bleed
No, I’m not saying to torture yourself or your brochures for that design epiphany to break through! I’m talking about your print bleed. Print bleed is expanding your brochure design to go slightly past the page borders in your design program. When brochures are printed, they are printed in sheets, and are then sliced into individual brochures. The blade that cuts the sheets is usually right on, but sometimes veers just a bit outside of the established border. When that happens, you can end up with a white border on some parts of your brochure. Not cool if you have a great picture on one corner of your brochure, or if a picture takes up the whole front panel. Design your brochure with an extra 1/8 inch beyond the established borders to avoid any printing mishaps.

Your images and photos should be at least 300 dpi
To create a professional-looking brochure, you need professional quality photos. If you print a photo or image that isn’t high-resolution, your image will come out blurry or even pixilated.

The images that look good on the Web are 72 dpi (dots per inch). This is not enough for printing on paper – these low quality images would hardly be recognizable in a brochure. Your photo files should be at least 300 dpi to print sharply and clearly.

Choose a high quality paper to print your brochures on
Many printing companies offer 80lb or 100lb stock paper. Papers also come with a variety of glossy and matte finishes. 100lb paper is much more substantial than 80lb paper and doesn’t cost that much more. Paper weight is calculated by stacking 500 sheets on a pile. A heavier paper will make your brochure seem more professional and your images and text will look better because you can’t see through to the other side of the paper!

You can add varnish to the paper if you want it to look glossy and shiny, and varnish also helps prevent fingerprint smudges on color-heavy brochures. If you have a lot of ink on your brochure, it will look glossy anyway, so you may not want to spend money on making the small, inkless parts glossy.

Tips for an Amazing Sales Presentation

Whenever you’re presenting your product or service to a client, it’s important for your presentation to stand out from the crowd. Most presentations are dull and unconvincing and not nearly good enough to keep the client’s attention, much less motivate the potential client to make a purchase.

That being said, it can be easy for you to stick out from your competitors by giving an amazing presentation. Here’s how:

Focus the presentation on the client, not your company. This means tailoring your presentation for each client. The most common mistakes people make is to create one generic presentation and use it for all of their potential clients. This may save on poster and brochure printing costs, but you won’t gain the clients’ business. Don’t give a “canned” speech – make your product relevant to your specific prospect.

Do a little research and find out your prospect’s main problems before the presentation and show them how you can solve each one.

Tout benefits, not features. Use your presentation time wisely – grab the potential client’s interest with benefits that your product will bring to her company. The best way to do this is to bring a prototype of the product and let the client touch it and examine it himself. Then he can ask questions and you can tell him about the features, if he asks. My bet: he won’t ask about features until you’re way past this first presentation.

Be brief. You’ll most likely be presenting to the top management tier of the company you are courting, and that means you need to value these people’s time. Make your points and move on. A good rule of thumb is to make your presentation take 60% of the time allotted for the meeting. This means if you have an hour allotted, your presentation should take no longer than 40 minutes. If you have a half-hour meeting scheduled, you shouldn’t take any longer than 18 minutes. Generally, a 20-minute presentation is a good length of time. If you go much longer than that, you might start rambling and talk your way out of a sale by talking too much. 

Get excited! The majority of sales presentations are boring. The presenters are boring, the information is boring and the PowerPoint is boring. Try not to speak in a monotone voice, and get excited about your product. When you’re excited, other people will get excited. Your client will mirror your behavior. If you act lackluster and serious, so will your client. If you get excited about your product, so will your client. Excitement is contagious!

Do something physical. You can either do a demonstration with your product, or you can even just write down facts and numbers, and draw pictures on a whiteboard. This will keep your client engaged to see what you’re writing or drawing next.

Believe in your product. This is the most important aspect of any sales presentation. If you don’t believe in your product, then there’s no way you can do a good job selling it. It will show in your body language, your word choice and the sound of your voice. And if you can’t get excited about it, what makes you think your client will?

Six Tips to Creating Fruitful Brochures

Whenever you’re ready to send out a brochure to new customers or existing customers, there are some key tactics to use to make sure you get a good response.  After paying for a copy writer, a designer, the printer, mailing costs and everything else that goes into creating a brochure, you end up spending about $1.00 per brochure.

Make sure you don’t waste your money by following these tips:

1. Get to know your customer
You need to understand your customers’ wants and needs.  You need to know what motivates them. What problems they have. And most importantly, what can your product do to help them? Do some research by simply asking customers or sending out surveys.  Knowing what your customers’ wants and needs are will shape everything about your brochure – the text and the
design.

2. Use the AIDA marketing technique to writing brochures
AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. For your brochure to be successful, it needs to get people’s attention, get your prospect interested enough to read further, elevate their desire for your product or service, and get them to take action, such as calling you, making an appointment or visiting your Web site.

3. Don’t waste space talking about yourself
Your customers don’t give a lick about your company’s history and your variety of products. All they care about is how you can help them. What benefits can you offer them for doing business with you?

4. Use eye-catching headlines and graphics on the front panel
Studies show that readers take between 5 and 7 seconds to decide whether they want to keep on reading your brochure. If your headline or graphics on the front panel of your brochure are boring or bland, no one will bother opening it.  You need something that will interest them and catch their attention. Use bright colors as accents for your headline text and use photos and graphics that will get people wondering what else is inside the brochure.

Use interesting, benefits-laden headlines all through your brochure – every panel should have a headline. Most people skim before they read smaller print, so using headlines will keep their attention and intrigue them to read on.

5. Include a call to action
Once you’ve gotten the reader interested in your product, tell them to contact you. You can’t assume that the reader will take the next step on his own – you need to tell him what the next step is.  Whether that is to call you or visit your Web site, tell them what to do, and give them the info they need to do it. (Not a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the phone or the computer of course! Just make sure you give them your phone number and Web site address.)

6. Make it urgent!
Give readers a reason to take action sooner rather than later. Generally, putting some kind of time limit on an offer is enough to get people off of their couches. Offer a free gift, or a special coupon that must be redeemed by the end of the month – just put some kind of date on your offer. If you don’t, your brochure is likely to get lost under a pile of mail or items to look at “later” (meaning probably never).

Prioritize Your Marketing Budget by Using the Marketing Pyramid

Many companies know that not all customers equal, and yet, they market to all of their customers equally.

What I mean by not all customers are equal, is that not all customers’ business potential are equal. Some customers can bring you a few dollars worth of business while others can bring you hundreds of dollars of business. Marketing to these customers in the exact same way is not an effective plan.

So what is an effective marketing plan?  The Marketing Pyramid, my friends.

What is the Marketing Pyramid?
Because all prospects are not equal, they should not all receive the same sized slice of your marketing pie. You need to spend the majority of your time and effort with the customers who are your best bets. Doing otherwise is just wasting your time and money.

The Marketing Pyramid is a tool that will help you decide how you should market to heavy, medium and light users through coupons, special offers, contests and other incentives. You build your pyramid from the ground up, spending more time and resources with the bottom tier, which is made up of your heavy, or primary prospects (A). The next tier is your medium, or secondary prospects (B). The top tier, and the smallest, in terms of time and resources spent, are your light, or tertiary prospects (C).

Determining your A, B and C Targets
You split your prospects into the three tiers based on their profit potential.

Your primaries (A) should make up 10% of your list. Your “A” prospects can include:
Current customers
Recent past customers (within the past six months)
Any hot leads from trade shows, Internet research, articles etc.
Recent referrals

Your secondaries (B) should make up 25% of your list. Your “B” prospects can include:
Somewhat recent customers – those who you’ve done business with between six months and a year ago
Somewhat recent referrals
Top targeted customers that you haven’t gotten a response from

Your tertiaries (C) should make up the rest of your list and should include:
- The rest of the targeted customers you haven’t gotten a response from
- Business cards, inquiries and other contacts
- Anybody else in your list that looks like they’d make a good potential client

Another way to categorize your targets into your pyramid is to estimate how many time you’ll close a deal with the type of prospect. A general rule to divide your list is:
A = 1 in 10 (or less) will close
B = 1 in 25 will close
C = 1 in 100 will close

Now that you know who’s in your pyramid, you can spend more time on the A’s, a little more time on the B’s and the least amount of time targeting the C’s. Generally, it’s recommended to contact the A’s 10 times per year; the B’s 4 times per year; and the C’s one time per year. If you mail out brochures or postcards, this is the number of times you should mail out your direct mail each year to balance your marketing costs with your marketing expenses.

Now you’ve got a prioritized list and you know just how much time and energy to expend on each group. Easy, right?

Creative Ways to Alter Your Marketing Message

If you’re finding yourself running into writer’s block or if you can’t come up with a new and innovative idea for your marketing materials, you might just need to tweak your thinking a bit. Below are five tips to help your right brain take over your marketing ideas and to pump out some creative ideas.

1. Change your question. If you change the question, you’re going to get a completely different answer and a different perspective on the goals of your marketing materials. If your question is “How do we to sell more products?”, you’ll craft your message in a way to sell your products focused on quantity. You might even lower your price to up the number of products out the door. However, if your question is “How do we bring in more profits?”, you might up your price or emphasize the quality of your product in your message.

2. Don’t use the first idea you think of. In the book A Whack on the Side of the Head, the author Roger von Oech says to take the time to think of a second, third or even 100th idea. When you’re trying to think of a new idea, the quality of your ideas don’t count in the brainstorming stage, it’s the quantity that’s important. The more ideas you have to pick from, the more likely you are to pick a great one.    

3. Paint a press release. What would you use to paint a press release? Sounds odd, but thinking of combining two unrelated acts can give you a creative answer you never would have thought of otherwise. What about thinking of how you could dance out your billboard design? All of this may not give you a feasible idea, but it will get your creative juices flowing.

4. Talk to your product or service. That’s right – ask your product or service how it would like to be sold. This is a more mind-bending technique that might seem a little weird at first. But it can be valuable to think of how your product would answer the following questions: What are your strengths and weaknesses? Who can you help? Why should someone pick you over your competitors? Does it look best in catalog printing or should it be sold in person?

5. If your brain isn’t working, don’t force it. If your brainstorming session isn’t working, stop. Do something else for a while. Take a walk or do some exercise. That gets the blood flowing and your brain time to sort out ideas. Your subconscious will keep thinking and you might have your answer the next day. Take a break until the next day – there’s a good reason why people say to “sleep on it” – sleeping lets your subconscious brain work out problems that your conscious brain can’t during the day.

How Do You Present Yourself?

For those in the world of graphic designs, the time will eventually come to show your work to other people. This is going to be particularly true for those who are just starting out in the industry.

If you’re going in for a job interview and you have to bring in a number of your different design projects it can be a very nerve wracking experience. Really, for any kind of job that relies upon an artistic talent of any kind it can be difficult to let other people see and judge the work that you did.

This is an almost purely subjective thing that you’re handing to them. There is no definitive right or wrong way to do something like design. Sure, you can stand by the industry standards, but maybe people are going to be looking for something different. You might give them something different only for them to say they prefer what is already being done.

Each person has their own opinion on what looks good and what doesn’t. No single brochure design is going to be universally accepted as the best way for brochures to be done, just as no postcard design will always be able to get the sale.

There are really only two things you can do to help make meetings like these go a little smoother: be prepared and have thick enough skin to take whatever is said. The latter of the two is the hardest to manage, but the first can be accomplished with relative ease.

I’ve still seen plenty of people who don’t come prepared, though. This is the one thing you can make sure is done right, and yet many fail to do so.

The most obvious thing to me is making sure that you know what type of advertisements that they want to focus on, if they have one, and only bring in samples that reflect something similar to it.

People have come in before to a company that primarily uses brochures and all they brought were sample flyers. When informed that the company preferred brochures, the person exclaimed that they had some sample brochures already made up, they just hadn’t thought to bring them in.

Had they done the needed research it wouldn’t have ever come up. Figure out what a person is looking for, and make sure you have as close to an example of it as you can.

Presentation is another key aspect of it. Take the time and money to get a great presentation folder to hand to people. The way material is presented is just as much an artistic statement as the material that’s being presented.

It shows that you’re aware of how things are going to look when first handed to people. A presentation folder will look a lot better than a packet stuffed with your material.

If you do have a proper presentation it can help increase your confidence, and better your chances of getting the job.

Basic Copywriting for Non-Copywriters

If you’re an entrepreneur who has decided it’s time to take a crack at writing your own copy for your marketing materials, this article is a great learning tool to help you write that first great marketing piece. There are certain basics that are common to every great marketing piece, from postcards to brochures to your Web site.

Here’s a quick mini-lesson you’ll want to print out and use when you sit down to write your first marketing copy.

Lesson 1: Write directly to the person that will be reading the copy
Although you are marketing to the masses, each mass is made up of individuals. Other than grade school, people don’t read in unison with each other as a group. Ads are seen by only one person at a time. The individuals that make up your target market should share many similarities, so it shouldn’t be hard to write to that individual.

Imagine you have your best prospect sitting across from you at a table. What do you need to say to get that prospect to shake your hand and make a deal to buy your product, right then and there? This is how you should approach writing your marketing material – talk directly to the prospect. The most obvious way to talk directly to someone is to address her with the word “you.” Ask “Do you have XX problem?” Talk right to them.

Lesson 2: It’s not all about you
Don’t talk about yourself and your company in your advertising copy. Take out all of the “we” and “our” instances in your first draft and rewrite those sentences with “you” and “your.” For instance, the sentence “We can deliver our product in 24 hours” is more effective when rewritten to “You’ll receive your new product in 24 hours.” Using “you” and variations of the word is known as “outer-directed” language. You are indulging people in what they like to do best: watch out for themselves and try to get the best deal.

Lesson 3: Talk about benefits, rather than features
This is somewhat of an extension of Lesson 2. People pay attention to messages that tell them something they want to hear. They want to hear how a product or service can solve a problem for them or make their lives easier somehow. And with so many ads directed at people through all kinds of media – newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, the Internet – you need to grab people’s attention immediately before they move on to the next thing.

The best way to grab attention is to tout a benefit right off the bat – at the top of your flyer, on the front of your brochure, at the beginning of your TV commercial, etc. Use benefit-ridden headlines in all of your print materials and make those headlines bigger and a brighter color than the body copy (that’s the smaller copy).

Lesson 4: Keep it short
Good copywriters don’t use a longer word when a shorter one will do. And oftentimes, the shorter word is the more common word in a language so you lessen the risk of alienating anyone who might not know what a longer word means.

Get straight to the point and use words that evoke mental images or sounds. You won’t have more than 20 seconds on average for your marketing materials to be deemed worthy of further reading so you need to get as much info (meaning benefits) as you can in that short of space and time.

Lesson 5: Ask a question or give a command
Many marketing pieces open with a question to get people thinking. Questions intrigue people and get them engaged with your message. Including a command, like “Call now” persuades people to take action when they otherwise wouldn’t. Commanding people to do what you want them to in marketing copy is known as a “call to action.” You tell them what they should do next and make it as easy as possible for the reader to take that action.

6 Keys to Success for the Budding Salesperson

Many times, people are hired as salespeople, are given a manual to study, but are sent out to sell before they even have time to open the manual. Here’s a quick beginner’s course, or refresher course to those new to the sales arena.

1. If you want to succeed, you must believe in the product you’re selling. You might be the greatest actor in the world, but if you don’t believe in the product, it’ll still show through in your presentation. You might make little slips of language that tell people what you really think of the product, or when you’re using brochures to explain something, your tone of voice or body language might be saying something different, otherwise known as a Freudian slip. Freudian slips aren’t only slips in language, but can be physical too, like your body language.

2. Know your product from the inside-out. You need to know the benefits of your product, and who exactly the benefits are for. This means you need to adapt to whoever you are trying to sell to – the benefits of a cell phone to a senior citizen differs greatly from the benefits to a teenager. If you know all about your product’s benefits, you can change your pitch in an instant because it’s all right there in your head.

3. Remember who you are representing. You aren’t just representing the integrity of yourself, but also the company you work for. Whatever you do reflects back on the company. You do have some social responsibility in sales. Don’t say or do anything in front of a prospect that you wouldn’t do in front of your boss.

4. Don’t feel like you need your customers more than they need you. That kind of thinking creates an imbalance from the get-go. You’ll always be on the defensive, even when the prospect hasn’t said anything offensive. This mindset will affect how you present yourself and the product. Think in terms of you doing the consumer a favor – you’re clueing them in to this great product with all of these benefits that this person is now missing out on. Consumers need people like you to tell them how to make their lives easier – by buying your product.

5. Create an air of confidence by practicing your sales pitch. If you aren’t confident in your sales pitch, do something about it! The best thing you can do if you aren’t comfortable with yourself is to practice your presentation in front of a mirror. If you aren’t confident for another reason, like lack of knowledge about the product or industry, get out that manual you were given on your first day. Look at your company’s Web site. Google your product and industry. There’s an old saying that “knowledge equals power.” Well, knowledge also equals confidence!

6. Above all, make sure you listen. You need to converse with prospects, not just talk at them. By listening to what the other person is saying, you can head off any questions or doubts early on. If you just wait to talk, on the other hand, you won’t get anywhere, fast.

Know Your Strengths

“Well, if they’re big and you’re small, then you’re mobile and they’re slow,” Gene Hackman’s character says to Will Smith in the movie Enemy of the State. While in the context of the movie he’s talking about fighting in a war against a branch of the government, this same advice can apply just as easily to a business.

Sometimes a business can have its hands tied by its own success. I know all those huge businesses try to talk about how they’re really a family owned company that you can feel close to. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I have a little trouble taking that advice to heart when I know for a fact I’ll never actually see any of those family members who own the company. They’re off in a boardroom talking about the future of the company, not on the sales floor restocking the shelves.

But if I walk into a local comic book store, video rental store, even grocery store, I very well might see the owner on his knees putting products onto the shelves. No major company can match a feeling of connection something like that can achieve.

Ask yourself about this in relation to marketing. Okay, brochures. Using this form of marketing as an example I’ll go over some of the ways you can actually benefit from not being a big corporation.

Sure, you aren’t going to have the same kind of budget for your brochures. A major corporation can pump out far more color brochures in a matter of seconds than you could probably make in the span of a week, but that isn’t always the most important thing. A brochure is only worthwhile if it actually gets people interested in the company.

You have the ability to make a custom brochure unlike anything those huge companies can match. If you own a small business you’re closer to the people. You know what they want, and really you don’t have to advertise to as many different groups as they do.

Wal-Mart isn’t just in one state or one city. They have to appease the mid-west as well as the northeast, and these are not similar people we’re talking about. This isn’t even taking into account all those other countries Wal-Mart deals with. You’re able to personally know and talk to the people you’re marketing to. You can know exactly what you need to do to appeal to them.

And really, creating a strong brochure design is a lot easier these days than it used to be for the small business owner. Do you have Adobe Photo Shop on your computer? That’s all you need to get started on some great looking brochures.

Just remember that what can appear like a weakness can really be an asset if you know how to properly wield it. You have a mobility the big business will never be able to match. Use it to your advantage.

Maximizing Your Brochure Effectiveness

Think Like a Customer
If you were a customer, what kind of brochure would make you take notice? Keep that in mind when you are designing brochures for your business. If you try to think like a customer, you might just find new ways to market yourself.

Use Enticing Information
The front of the brochure is where you need to convince the reader that he needs to look inside. Don’t be afraid to use some non business stuff there. For instance, you can say something like, “Coldplay’s new record just broke the record for downloads,” to try to interest the reader. Of course, you have to be able to tie that in to your company in some way, or else the customer will see right through your ploy.

Keep it Organized
Keep your brochures nice and neat. Don’t let them get too cluttered or text heavy. And if your brochures are quite long, you might want to include a table of contents to help readers find what interests them.

Information is Key
Don’t forget to include information about your company or product, or both. Your brochure cannot be completely full of enticing information without including something of substance. If it is, it will not generate any profit for you.

Throw in Something Valuable
Try to include something that will make the reader consider keeping the brochure. This can be information that does not deal directly with your company, but relates to it indirectly. The point is just to provide something that is valuable outside of the marketing aspect.

Think Outside the Box
You do not necessarily have to print a conventional brochure. Be willing to use some unique techniques to really get the customer’s attention. Change the shape of your brochures, or use a bold color (only if your business is not serious in nature). You could use humor extensively on your brochures, or anything else that will make them stand out from the thousands of others out there.

Use Story Techniques
Try to put the reader of your brochures in a relaxed mood. Try to take them away into a different world, of sorts. Use storytelling techniques to change the customer’s frame of mind as they read your brochures.

Focus on the Needs
The bottom line of any sales pitch is that you need to tell the customer what you can do for him. As early as you can in your brochures, tell the readers how you can solve a problem that they have, or fill a need that they suffer from.

The Call to Action
This is a vital part of any advertisement. You need to tell the customer exactly how to act, and why he needs to do so in a hurry.

The Different Types of Brochures

Not every brochure is the same. There are several different types of brochures, each of which has a different purpose in life. To be specific, there are 5 types of brochure. You should become familiar with each so you can produce the right kind for your company.

Here is a rundown of each type to help you plan your next brochure project.

1. Support Brochures
If you give presentations as part of your sales approach, you may want to print some support brochures. These brochures are designed to help you get your message across. You should design these brochures to coincide with your presentation, so that the participants can follow along as you speak to them. This can be a tremendously effective technique, because if reinforces the things that you are telling them.

2. Direct Mailing Brochures
This is a very different type of brochure that you send directly to a prospective customer. Obviously, this type of brochure will not be meant to accompany a sales presentation. Instead, you will design this brochure to introduce your company to a customer, and tell him why your company is the best at what you do. You need to tell them a little about your product, and how much care and detail you put into creating it.

3. Response Brochures
When someone shows interest in your product or service, you should have some information to give to him. That is where this type of brochure comes in. Design a brochure that drives home the best features of your company, like why you are better than any other similar type of business. You will be giving this brochure to someone who is already interested in you, so design it to close the sale.

4. Check out Brochures
Putting brochures next to the check out area of your store is a good way to bring customers back for repeat business. Make sure you put a really enticing headline on these brochures, because it will take a little extra to make these customers (who have already bought something) look more closely at your information.

5. Drop Off Brochures
There will be times when you are around a lot of potential customers, but you can’t speak to them. That is a good time to have some drop off brochures at your disposal. These are different from response brochures, because they are not necessarily for people who have shown interest. They are simply there to pass out to a mass of people that you cannot communicate with directly at the time. These brochures should be designed as sales tools; you need them to persuade people that they need the product or service that you provide. Of all the types of brochures, these are probably the least effective, because you are usually giving them to people who know little about you and may have no interest in your services.

Design Basics: Posters

Above all else, the goal of the poster is quite simple: you want people to look at it longer than they will any of your print ads. Sure, this goes for almost any kind of advertisement, but your poster is going to embrace this mentality like no other form of advertisement will for the simple fact that, unlike all your other print ads, posters are way bigger.

Remember this also: people don’t take posters home with them, they don’t stuff them in their pocket, and they don’t look at them from the comfort of their home. A poster is only going to be seen at the location you put it and it needs to convey its entire message as fast as it can, because people won’t be looking at that poster for very long.

The question I ask now and I’m sure a lot of people are thinking is how do you get the most out of your posters then? Even more than that, why even bother to use them if they have such a limited scope of effectiveness?

The charm of large format posters is that they can grab someone like no other kind of advertisement can. Every other form of advertising simply takes more time or can’t stack up when it comes to the quality of the image.

Take for example a postcard or flyer. Now, like a poster, both are going to grab someone’s eye right away and both don’t have room to really say too much. But both are going to be on lower quality paper and both aren’t going to be able to support the kind of visual flare a color poster can achieve.

Think about photo poster printing. A poster can support a high quality picture unlike anything a flyer would lay claim to. This is what will really make someone look over at your poster. It’s always the picture that grabs my eye first, and your poster stands as the best style of advertising to get that high quality image out there.

Given that you know people aren’t going to tear your poster down and take it home with them, or you hope they won’t, you need to make sure you can tell them what you have to say as quickly as possible.

Get to the point and only focus on the point. Is it a sale? Tell them that and be done with it. Maybe you have a grand opening or new product release. This is the key point of your poster and all you should have to worry about mentioning.

The more your poster has to say the less likely it is people will care enough to read it all. I’ve seen all sorts of posters that only have six or seven words on them total. I can tell you this, I read everything those posters had to say. The more complicated your poster starts to get the less likely it is people will bother reading any of it.

I’ve designed many posters myself using all sorts of different designing programs. With a program like CorelDRAW you can pump out some truly marvelous looking posters from the comfort of your own home.

Design Basics: Flyers

Compared to other forms of advertising, designing flyers should be a breeze, right? After all, the flyer is one of the most basic forms of advertising there is. You have a single sheet of paper to worry about and nothing else.

I won’t try to claim that a flyer is as complicated as a brochure to design, but there are some important details to be aware of before you go off and start designing them yourself.

These days I see a lot of flyers I just know people are making at home using something like QuarkXpress. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, but I think you’ll be better served knowing more about flyer design before you go off and start making your own.

The first and most important thing about a flyer is the primary message you’re trying to convey. If your goal is to make some nightclub flyers than you want to decide what it is about the nightclub that you think will be your best selling point.

Let’s say you have a certain night that has great drink specials. This is the main point you want people to be aware of, which means this should be the biggest thing on your flyer. You want to grab people’s attention right away before they can throw that flyer on the ground, and we all know that’s what most people are going to do.

I see a lot of flyers that seem to have no particular point it emphasizes. Nothing is bigger than the rest, and so nothing really jumps out at me. Those are the flyers I drop in the first trash can I happen to pass.

A flyer needs to jump out and grab a person’s eyes. It needs to make sure they don’t look at anything else until they’re done looking at your flyer. Whether your flyer is for a nightclub or your plan on making some business flyers, you have to make sure your selling point is prominent.

Along with a strong message you need to have some strong visuals. A person is likely to see the image before they see the message, so give them something they’ll stop to look at. You could go for the extreme out of the ordinary kinds of images or the more colorful, flashy look. What you plan on selling will be what will decide the best kind of image to pair up with your message. Only you can know what that is.

And of course, make sure you have plenty of flyers made up. The cost to print flyers is cheap compared to almost any other form of advertising. Take advantage of it to get as many flyers as you can. The more people you hand them to the more opportunities you’ll have to find those people who will take your message to heart.

If you want to design your own flyer, by all means, go right ahead, just be aware of what all goes into them rather than waste your time on something people like me will just dump in the trash.

Design Basics: Business Cards

In looking for something to represent your business, it’s only expected that you want it to look its best. Print advertisements, big or small, represent your company and should not be ignored. Yes, even if it comes in the smallest dimensions like your business card.

Not only is a business card going to be what people use to remember who you are, but quite often you’re actually there when you hand it to them. You’ll see that person look right down at your card and you’ll have to deal with whatever their reaction will be.

Here are some of the basic tenants of any high quality business card. I don’t plan to get into anything too fancy, and really, you can design your own business card with ease if you know all of the basics for what makes a card effective.

The first thing to look for is the information you plan on putting on your card. Ask yourself what you want people to know about you. Obviously your name should be on it, but what kind of contact info? Do you want a phone number, an email address, a fax number, maybe a building number? Maybe you have an office phone, a cell phone, and a home phone that you might consider using, or multiple email addresses that would all work.

Wouldn’t that be a little too much information? Probably. A good business card needs to be concise enough that people can just glance at it and get all of the information they need. The more complicated you make your cards, the less likely it will be that people will bother wanting to sort through the mess of information.

Figure out only the best pieces of information and that’s what you’re going to stick with.

Now, let’s talk about the design. If you have a company logo you definitely want to make sure that’s on your card. Any good logo shouldn’t be overly complicated or too colorful. Where you place the logo is up to you, but I’d say it would probably be best to keep it close to your name. A colorful logo will be the first thing someone looks at, which means your name will be the second if the logo is close enough to it.

When it comes to something like font type I would try to primarily stick to a single style. You could probably get away with two fonts, such as having your company name in a different font, but any more than that will make the card look messy.

Also remember that white space isn’t always a bad thing. Don’t try to fill your card up with too much info or too many pictures. Sometimes I like to be able to write something down on the back of my business cards. Why rob people of the ability?

All of these things can be handled and designed in something as simple as Adobe Photoshop. You don’t have to be an expert in design to make your print business cards look professional.

Design Basics: Brochures

Brochures aren’t always for the faint of heart or for those who don’t have enough time to adequately design something that will work.

Brochures also aren’t the cheapest form of marketing. You can get plenty of great advertising for your buck if you do them right, but you still have a larger initial investment when compared to other kinds of marketing.

But one thing you can do to help ease the financial burden is be aware of what goes into designing an effective brochure. If you have the right kind of software like In Design, you might even be able to start designing brochures yourself.

The first thing to look at is the brochure layout. How many pages do you plan on having and how do you plan on having your brochure folded? There are all sorts of different methods for folding brochures, and each carry a certain advantage. I won’t list every kind of folding method here given how many there are.

Once you do know what kind of folding method you plan on using decide the right progression for your information. A brochure should have a strong linear feel to it. Make sure yours flows along a single line of thought from beginning to end. You can have several points that you’re making, just don’t jump around from topic to topic. People will get confused before they bother to finish reading your brochure.

After the writing is decided on, pick up some good visuals to go along with it. A color brochure will always be more appealing than a plain black and white one. Think about the brochures you’ve seen, and I’m guessing most had a strong visual appeal. They had bright pictures and images on the cover to get people interested in reading what else the brochure had to say.

The brochure design will be a combination of the writing and the images. Some topics are simply going to have more that you need to say about them whereas others will center on the images. Most travel brochures are loaded with pictures because this is the most important selling point for them: letting people see where they’ll be going.

Think about the reason you’re writing your brochure and you should know exactly how much writing you’ll need and how many pictures will best compliment it.

Designing a brochure can be a rather daunting task, especially if you’ve never done one before. Make sure you take things one at a time. Do your writing first, pick out the style of folding you want next, and then decide on the number of images that will work best.

So long as you don’t let all of it bog you down, you can write brochures that are more than worth the money it took to make them.

Uncovering Trade Show Secrets

Trade shows can be both fun and lucrative. They present a great forum for generating sales along with networking with the industry. Smart business owners realize that this second component is almost as important as the first. Say you owned a brochure printing business. Networking with peers allows all to compare underlying costs, regulations and other common interests.

There are some simple rules when selling at a trade show. Unfortunately, many reps don’t follow them. The first is to understand where you are. Most usually it is a warm beach town during winter. The prospect in front of you at your booth has other things on their mind. Keep the presentation focused and efficient or your prospect will quickly become annoyed.

Do not engage in tricky pricing. Keep it simple. Give one clear price without making the prospect do mental gymnastics while calculating discounts and rebates. Extend this thought to the rest of your presentation. As indicated, many have other things on their mind like getting out to the beach or golf course. The quickest path there will be taken. If your process is twice as long as a competitor who’s booth is across from you, then you will see your traffic head their way.

The trade show doesn’t end when the booth is packed up. Follow up is critical after the show to pursue closing all the leads generated. Follow these simple rules for trade show sales success.