What To Consider When Designing From Web to Print

For Web-only designers, you know what platform you’re going to be working on. You know that no matter what you do, it’s going to be on the Web. In the print world, you need to first decide what kind of print material you’re going to design. Does the company need a direct mail postcard, brochure, poster or flyer?

Selecting Your Printing Pleasure
One thing you have to consider with print design is portability. What will make people pick up this piece of paper and take it with them? Print does encompass including URLs, but you need to gauge where exactly the best place to put the URL is on the printed piece. And with no search engine or reviews to guide people to pick up a brochure, your design is that much more important. It has to follow the same design idea of the Web to grab someone’s attention in precious few seconds (the most time you get to capture attention is 5 seconds according to research).

You also need to consider what you want the printed piece to accomplish. What is your goal, or objective, for the direct mail postcard? To drum up new business, to announce a sale or to direct people to your Web site? All of these objectives lend themselves to different types of design and could be achieved by multiple paper sources, like flyers, postcards or sales letters.

Your Natural Competition
Once you choose what type of printed material would work best for your objective, you have to think about where people will be viewing your printed material. If you’re sending a postcard to people’s homes, there’s not much to think about there. But an item like a poster outside your building has natural competition, such as weather ruining your print job or trees blocking the view of your billboard. 

Depending on if it’s the rainy season or if your item will be in direct sunlight will influence your choice in paper and ink selection. UV- and water-resistant paper and ink will help weatherproof your work and will keep it fresher longer, but it might also change the way your colors look. That, in turn, could affect your design. Another factor is finish: a high gloss finish will stand up to weather conditions better than matte, so you’ll need to design accordingly.

You’ll also need to drive by the location your printed item will be hung – are there tree limbs in the way? If you’ll be hanging it on a red brick building, you won’t want to use rust red as a background color for your poster. Also, look at the location at night to figure out how street light will affect your printed material at night.

Another biggie is that in print design you have to catch people’s attention from everything surrounding your item; on the Web, people search you out and you convince them to stay. Be sure you use colors and an eye-popping design that stands out from surrounding elements.

As long as you take into account what will get a human’s attention, rather than a search engine crawler’s attention, you’ll have success going from Web design to print.

Marketing Photo Know-How

Marketing materials look better with photos. Period. “A photo is worth a thousand words.” From the beginning of the first printed photograph in the 1820s, people have known the value of a good photo. But with megapixels, color and photo effect jargon floating around everywhere on the Internet and in photo studios, how do you know when you have a good photo? It all depends on the lighting, the megapixels and the photographer.

When you create a brochure or flyer that has an intriguing message and a blurry photo, people are only going to remember that blurry photo. “What was in that photo? Was it supposed to be like that?” A photo can make or break your marketing materials. And the most important factor of the blurry photo is the number of pixels. 

Pixels – The Building Blocks of Photos

To have a clear photo, you need to take the picture with a digital camera that has a decent amount of pixels. A decent amount means at least 2MP (more about MP in a minute). Anymore, it’s hard to find a low-end digital camera with 2MP – most start at 3MP or more. This is good news for you that digital cameras are getting more affordable.  

What is a Pixel?

A pixel is a dot of information, a dot of color, in your photo. Photos today are made up of millions of these dots, or pixels. Mega means “million” so whenever you talk in megapixels (MP) you mean X million pixels. So, a 2MP camera will provide 2 million pixels when a photo is printed from that camera. That may sound like a lot, but really 2 million pixels will only get you as far as a clear 4×6 photo.

If you are printing a poster and need to take a photo, you’ll want to take the photo with a camera that can produce a print size of 12×16 or maybe even 18×24. The bigger the MP of the camera, the more expensive it is. A 12×16 print, to be printed clearly, needs to be taken with a 10MP camera.  An 18×24 print, to be printed clearly, needs to be taken with a 14MP camera.

Now, with a 10MP camera, you can make photo sizes up to 12×16 clearly. Anything smaller will come out equally as clear.  

Camera Quality

Most amateur digital cameras on the market today, the ones you can get at Target or Best Buy, range from 5MP to 8MP. The largest clear photo you can print with a 5MP camera is 8×12. With an 8MP camera you can get up to 11×14. This is good enough for most people and most small businesses as well.

If you print photos larger than the maximum sizes given here, you’ll end up with a blurry, pixilated photo. So check out the MP size of camera before you buy, keeping in mind what you’ll use the photos for. If your photos will just be for regular-size flyers, brochures and postcards, you can get a great 5MP digital camera for an affordable price, between $100 and $300.

How to Integrate Print Marketing with Online Marketing

It’s no secret that many marketing venues are online that were once exclusively offline.  Everything from television to brochures are online now. But does that mean that print marketing is dead? Hardly. It might not be as big as it once was because people now have multiple outlets, but that just means print marketing has to share the spotlight with its online counterparts.

People typically do their initial research about products online by checking out forums, review sites and the product manufacturer’s Web site. Some people do all their research online, but many still request brochures, catalogs and other printed materials from the manufacturer. People like to be able to relax on the couch without a hot laptop on their lap and just look through a catalog. The glare from looking at a computer screen all day is not appealing.

All of this means that you must integrate your print marketing strategy with your online marketing strategy.

Here are a few ideas on how to do that:

Use your print marketing to direct people to your online marketing. If you use postcards to draw people’s attention to your product and then direct them to your Web site for more information, you’ve just drawn people in with the information that would have been on a brochure for the price of a postcard. Since Web site hosting is cheap, you can put as much info on your site as you want and not have to worry about paying for an extra four pages of content like you would a brochure.

You can also cut back on catalog printing costs. Send out a 40-page catalog with your best products instead of your usual 56-page catalog and direct people to your Web site for more catalog selections. You save money on printing and people can still see all of your products on your Web site. You can focus your catalog on your best moneymakers and feature the not-so-popular items on your Web site only.

Create an e-newsletter. Include info that your customers crave, like how to save money on products in your industry and info on the best products on the market. If you already have a print newsletter, include a link in the newsletter for consumers to sign up on your Web site to receive the e-newsletter. You can build your email database this way and also keep in touch with consumers in the way that they prefer. Older consumers prefer to get their news in print while younger consumers would rather get their news online.

Include an interactive copy of your brochure or catalog online. Make it searchable so people can browse to exactly what they want online. Many people will note what they want from your print catalog and then get on your Web site to make their purchases. Make it easy for them by including a search box for the online catalog and making it easy for people to find what they’re looking for.

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!

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.

Marketing Through Information

I’ve always been involved with various short story magazines. Who knows how many monthly newsletters I get, or other information on how they’re doing. Knowing how well they’re issues sell or what they’re planning to do next is such a simple thing. I know they aren’t spending much money printing all of those newsletters and business brochures given how small most of these companies are.

I’m not sure how many times I’ve looked at a magazine only to forget it a few weeks later. I might’ve even enjoyed the issue, but if I take in too many things at once, remembering isn’t always the easiest thing. But one thing I know: when I get those newsletters, I know exactly what magazine I’m dealing with. If I’m close to a place, I like to know how they’re doing and if I’m looking at so many different companies it isn’t easy to remember who they all are. Given the affordable nature of it, it just doesn’t seem to make much sense for a company not to take advantage of keeping their customers up to date. I’m always going to remember the magazine that took the time to write up a nice looking newsletter than the one who doesn’t seem to care either way about the business I bring them. I can only hope more companies come to realize how much this works. It would be nice to feel a little more appreciated.

Entry by Philip Roberts