Now this is the true $100,000 question isn’t it? The truth is, there is no real easy way to track the ROI of print advertising for your online business. There are a number of techniques you can do to help give you a better picture of the success of print marketing, but it is still really nothing more than a guess. Below I will outline a few various ways you can use printed materials to help drive traffic to your company website:
1. Turn Your Business Card Into a Coupon
If you are like many small business owners, you give out or leave your business card with almost every person you come in contact with. While the traditional business card is a business staple, many people underestimate its value as a marketing tool. Yes, having your contact information on it is important, but is that really enough to get people to visit your website? Why not turn your business card into a coupon? Adding a simple line that says, “redeem this card for a free social media strategy consultation” is a lot more likely to get people to contact you.
2. Create a Synergy Between Your Print and Online Image
Many designers already know that keeping a cohesive look between ads, website, and marketing materials is important. But, you would be pretty surprised ( or maybe you wont!) at how many small business owners aren’t aware of just how important this is. Using your logo on all your materials is not enough to create a cohesive look. You need to make sure things like colors, fonts, photos, logos, all match up. You don’t want someone thinking they went to the wrong website because it looks nothing like the flyer they have do you?
3. Create a Custom Landing Page for Printed Materials
First, let me say that this is not the same thing as creating a custom URL to try to track ROI from printed materials. Adding a www.mysite.com/nytimes url to your ad the auto redirects to your homepage is a fools attempt to track conversions. The majority of people out there, even the dumbest ones, are smart enough to know they don’t need to type that into the browser. What you need to do is create a landing page that is specific to your printed material and that persuades them to visit that url directly. For example, say your are a wedding photographer, you could create a custom landing page with a contest for seniors to get a free 8×10 print. In this instance, people are a lot more likely to visit the contest url before the root url, thus helping you track your ROI from printed materials.
4. The Power of Curiosity
Many small business owners are afraid of this tactic, but many could greatly profit from it. That said, this idea won’ work for everyone. The idea here is to say as little about your business as possible. For example, if you were a designer, try only printing your website url on the card. Obviously you can’t really track this method, but it is still worth while. Many people will be intrigued at what you do and want to see what you are all about. On a side not though, you need to have a somewhat descriptive url for this to work well.
5. Drive Traffic from Your Website to Your Printed Material
Say what?!? How does this work you are probably asking yourself. This is another tactic that requires a little more work, but one that could work very well for the right business and industry. The idea here is to make your customers have to do some work to be able some sort of discount or special from you. One idea here is to blog about a special on your website. Then tell your readers in order to get it, they must find your “secret flyer” at local downtown retailer. If launched correctly, this could lead to a nice little viral marketing campaign.
Advertising is the core of any business’ success, no business can grow and make revenue when their name is not known to any and this is why embarking on advertising and marketing program is an essential step to be made, however in most cases, limits in budget can make it tricky to create an effective yet cost-efficient program.
One marketing tool that is effective as well as not prohibitive on your budget is printed materials that you can give away to the masses and make yourself known to them. Full color printing has become a very affordable and attractive alternative for smaller business, even large business still relies on them. Here are three things that you can employ that serves as a great advertising tools for your business.
Business card without doubt, is the most basic necessity for all business. This is one printed things that business should have, regardless what kind of business or services they are offering to their customers. Business cards are real messenger for any business in front of their potential customers, it is the front piece of information for any business, company or enterprise and therefore it is the first thing that your most potential customer will seek to find you. While it is not entirely accurate if we say that business cards are only prime mode of contacting a company for their products and services. In fact, business cards are true representative of every business. They reflect the quality of organization as well as the products and services being offered by them. A well designed and attractively finished business card can draw attention of people and convince them silently in favour of your products or service. You can find more information on how to get the best of business cards here.
Printing postcards is another way to reach your consumers, it is a relatively effective yet enormously much cheaper compared to campaigns using other media such as TV or radio. Postcard prints are useful because it can be kept by consumers for future use and as their name implies, it is meant to be sent to other parties. Thus helping you to promote and spread your business further. Therefore it is just imperative that you should print attractive postcards. Find more tips on how to ultilize postcards for your business campaign here
Flyers are one of the granddaddies of advertising tools, flyers has been used as an effective material to advertise products since the Roman Empire exists, even ancient Egyptians did use promotional papyrus complete with well written slogans that would probably be one of the first flyer every made.
There is one very obvious advantage when you advertise products using flyers; they are cheap, they are easy to make and they are easy to distribute. However that being said, flyers should be well designed, attractive yet containing meaningful information that are easy to be understood. Business flyers are used by many business, so you would want to make sure you go an extra length so that your flyers doesn’t ended up in a pile of trash among thousands other flyers made by other business. Although response rates are often very low leaflets are not expensive and can be an extremely good way of targeting your target market through placing information about your company directly into their hands.
The most common place for you to receive Christmas cards is in the work place. Not only do you receive cards from the people you work with but also from the company itself or from your bosses. Sometimes you even receive a card from the president of the company.
Companies like to give out Christmas cards not only to their employees but also to their clients since this is the most cost-efficient way to show them that each person is important to the company. The cards the companies send out are not just ordinary cards since they usually make sure that the person receiving it knows exactly who it is from.
There are company Christmas cards that are more formal and include the Christmas tree or a symbol, drawing, or some picture in front and write a general greeting to everyone. There are others that dress up or design the company’s logo and use that on the front of each card. Others include the company’s name in the greeting itself instead of just writing the company as the sender. An example of this would be “Have a Merry (name of the company) Christmas!” or “May You Have a Happy (name of company) Holiday!”
Bigger companies usually do not put just one person to be in charge of the cards for the year. A committee works on them and of course, more people working on it, means more ideas to make the card a special and unique one. The more creative the group working on it and the more resources available to them, the more interesting or entertaining the company Christmas cards are.
Some companies have the officers of the company dress up in costume or with a Christmas set which is used as a greeting on the front of the card. There are those that come up with two different designs, one for the employees and another one for the customers. There are even those that have a group of employees sing a Christmas tune which is recorded and included in the card to make it a singing card. Others have the mascot or icon of the company as the main character on the card. There are some company logos that do not have a character or mascot identified with them. What these companies do is they take the most famous product they have and turn that into a mascot just for the Christmas cards.
There are all sorts of ways to customise the company Christmas cards, which is also usually easier since there are more resources and funds available for doing so. The options are limitless which allows the company to send out cards with a number of possibilities. They may be three dimensional with a pop up feature, a singing card, a more funny and entertaining one, or something more elegant. These personalised greetings are a good way to spread the love and wishes around to those the company values and at the same time advertise the company itself.
How To Create A Promotional Flyer That Actually Attracts Customers
Aah, the old promotional flyer…
It’s usually the first marketing tactic businesses use when they start marketing. “Let’s make some flyers and hand them out” they say. Yep, sounds fair enough. And guess what usually happens – they hand them out, put them in letterboxes and nothing happens.
“Promotional flyers don’t work!” is what they start shouting from the rooftops. Then they turn on the marketing profession. “Marketing doesn’t work…..I put some flyers together and I got no response”. Boy I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said that!
When I look at the flyers, they are usually enough to send an insomniac to sleep. No pizzazz, no spunk and worst of all – they don’t follow the four basic marketing rules that will make them work.
So to save my profession from being ridiculed by the humble, promotional flyer – here are four things you must include to create a promotional flyer that actually attracts customers.
1. An attention grabbing headline and images.
Just like any advertising, you need to grab your customers attention. And you won’t grab them with a headline “Mobile Dry Cleaning Service” or “XYZ Gardening Services” with a dodgy clip art image. The headline is critical to your success. Grab their attention and people will read on – if you don’t, the flyer will head for the bin.
2. Tell customers how you will solve their problems.
Most flyers (that don’t work) use snooze worthy words like:
“At XYZ Gardening services, we offer a reliable gardening service that includes; lawn mowing, rubbish removal…” Yadda yadda yadda, yeah yeah whatever, you and every other gardening service – take a number…
Tap into the reasons why people use a gardening service in the first place. It might be a time problem, a physical problem or they just hate gardening. Make life easy for your customers and tell them how you will fix their problems.
If you are struggling to find the right words, get a copywriter to help you. The investment will be well worth it.
3. Make a compelling offer
Ok, I just need to say this straight up. Providing free quotes is NOT a compelling offer. An offer is a benefit the customer can only get from you if they call your number NOW. It needs to be compelling, valuable and time sensitive. And please, don’t make it a discount – offer something that adds value.
4. Have a call to action
Your promotional flyer must have a call to action. What do you want people to do after receiving the flyer? Do you want them to call you? Visit your website? Make an appointment? You need to spell it out so the customer knows what to do next. And most of all, you need to tell them how to redeem your offer.
Promotional flyers can be a very effective marketing tactic from any business. Just make sure you include these four items to make yours a success and save my profession from damnation!
