What To Know About Catalog Printing Before You Place Your Order

Catalog printing can be an essential part of doing business, particularly if your small business has multiple products.  However, failure to take the right amount of time and use the right design elements during catalog printing can cause you to lose business.  Here are some things that you should know before you head to the presses.

Always go full color

While black and white printing is significantly cheaper in some cases, for catalog printing, you should always go with a four-color layout.  Remember that you are trying to capture the audience’s interest, and black and white photos are boring.

Make sure that your layouts and images are saved in the appropriate format so that your catalog printing turns out how you had pictured.

Write great copy

Images are only part of catalog printing, as you also have to include your product descriptions.  Descriptions should be well-written and snappy.  If you have never done catalog printing before, you should consider hiring a professional copywriter to assist you.

Always work with professionals

It can be tempting to try and save money by doing your catalog printing out of your own office, but unless you are a printing company, the results are going to be far inferior compared to what you can receive from a professional printing company.

If you are looking for ways to cut costs, talk to your printer about cost effective paper, ink, and binding methods that will save you money.  If you visit your printer in person, you will be able to see and touch samples of catalog printing to decide which is best for you.

Use an interesting design

Catalog printing is about more than simply creating a list of products that are available.  Catalogs need to whet the interest of the customer and inspire them to open their wallets.  Take a look at catalogs from other companies to see what they do to make their products interesting and fun.

Make your logo visible

An important part of catalog printing is branding your company, so like any other printed product, your catalog should always include your company’s logo in a visible way.

Get creative with the covers

Some companies will make the mistake of thinking that every catalog printing they do should have a very similar cover to help with branding.  However, this can backfire; if the customers think that they have already received a copy of the catalog, they will be less likely to read the new one.  While you should always make sure that certain elements, like your logo, remain the same, the cover art should vary significantly so that the new catalog printing is easily recognized as being new.

Keep the background simple

Lastly, make sure that your products stand out on the page.  Do not go with overly designed backdrops for your images or busy prints for the background of your text.  Keep the overall layouts of your catalog printing clean and simple so that your products are well-highlighted to the reader.

By following these simple tips, you can make sure that your next catalog printing will be an absolute success with your readers.

Poster Printing Design Tips For In-Store Displays

When many people think of poster printing, they picture outdoor displays.  Posters are often plastered all over town to advertise a big event like a sale or a concert.  However, if you are looking for an inexpensive way to create in-store signage, poster printing may be just the answer you seek.

Since posters are bright, eye-catching, and inexpensive to print, they make an ideal format to advertise sales, discuss terms, and share information with your customers.  Their lightweight format also makes them perfect for indoor/outdoor displays and traveling displays for meetings and tradeshows.

If you are thinking of using poster printing for your displays, here are a few things to consider.

Focus on the image

Poster printing is a visual medium, and therefore, the images that you select should be of the highest importance.  Look for images that get your message across, are bright and eye-catching, and are of a high enough resolution that your printer can blow them up to a larger scale.

For large-scale printing, your printer may request a digital format that allows for ease of enlarging.  If you do not have the technology to get sharp, clear, high-resolution prints, you may want to consider hiring a photographer to take the images needed for your posters.

Keep it simple

In most cases, posters aren’t designed to convey huge amounts of information.  Rather, they are designed to capture the attention of the audience and get a key point across.  This means using short, to-the-point headlines, bright images, and direct text.  While there are a few exceptions, most poster printing should be designed to be read from a distance – whether across a salesroom floor, a parking lot, or a tradeshow arena.

Include a call to action

Poster printing is an effective medium because it tells the reader directly what they should do.  It doesn’t matter if your message is “buy now” or “call today” – whatever it is, it should be listed and listed clearly.  Don’t forget to include something that identifies your company, or list contact information if appropriate.

Choose colors that stand out

While all printing projects need to be done with colors that look great together, poster printing should be designed to be read at a glance – which means choosing colors that stand out together.  Black on yellow or white on dark colors can be read from a distance and lend themselves well to poster printing.  Of course, by the same token, you need to choose font styles and sizes that are easy to read as well.

How will they be displayed?

Another aspect of poster printing that you will want to discuss with your printer is how you will be displaying your posters once they are printed.  Do you need a stand to use, are they going to be hung, or will they go into frames?  The ultimate display destination will have an impact on the materials used during the printing process and should have a consideration during the design process.

Your printer can help you come up with the poster format that works best for your venue.

How Sticker Printing Gets Customers Stuck On Your Business

The love of stickers is ingrained in us from a very young age.  How often can you remember receiving a sticker as a child for visiting the doctor’s office, scoring high on a test paper at school, or completing all of the goals on your chore chart?

As we get older, we continue to use stickers to label belongings or advertise our beliefs on the bumpers of our vehicles.  Clearly, sticker printing can be an appealing marketing medium for many small businesses!

Affordable

One of the reasons that sticker printing makes for an excellent advertising medium is the fact that they are very affordable.  You can get 100s or even 1000s of stickers for what it would cost you to create other advertising methods.

Multi-use

If you don’t know how sticker printing can be used for your business, then you may not know much about the power of stickers.  Here’s just a short list of some of the ways that you can use stickers:

• Appointment cards – Many clients still use paper calendars to keep track of their schedules.  Having an appointment card with a peel-away sticker that they can use to attach to their calendar to remind them of appointments can be quite useful.
• Bumper stickers – Let your loyal clients do the advertising for you by sticking your business information to their vehicles.  You pay for the sticker, but get multiple advertising opportunities each and every time they drive.
• Giveaways – Want something to hand out at the next big event your company is sponsoring?  Or maybe something fun to hand out to the kids that visit your business?  Stickers work great for both!
• Labels – Need a custom label to identify your products?  Want to make sure that your mailings stand out from all the other junk mail that people receive?  Stickers make great labels.

Easily personalized

Another reason why sticker printing is a great marketing medium is that they can be infinitely personalized.  While you will need to talk with your printer about the exact features they offer, there are multiple options from which to choose.  .

Stickers come in all shapes and sizes, with die cutting making it easier than ever before to get custom shapes.  They can be multi-colored or done in black and white.  They can even have additional features like using holographic paper.  You can even customize the backing of the stickers as well with your business contacts, coupons, or other information.

Long lasting

Many printed marketing methods are good for a very short period of time.  A postcard gets sent through the mail and either used or immediately discarded.  Catalogs and sales flyers are only good for as long as the promotion is.

Sticker printing, however, can be very long lasting.  Once a sticker is stuck, it tends to stay stuck – becoming a constant reminder of your products and services every time it is seen by someone.

Sticker printing is a great marketing medium for small business.  If you are looking for a fun, cost-effective way to get your message across, then you should definitely take a look at stickers.

Direct Mail Advertising With Postcard Printing

Postcard printing is one of the most cost-effective marketing methods for small businesses.  Easy to create, easy to mail, and easy to get your point across, postcards are a fun way to share the news with your clients.

Remember to keep your postcard printing short and to the point.  The goal with postcards is not to inform the reader of every last detail, but rather to whet their interest so that they contact you for more information.

The visual appeal is important as well, as you may have mere seconds to make an impression on the reader before they toss your postcard into the recycle bin.  Choosing appropriate color schemes and images are important.

Lastly, every postcard should include your contact information in some form, whether it is your phone number, website, or physical address.

Not sure how postcard printing can work for you?  Here are some direct mail strategies that your small business can utilize:

Announcements

Do you have a grand opening or a great sale coming up?  Make sure that your customers are in the know with postcard printing.  New stores can do blanket mailings for very little cost by sending out postcards to every household within a geographical area.

If you already have a client base, then you can use this as your mailing list to notify your loyal clients about your special event.  Remember to send out the postcards far enough in advance that your customers can plan for it, but not so far in advance that they forget about the event before it happens.

Coupons

These days, everyone is trying to save money, and more and more businesses are becoming aware of this by offering their customers special incentives.  Whether you want to offer them specific coupons or percentages off, postcard printing is a great way to get the postcard into their hands.

Plus, this is a great method for verifying the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.  By tracking the number of postcards sent out compared to those coupons that are redeemed, you will get a better idea as to the health of your business and if you are advertising to the right people.

Reminders

Many service industries rely on repeat business to keep sales high.  For example, your dentist relies on you coming in for that annual appointment every year, your vet wants you to bring your dog in for shots, and your mechanic expects you to show up for regular oil changes.  If you are in a business that relies on regular, repeat business, then you can use postcard printing to create a gentle reminder for your clients.  Keep track of when your clients will be due for their next visit with you, and send a postcard out a few weeks before.  You can even include a coupon or other incentive to encourage them to come and see you.

If you aren’t sure how you can use postcard printing for your business, talk to your printer.  Your printer can go over different features that may be useful for your industry, including automatically using your own mailing list, purchasing mailing lists, and utilizing printing features like two-sided and four-color printing.

The Gift That Gives Back: Designing Giveaway Calendars

One of the main goals of your business is to create recurring traffic.  Building customer loyalty is essential to running a business, as it takes much less cost and effort to keep a customer than it does to woo a new one.  But with the fiercely competitive atmosphere of the business world, how do you keep your clients returning again and again?

Advertising is an important part of business generation.  However, finding the right advertising medium can be a bit of a challenge.  You have to budget your printing costs, yet find something that is creative enough that it attracts the right kind of attention.  Calendar printing is one way that you can achieve this balance.

Why calendars work

Calendar printing is an excellent advertising medium because it allows you to print once, yet advertise the entire year.  Calendars are tools used by many, even in today’s digital society.  They allow you to highlight your business while still leaving room for your clients to record their own information.

Even better still, if your calendar is display-worthy, anyone who visits your client’s home or office will get to see the calendar as well, helping to generate even more business.

Elements to include

When doing calendar printing as a giveaway, there are a few features that you need to include.  A calendar needs to be attractive; otherwise it will be tossed in favor of one with better images.  Calendars also need to be useful, lest they be tossed out during the next office tidy up.

You should also consider the following for calendar printing:

• Graphics – Many people display calendars because they are visually interesting, and because of this, your calendar printing needs to contain only the highest quality images.  Depending on your field, you may consider highlighting images of your own products or a related industry.  You can also pick an unrelated yet visually stimulating topic for your images if you display your contact information prominently.
• Space – In order for calendars to be useful, you need to include plenty of blank spaces for users to write in their own appointments and information.  Besides including plenty of space for each day, you might also consider having a place for notes as well.
• Advertising – When designing a calendar for printing, it can be easy to forget the ultimate goal of the calendar – to draw in business.  However, it is crucial that you work in your advertising points as well.  Consider highlighting days that have special sales, including a coupon, or writing in a friendly reminder about how you would like to see them.
• Contact information – While calendar printing is useful because calendars last all year long, it can also mean that it is easy for the client to forget how to contact you later in the year.  Make sure that each month contains the pertinent contact information so that the client can contact you.

By including all of this information in your calendar printing, you can have a visually interesting calendar that your clients are proud to use and display – which reminds them to continue to do business with your company.

How To Create Brochures To Highlight Your Services

Brochure printing can be an excellent way for small business owners to highlight their products and services.  Brochures are inexpensive to print, can include a lot of information, and are easy to pass out, display, or even mail.

How do you create brochures that are eye-catching and effective?  Here are some basic tips to get you started.

Find a good printer

If you are looking into commissioning brochure printing, one of the first things that you will need to do is to find a printer that you trust.

Many small business owners prefer to work with a local printer.  Not only does this make it easier to see the quality of the work they do and get proofs of your work, but it also allows you to build up a working relationship with your business community, something that is lost when you work with an online printer.

Turnaround time may also be faster with a local printer, as you will not need to wait as long to have your items shipped to you, and you may even be able to pick them up in person.

Decide on a topic

Because of their size, brochures can only hold a limited amount of information.  Before you even go to brochure printing, you will need to decide what the most important information that you want to convey to the reader is.  Keeping your brochure limited to one main idea will allow it to be direct and concise and easy for readers to follow.

Get amazing images

When someone picks up a brochure, the first thing that they will notice is the pictures.  Because of this, you need images that will attract the interest of readers.  If you are unsure how to create these yourself, consider hiring a professional photographer to get the shots that you need.  All images should be sharp, clear, and a high-resolution.  If you are going to go with color images, make sure that you have them set to the appropriate format used by your printer.

Simplify your text

Large blocks of text are boring to read and are unattractive for brochure printing. Whatever text you plan to include, you should make sure that you break down the content into easy-to-read formats.  Bold headlines, bulleted lists, and picture captions are all quick and easy ways for you to get information across quickly to a reader.

Keep in mind that few people will actually sit down and read the entire brochure.  Instead they are going to glance over the headlines, look at the pictures, and maybe take in a caption or two.  By focusing on these main features, you can make sure that you get the most important information to your readers.

Include a call to action and your contact information

Remember that brochure printing is done with one ultimate goal in mind – to drive up business.  Subsequently, you want to make sure that your brochure includes a call for action to the readers.  Whether you want them to stop by, give you a call, or visit your website, this information needs to be stated.

And don’t forget to include your contact information!  Even the best designed brochure will be useless if the reader does not know how to follow up with you.

Sell Your Products With Booklets

As a small business owner, you know how important it is to make sure that your products stand out from the competition.  The difficulty that you have is that your competition can be fierce – not only do you have to worry about competing against fellow small business owners, but often the “big box” stores will also be trying to woo your clients away.

If you want to get information into the hands of your clients in an inexpensive and fun format, booklet printing is one smart option.

What makes booklets special?

With so many printing options available for marketing, you might wonder what makes booklet printing a better choice over another format.  Booklet printing can offer you several advantages, including:

• A semi-permanent item that your clients can retain. Since booklets are bound, they last longer than sales flyers or pamphlets.
• An item that can convey a lot of information to the reader. Booklets allow you to inform a customer about your products or services in great detail, more so than you can do with a brochure, flyer, or poster.
• A way to make ordering easier. Don’t have quite enough products for a full-fledged catalog?  Want to provide shoppers with special coupons or offers?  Booklet printing allows you to do all this and more.

Tips for making your booklets more effective

Like all printed products, booklets need to include certain elements to make them effective with the reader.  Keep in mind that since booklets are designed to convey more information, it is possible for them to become “dry” and boring to the reader.  To prevent this from happening, consider some of the following tips:

• Text – Large blocks of text can be difficult to read.  Break the text up by highlighting important information through the use of bolding, underlining, and headlines.  If you have a lot of information to convey, consider dividing it into chapters and creating a Table of Contents so that readers can quickly find what they need.
• Pictures/Graphics – Images can help to break up large areas of text, highlight ideas, give a better explanation of a product, and make your booklet printing more appealing to your readers. Any time that you will be using images in printing, you will need to make sure that you use sharp, focused, high-resolution images.  Consult with your printer the type of color format that images need to be submitted in and whether there are any special considerations needed for your printing project, such as bleed areas or cropping.
• Color – Four-color printing is always more attractive to the reader.  However, if you plan on using color for more than just your images, make sure that you are using a palette that is attractive.  Too many colors or colors that are not coordinated to each other can cause your booklet to appear unprofessionally made.

Make your booklet useful to the reader

Booklets that are useful to the reader are more likely to be kept than those that are not.  During your booklet printing, look for features that will make your booklet more useful, such as coupons, checklists, spaces for taking notes, how-to information, and similar items.