No more excuses!
Twenty years ago, all printing companies were the bane of the environment. They
were Mother Nature’s public enemy #1 and there wasn’t much anyone could do about
it. Degrading the planet was simply a cost of doing business.
Today things have changed.
Technology, coupled with a new level of awareness, has changed the relationship
between print providers and the environment.
Despite the increase in both popularity and practicality, many printers are yet
to get on board the green printing wagon.
So how exactly is the responsible consumer to know whether they are a friend or
foe to our planet? Consider starting by asking your print provider these five
questions:
1. Do they use digital printing, or more traditional (and more harmful)
methods?
2. Are they using harmful, chemical based inks?
3. Where are they getting their materials from? Are their vendors certified by
the Forest Stewardship Council?
4. Are they adamant about recycling their unused products and by-products?
5. Do they use exclusively post-consumer paper?
As green printing continues to grow in sophistication, the list of questions may
grow longer and longer. Nevertheless, if your printer can give positive answers
to these five questions they you can be sure that you are doing business with a
responsible, eco-friendly company.
Search on Google or Yahoo and you’ll find a whole host of sites that offer inexpensive graphic design and logo creation services.
There seems to be a “how-low-can-you-go” competition going on right now in terms of cost and turnaround time. Some sites offer there services for as low as $50, while others guarantee 24 hour turnaround. Is anyone else starting to see the problem here?
Aside from your products or services themselves, your brand image may be the single most important part of your business. It’s an artistic representation of your company and it serves as a huge influencing factor on consumers.
So given the importance of your logo, do you think that you can trust this job to a website that offers unrealistically low prices? Can $50 really buy the kind of attention and detail that your image requires? Furthermore, can the true essence of your company really be captured and recreated in a mere 24 hours?
Obviously, we do not think so. For that very reason, we recently created Bizcard Custom, the graphic design and specialty printing member of the Bizcard.com family. The philosophy is simple: offer agency quality graphic design and printing services, but at a cost that small businesses can afford. Visit our site at custom.bizcard.com to learn more, view our design portfolio and submit a quote request for your own custom work.
To market is to create sales for tomorrow. Unless your product is viral, you will have to invest both time and/or money to promote it. But for a small business investing in marketing can be cheaper than you think. For example with just under $100.00, you can create a decent print marketing starter package that includes business cards, thank you cards and magnets. But why do you need these products?
1- Because it is a business, not a hobby.
Business cards are more than a piece of paper with your contact information. Consider them as pocket-sized billboards. Besides conveying a professional image and creating rapport, you are also ensuring the recipient has the proper information. How many times have someone told you their website /blog URL which you tried a few times before calling them to get it right or finally giving up? Only a few people will have the patience to key-in your phone number, email, twitter id and other contact info on the spot. A business card eases the process.
2-Because you must set your business apart.
One of the areas where small companies can outperfom large organizations is customer service. As consumers we are almost accustomed to a low quality of customer service, hence a tiny act of kindness and appreciation can make the difference. When shipping a product, adding a Thank-you card can differentiate you from other sellers and build customer loyalty.
3-Because you want repeat customers.
A marketing message needs to be sticky, sometimes literally. Using magnets as business cards or notes is the perfect example. They are likely to end up on a fridge or somewhere prominent within the office space. When creating a magnet card, the goal is to make sure recipients will find it interesting, funny, informative or all the above. As long as they are reminded of your business in a positive manner, you are winning.
Marketing does not have to be expensive. By doing a little research, and budgeting wisely you can invest small amounts in print, online, affiliate and other forms of marketing can yield a positive return in both the short and long term.
There is often a tendency to choose fonts based on what serves our preferences. Some people prefer the formality of Helvetica or Times New Roman, while others like to use fonts that are fun and informal.
There is no such thing as the right font but rather, the right font for the occasion. For small businesses, using the right font in your print marketing can be the difference between a strong, memorable brand and one that is quickly forgotten or worse, remembered for the wrong reasons.
Consider the following examples:
In the examples above we have two fictional companies, one a serious company and the other a fun company. As an important investment firm, Davis investment services is not very likely to be taken seriously by affluent, wealthy customers when they are using an informal font. By the same measure, OnlineFunZone.com does not look very fun at all when displayed in a highly formal brush script.
One side effect of the recent economic downturn has been the pile-up of business cards for which there is no corresponding job. This has apparently left some to ponder the question of exactly what might be done with all those obsolete cards.
TheDailyGreen.com has a few creative ideas. Rather than simply throwing the cards away, they suggest a few ways to recycle them by replacing the out-of-date info.
While the eco-friendly aspect certainly appeals to us, as marketing professionals we also have to consider the limitations of such an approach. The question to ask yourself is who exactly are you going to give the cards to? If the answer is strictly friends and family, then you’re probably fine. But if you are going to use the cards for professional networking, or in your new job search, then you may want to consider the effect this might have on your appearance.
For better or worse, a professional appearance is more important than ever. If you apply for a new job and there are fifty other people competing with you for the position, you probably don’t want to be the only one with the bottom left side of your business card torn off.
Sometimes an image is worth a long and well written blog post. This is is one of those times. The Lego business cards.
MySpace has just launched a new feature to help users find, review local businesses. The company partnered with CitySearch to access its database of millions of local business information such as address, phone number, reviews, ratings etc…Users will be able to review businesses and share the information with their friends. If you own a small business this will be another way to effortlessly promote your products/services. Each business has its own profile. This move will essentially put small businesses in front of millions of users. Consider it a great leverage. Venturebeat has a more detailed description of the service.
Starting a business can easily become the most resource intensive move you ever made. Running an existing one is another entire set of difficulties. But if you are convinced you’ve got the best idea since the fork-knife, and you found ways to bring your idea to life, then you need to be frugal in your development and expansion. Marketing does not have to be costly and does not always require a “grandiose” plan. Take it one day at the time. If you can spare fifteen minutes every other day, you can get the following accomplished in less than an hour total:
You have a website, right?
A business needs a website. It is that simple. No matter what you do or sell, you need to be represented online. Far too commonly do small business people fail to care for their site. The most common reason I hear is some variation of we are not that kind of business (insert slack-jawed southern accent here). Unfortunately you are that kind of business, not because you chose to be, but because that is the world we live in. Maybe it does not need a Flash intro and music playing in the background, but you need something providing (at the least) information about your products and services as well as your contact info. There are a number of websites such as Weebly and Synthasite out there that will set you up with a free site and even host it for you.
Google is your friend, Google Map is your other friend.
SEO this. SEO that. While optimizing your site requires months of hard work, you can easily add your business to Google Local Business Directory. This could turn out to be the most productive 5 minutes you will spend online today. Whenever users search for products or services related to yours, your business will be included in the results. The more reviews, images and content you have, the higher your business will rank on the results.
If you want to be taken seriously, then act accordingly.
You might be your company’s sole employee, but when you meet with clients consider trying to convey a sense of stability in your enterprise. A business card is more than a piece of paper baring you contact info, it’s your own portable billboard. A well-designed business card send the correct message to your prospects. There are several companies that promote free business card offers. Some even offer it without their ads on the back. Or, of course, you can hire a professional designer to crank out a top-notch design that compliments your brand but it will cost you.
These are 3 steps you can accomplish in 45 minutes or less and that will help you to better position your company and acquire more customers.
When did Marketing really begin?
Maybe during the Stone Age, maybe before. We do not know for sure, but when Man began writing it sure became a lot easier. From the time we knew how to write, the hassles associated with information dissemination were lessened. Different mediums like stone tablets, trees, fabrics and papers made knowledge within reach. Even self-expression became easier especially with lots of resources that one could use. And when printing was born, everything became even more convenient and spreading information became exponentially scalable.
One of the earliest form of printed marketing tool was the business card. Popularly known as visiting card in Europe, it was an ordinary playing card that was small enough to fit in one’s pocket. The trade card, successor of the visiting card, was slightly different. Aside from advertising functions, a trade card was also designed to give directions. Before zip codes and addresses, trade cards served as maps. Drawings and landmarks were printed on them. Although different printing methods were already applied at the time of trade cards, it still remained plain and simple because of the monotones used.
Printing made the production of business cards efficient. As various materials became available, different styles and designs emerged. Gone were the boring trade cards with maps. The conventional styles are long gone, yet the traditional guidelines for lay-outing a business card still remains intact. The Logo, company name, position and contact details still appear on cards. Alignment and positioning of details are still of high value. Some business cards are printed on different materials, e.g. sticker papers, magnetic papers and even on plastic cards. But the puropse remains the same.
The dawn of modern age helped a lot in flourishing the business card industry. Creative minds detached from the traditional materials and explored other possibilities. Thus, different production methods, styles and designs surfaced. But more important is the ease of creating and printing business cards using online printing companies.
Email marketing can be a supremely frustrating experience. A marketer will send an email to 5,000 recipients only to discover that only a couple hundred or so opened it, and only a small handful actually followed the links to their website.
In a recent article, Marketing Sherpa shined a new light on some of the more irritating aspects of email marketing. Non Responders May Still Love Getting Your Email is based on relatively primitive research techniques, but it nonetheless gives email marketers some hope for their future job security.
New anecdotal evidence from MarketingSherpa’s own experiences suggest, however, that nonresponders may not be as big a problem as you think. Our editorial team conducted a test that every marketer should consider; we picked up the phone and called some nonresponders. “Why don’t you open anymore? Why don’t you click?”
The most common answer shocked us. “I do. I like your email. Don’t stop sending it. I may not always have time to read it, but I want it.”
So perhaps all those hours spent putting together that email blast were not wasted after all. Well, maybe. It would be nice to see some more actual research on the subject.
The problem with non responders is that you do not really have any indication of what they think about your business and your emails. If someone visits every link on your email, then you know they probably like getting your messages. If they mark you as spam, then you know just the opposite. But when someone fails to respond one way or the other, then they are stuck in e-marketing no-man’s-land.
A good assumption to live by is that if a recipient has not opted out or marked you as spam, then they must have at least some interest in receiving your emails or they just don’t check their inbox very often. Either way it is a pretty safe bet that you can continue to email such people without fear of a major backlash.