General | Killer Printing

Turn Letterhead Stationery into a Sales Tool

Letterhead stationery is a must-have communication and branding tool for many businesses, so why miss the opportunity for direct sales? It is all about branding, right? At least, that’s how it is designed and deployed; however, letterhead stationery can actually be a powerful sales tool with a few easy tweaks. Here’s how you can turn your letterhead stationery into a sales tool that not only brands your company, but lands direct sales.

Call to action

Including a call to action on your letterhead stationery can motivate customers to purchase new products and services. A photography company might include a line on its letterhead such as: “Get your next catalogue photography 20 percent off if you schedule by October 28.” This offer/call to action combination will get direct-mail companies to take advantage of the discount and fill up your bookings early.

VIP Coupon

Turn part of your letterhead stationery into a VIP coupon for your best customers. You could take the bottom four inches to thank your customers for their loyalty and to offer something free or discounted in return. This is a great way to give customers a “first look” at a new product or service that you’re going to be promoting. Your customers will feel valued because you want them to try it first, and you’ll get sales if it is as good as billed.

Backside flyer

Recycling 101 says to never throw something away if it can be reused. The backside of letterhead stationery is often overlooked as an excellent marketing tool. For nonsensitive communication, place a flyer advertisement on the back of your letterhead and tell your customers that as part of your green agenda you’re asking them to hang it up where employees can see it. This is a way to get double the mileage out of your eco-friendly efforts since your letterhead stationery gets recycled twice: once when hung, then again when the promotion ends and it is tossed in the recycling bin.

Add value

Another great way to turn your stationery into a sales tool is to add value to it. Design a panel (or even the back) as a guide about a hot industry topic. End with a call to action that motivates your customers to call you for a prescribed solution.

Alternatively, you could turn the back (or a panel) of your letterhead stationery into a conversion chart, resource list or other helpful guides your customers are likely to pin up on the wall or tape to the desk for easy reference. This won’t lead to direct sales, but it will help brand your company by increasing your letterhead’s longevity.

No matter how you employ your letterhead stationery as a sales tool, you will be more successful if your paper feels strong and prestigious. Good choices are 100gsm white wove and premium bond papers. For a more dramatic effect, add a dazzling foil stamp or die cut.

Finally, by adapting your letterhead to land more sales, you’ll double up on your marketing efforts, slash costs and yield a large return on investment.

Combining Print Marketing and Social Media

Combining social media and print marketing in an integrated campaign strategy is a powerful way to market your products and services. While some would have you believe that social media and print marketing are too different to work together, savvy marketers know that harnessing the power of one can dramatically increase the success rate of the other. There are several ways to boost both your social media and print marketing campaigns in combination, as revealed by the following tips and ideas.

Print marketing to social media

Everyone knows by now that a powerful Facebook presence can pay off huge dividends, but how do you build your fan base to the point where your campaigns are profitable that is, when you can essentially advertise on Facebook for free? Many marketers do not stray from web-based marketing, but while web marketing has benefits it is important to remember that just about all of your competitors are taking the same measures. This decreases your ability to stand out from the crowd and naturally drives ad rates.

Instead of trying to compete head-to-head (or in addition to doing so), get fans on your Facebook or other social media page with a print marketing campaign. You can do this efficiently and economically with a simple, yet strategic, direct-mail postcard campaign The benefit here is that you can reach a highly targeted demographic audience with a controlled message one-on-one, and probably with zero interference from competitors. Postcard-to-web remains proven as one of the most successful ways to market, and with the right incentive (say, free product to the 1,000^th fan?) and list you’re bound to increase your fan base.

Posters, flyers, large-format vinyl banners and other print marketing strategies can also help you drive fans to your page either separate from or in conjunction with your direct-mail postcard campaign. Remember that print marketing lends credibility to your brand. After all, anyone can put up a Facebook page for free; but not everyone has the perceived budget to direct mail the market. If you do, you legitimize yourself and begin to earn trust.

Social media to print marketing

For all its benefits, the online environment provides plenty of distractions. Nothing is worse than when your ad is buried between two competitors’. In contrast, print marketing is read one-on-one and can captivate attention far easier. Most people read their mail alone, increasing opportunities for customer engagement. You might, for example, find that it is easy to convince customers to click a link requesting more information; but difficult for them to read your material online.

To combat this, you could use your social media page as a sign-up form to receive a free information kit via post. This strategy has two major benefits. First, you pre-qualify all leads because they have to take action to express interest, therefore you can fine-tune your pitch and earn a better response rate. Second, your overall investment is diminished because you only send your direct-mail kit to pre-qualified leads. Thus, you spend less money and send fewer information kits but receive a better response rate and increased return on investment. You are, in essence, creating an opt-in mailing list a powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal.

As you can see, combining social media and print marketing can help you earn far better results than just doing one alone. You can even create campaigns or contests where customers enter through social media, then have to receive a postcard with a special code to enter on your site to receive an incentive. Such highly engaging campaigns will help you weed out the non-buyers from the buyers, identify broken links and bridge the gaps to turn those non-buyers into buyers with future campaigns. Be creative, don’t be afraid to break the mold, differentiate yourself from the competition and achieve success by combining social media and print marketing!

Flyers Are Powerful Marketing Tools

Flyers are powerful marketing tools, no doubt about it. But how do you print a high-quality flyers so you can bring in the premium clientele? The answer is to choose the right flyer printing company. Here’s what you need to know about printing flyers without sacrificing quality so you can run a campaign that looks like a million bucks.

Choose the right paper stocks

Cheap flyers can be printed on premium paper stocks, despite the premium connotation. Quality paper denotes a quality company that sells quality products and services. Compared to store-bought papers, you can get exceptional quality from 130gsm paper stock with glossy sheen on both sides and print cheap flyers that look exceedingly professional.

Quality,may depend of the type printing

The quality of your ink in combination with your paper stock can make or break even the best flyer design. Litho printed flyers are more vibrant than digital print flyers. They lend deep, rich colors to your artwork. Best of all, Lithoprint is ideal for all sizes of flyers; so you can have the best of both economy and aesthetics when you print your flyers with them.

Custom sizing

Flyer pricing depend on the flyer size, and when you have the option of choosing sizes between A6 and A4 size, you have full control of how large you want your flyer to be and how much you want to spend on them. The quantity of your flyer would determine the pricing for various flyer size options – you’ll probably be surprised to learn that you can print rather large flyers without breaking the bank.

Flyers can still be die cut

One of the advantages flyers have over other marketing mediums is the ease at which they can be die cut into prefabricated or custom shapes. Die-cut flyers have more influence and eye-capturing prowess, so the fact that you can shape up your pitch and still print cheap flyers is a boon to many small businesses with limited marketing budgets who are trying to compete with larger corporations. Cheap Flyer printing simply levels the playing field.

Quantity counts

When it comes to cheap flyers, quantity counts – but that isn’t to say that the fewer you print, the cheaper your flyers will be. On the contrary, you should think of flyer printing return on investment in terms of cost-per-customer: How much does it cost to reach one customer? The more flyers you print per run, the cheaper your price per piece, and thus the cheaper your investment per customer becomes. When you land a sale, your return on investment for that sale is higher. So, you can print 5,000 flyers less than 90, which comes to about 0.02p per flyer. But you could also print 10,000 flyers for about 120, which comes to about 0.012p per flyer. Either way, those are cheap flyers!

Five Direct Mailers Every Business Should Use

Every business needs to have both an online and a print advertising and marketing presence. But in this day and age of the Internet, some businesses fail to utilize all of the potential methods of direct mailers that’s so essential to business success.

Direct mailers are some of the most powerful marketing tools, and they have benefits online advertising can’t match. For one, they allow you to be one-on-one with customers without interruption. They are not intrusive. They also allow for better targeting based on demographics most online marketing mediums can’t touch. You can literally grow to be a multi-million dollar business on direct mailers alone, when you know how to take advantage of their power. The following five direct mailers should be used by all businesses.

1.Postcards

Perhaps the most versatile direct mailers available, postcards are also some of the most effective and cost-efficient. Postcards are incredibly cheap to develop, print and mail; and can be used in a variety of ways to generate interest for your products and services: as coupons, VIP passes, mini-newsletters, mini-catalogs, web promotions, discount notices and more. They can also be tracked via redemption coupons and codes.

2.Catalogs

Many top companies use direct-mail catalogs even though they have a strong web presence. These catalogs arrive in consumers homes as tangible, physical objects to browse and peruse at their leisure. There’s nothing like the feel of a hefty catalog filled with superb products with the descriptions and prices located next to each item. People still delight in flipping through the pages, and business will definitely increase via these mail-order sales and the online orders they spawn.

3.Newsletters

Every business should mail out a regular newsletter, usually on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, to keep all of their loyal and new customers informed of all of the latest updates and recent developments that are going on with the business. Your newsletter should have short articles and stories based around the benefits that the consumer can derive from continuing to patronize the particular business but it shouldn’t be a rolling advertisement. Provide customer value and highlight happy customers for maximum potency.

4.Response cards

Response cards are a great way to learn more about your customers and collect new names for your mailing list. Create a short survey and have customers return it with a discount coupon, or offer customers and a friend a great discount or other special incentive for filling out your response card. Collect names and contact information so you can keep sending targeted mailings to the first customer, a proven responder, and the second customer, a new name you can market to.

5.Sales letters

These direct mailers need to be mailed out on a mandatory basis to every consumer and potential consumer on your mailing list. They should make a direct statement of facts and helpful information as well as offer the consumer the chance to purchase something special from the company’s inventory. Sales letters allow your friendly personality shine through and therefore allow you to showcase the unique aspects of your business.