PB&J Marketing

It's easy to see why peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a nationwide favorite. After all, PB&J offers creamy, sweet, smooth (or crunchy) goodness that is fruity, satisfying, filling, inexpensive, and fairly good for you to boot. Sure, peanut butter is delicious by itself (as is jelly), but when they are joined together, they create a flavor-packed, winning combination that can't be beat.

When it comes to marketing, a blend of print and electronic media can easily be compared to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While they can both function effectively on their own, they pack a more powerful punch when joined together.

For example, print promotions -- such as postcards, newsletters, flyers, or brochures -- are a great way to grab attention, increase awareness, and encourage readers to visit your website for in-depth information, product ordering, survey completion, webinar and event registration, and more.

When it comes to combining print with electronic media, the options are endless. If you're in need of unique print ideas to supplement your electronic marketing, give us a call today at 254-773-7391 or www.papergraphicsltd.com. You just may think some of our creative ideas are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Encourage the Customer Voice

One of the best ways to promote your business is to get your customers talking about you, whether on the streets, via social media, or in product reviews. Here are a few ways to encourage customers to voice their opinions:

• Create a message board, chat forum, or guest book where customers can create an online community and share their opinions and feedback.


• Ask key customers to participate in a "customer spotlight" section of your newsletter. Use this feature to help customers promote their business and elaborate on their relationship with your company.


• Add product review capabilities to your website that allow customers to rank and review your products or services. Send customers a link to an online opinion survey they can take shortly after making a purchase.


• Start a blog and encourage feedback, questions, suggestions, and sharing of your posts.


• Offer valuable incentives (coupon, discount, free gift, etc.) as a reason to fill out a survey, and keep surveys short and sweet. This will encourage customers to complete your entire survey... and to answer future surveys when you ask them to.


• Encourage customers to contact you any time they have questions, comments, or suggestions -- and make it easy for them to do so. Include your contact details in your email signature, post your phone number prominently on every page of your website, and send a business card with every letter or mailing.


• Engage with customers every chance you get. Ask them about their experience, seek their opinion on industry-related topics, and garner their feedback and suggestions regarding your business.


• Don't discourage negative customer comments. Negative feedback provides credibility and tells customers the business is confident enough to show a range of customer opinions. Honest feedback and suggestions can also help improve your business.

If your organization or business needs to increase sales, we can help. Call us at 254-773-7391 or visit us at www.papergraphicsltd.com to set up a no obligation consultation.

Invite Them and They Will Come

Some companies think that a beautiful new website will instantly attract visitors like a moth to a light bulb. However, unless you turn the light on and direct them where to go, your visitors may wander aimlessly into your competitor's backyard. Here are a few mixed media marketing tips to draw visitors to your website:

• Create a "web card" that highlights your site's benefits and entices readers to visit. Mail them as postcards, hand them out at trade shows, distribute them with purchases, and so on.


• Create videos and post them on YouTube. Not only does Google index your content, but viewers can embed your videos on their blogs and share them via social media.


• Offer free original content or blog postings to other publications in your niche market. Be sure to include a link to your website to draw new visitors from these high-traffic sources.


• Distribute news releases to print and web periodicals in your industry. Your website link will remain in news databases for several months and may improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity.


• Create a short but sweet email signature that encourages readers to visit your new website.


• Ask partnering or non-competing businesses to link to your site, and do the same in return.


• Post your website on trade sites and in specialized directories.


• Include your URL on everything you can think of, ranging from business cards, stationery, and marketing materials, to pens, shirts, hats, mugs, and more.


• Promote an exciting contest or giveaway, and direct people to sign up on your website.


• Encourage customer feedback through a survey on your website.


• Increase your SEO by editing existing content, removing barriers to the indexing activities of search engines, and increasing the number of links your website receives from other web sources.


• Create a Facebook or Twitter post announcing your website, and offer prizes for the first XX people who visit your website and sign up for your newsletter.


• Encourage repeat visitors by offering a bookmark button on your website, such as AddThis, a free content-sharing platform that helps you integrate sharing tools into your website, spread your content, and increase social traffic.

For more information, help with your website or to create a new website, contact us at 254-773-7391 or visit us on the web at http://www.papergraphicsltd.com/servicecenter/websolutions.html.

Start Spreading the Word About Your Full Product Line

 

 

If your marketing focuses too sharply on just a few key products or services, your customers may be unaware of your additional offerings...and you may be missing out on a great deal of potential revenue. Here are a few ways to spread the word about your full product or service line:

• Create a monthly or quarterly product spotlight postcard campaign that highlights various products or services, including a tearaway coupon as an incentive to try.


• Distribute product and service overview flyers or brochures with every purchase, either by inserting them into the purchase bag or stapling them to the receipt.


• Include a Q&A section on your website that provides additional details about your various products and services.


• Give new customers a three-ring binder welcome packet, and periodically send them new product pages or updates that are three-hole drilled to update their binder.


• Publish a blog and offer regular tips and articles that help customers get the most out of your products.


• Offer a product catalog with in-depth product features and highlights.


• Highlight a different product or service in your email tagline every month, with a reminder to check your website for more details.


• Cross-sell or up-sell your products to increase revenue by bundling items together, suggesting complementary items, or including customer testimonials that recommend some of your lesser-known products along with your more common offerings.

Plant a Seed with Catalogs, and Watch Your Business Grow

 

 

While online ordering is a must-have for many businesses, a printed catalog can provide a great supplemental marketing tool for your website. Many people still prefer perusing catalogs at their leisure without being connected to a computer. For these customers, a printed catalog provides increased exposure to a wider variety of products. In addition, catalogs can be easily shared with others and offer staying power...with a message that can be seen again and again.

Here are a few tips for creating a printed catalog that will do the selling for you:

• Include a mix of customer testimonials that give readers a more consumer-centric look at your products.


• "Tell your story" by including background information about your business and the history of your products.


• Cross-sell complementary products through suggestions in the product copy, call-outs, or the placement of companion products together.


• Feature best-selling products in the upper right-hand corner, where the eye is naturally drawn when flipping through a catalog.


• Think small. If you have a frequently changing product line, consider a mini catalog booklet that offers a brief overview of your product line with colorful product photos to pique interest. Refer readers to your website for an extended product line or more in-depth information.


• Include an order form. While few customers mail in their order, many will use it to organize their orders before ordering online or calling.


• Include seasonal inserts that can be easily updated for relevant sales and offers.

Remember, the more information customers have about your products, the more confident and satisfied they'll feel with their purchasing decisions.

PGP Tip: How To Use Direct Mail To Grow Sales

PGP Tip: How To Use Direct Mail To Grow Sales

Regardless of the changes in technology, experts agree that traditional direct mail and e-mail work best when used together to grow sales. Both have their place in a marketer’s tool kit, neither cancels the need for the other, and the two may even work symbiotically, as when a post card is sent offering a premium if the recipient provides an e-mail address.

Some audiences prefer traditional direct mail

While we acknowledge the growing importance of web-based communication to reach customers and prospects, computers and mobile wireless devices like smartphones cannot by themselves reach everyone in a business’s or organization’s target market. That could change as the use of mobile wireless devices spreads (which is happening rapidly) but until that time, traditional direct mail still has valuable place as a marketing tool.

Traditional direct mail is a good choice for some audiences (such as an older demographic whose adoption of web-based communications may be lagging younger audiences) and for anyone who clearly states a preference for direct mail.

Traditional direct mail is also a good choice for businesses and organizations whose target audience is local. Sustaining member campaigns, fundraisers and financial support appeals by community-based non profits are a good example where outreach by traditional direct mail to the homes of donors is likely to outperform web-based appeal.

Successful direct mail in 3 easy steps

To conduct a successful direct mail marketing campaign, you’ll need three things:

1. A mailing list
2. A mail piece and
3. A message that is of interest to your target audience.

We’re making it sound simple because we do it every day and to us, it is!

Notice that we said a successful direct mail marketing campaign. If you measure success as the response rate, then greater success comes from a series of mailings rather than a one-time drop.

The ideal number of mailings in a campaign is ten or more mailed close enough together to build recognition in the mind of the recipient. Studies show that the cumulative response spikes after three mailings, then reaches a point of diminishing return until the seventh mailing, then spikes again. Based on this fact, the response rate will be greater if you mail seven times to the same list rather than one time to a larger list. Said another way, if you budget allows for mailing 5000 pieces, mail 10 times to 500 prospects rather than one time to 5000 recipients.

At PaperGraphics we can teach you how to make your next mailing a breeze through our ManagedMarketing™ program where we can handle it all for you from concept to completion. In fact, we are the only printer in this market that is certified to do so. 

If your organization or business needs to increase sales we can help. Call us at 254-773-7391 or reply to this message to set up a no obligation consultation where we assess your current situation and offer a plan of attack that works for your budget.

PGP Tip: The Secret Ingredient To Great Graphic Design

The Secret Ingredient To Great Graphic Design

Communicating via visual means is central to the selling process. Imagine trying to explain your product or service without having the assistance of a brochure, a display ad or a web site. Think how difficult it would be to differentiate your product from others on the shelf without attractive packaging. All buying decisions include some amount of emotion – how would you quickly evoke emotion without the assistance of images?

Visual communication is a process that uses investigation, analysis and planning to identify a communication requirement as a first step in designing something meant to be seen rather than heard or felt. Visual communication is a broad discipline that uses graphic design, drawing, illustration, typography and color to convey a thought, to inform, to educate or to persuade a target audience.

You may have heard us use the term graphic design when discussing a marketing or sales-related printed piece, creating or refreshing a logo, or updating a web site. What we mean is all the techniques, from composition to page layout, that are needed to prepare for the final step – printing, taking a web site live, branding, etc.

Graphic design as a discipline

Graphic design combines words, images and symbols into a coordinated whole that communicates to an audience. Graphic design can mean both the process of designing and the finished product. Here are some of the tools of successful graphic design:

• Lines direct the reader to points of interest, create shapes and forms, and divide space into sections.
• Color attracts attention and evokes emotion.
• Typography creates emphasis and contrast.
• Images and photographs convey meaning and bring forth emotion.
• Symbols represent ideas or concepts.
• White space separates elements so they are easier to read and provides the eyes with a brief rest.
• Grids and templates provide underlying structure and organization.

A layout refers to how these elements are arranged to convey the message. An effective layout uses a grid or template to organize the lines, color, typography, symbols, images and photographs into a visually pleasing whole.

The layout influences how much time the reader initially invests in the communication vehicle (i.e., whether to continue reading, save for later reading, or discard) and controls the order in which the reader moves around on the page, column or panel. An effective layout quickly captures the reader’s attention and leads him through a series of steps to understand the message and what action to take next.

Preparing for graphic design

Graphic design is not the starting point for visual communication. Rather, it is a subsequent step after investigation, analysis, planning and organization. At PaperGraphics we can walk you through all of these steps until all of us are clear on the purpose of the marketing and sales material, the web site, or the display ad.

The art of graphic design

Graphic design is a combination of technical skills and artistic creation. A type of commercial art, graphic design differs from fine art mainly in its purpose: to convey a message to an intended audience.

Graphic design shares with fine art many principles of design including balance, emphasis, movement, rhythm, contrast, proportion and unity. These principles, when combined with planning and technical knowledge of print and multimedia, results in marketing materials, sales collateral and cross media promotional materials that convey an advertising message in a visually pleasing manner.

At PaperGraphics we can show you the difference good graphic design can make. Select a brochure or sell sheet whose information needs to be updated and let us redesign it using the principles of graphic design. We predict you’ll be impressed with the results. For more information and a quotation, call us at 254-773-7391 or www.papergraphicsltd.com to set up a no obligation consultation where we assess your current situation and offer a plan of attack that works for your budget.