Magazine awareness to provide marketing value

Guest post by Tamra Booth, Editor of Vive Magazine

Combining design with marketing? Well, this is absolutely essential if you want your marketing to be effective and to deliver value for money.

Magazines and newspapers are notoriously terrible at making sure their clients’ adverts are effective. How many times do you hear people say, ‘I never advertise, it doesn’t work’. Well, I have a fair few times, but that is because they have had an advert designed that might look pretty but it does not grab the reader’s attention, it does not relate to the reader, there is no call to action, so the reader’s eye moves on to the next advert. If we are sent an ineffective advert by a client then we send it back with suggestions. Our designer has a marketing background. Also we offer packages to clients so they reach their customers in different ways, so a mix of designs to drive home a clear and eye-catching marketing message.

Advertising can and does work wonders but it is all down to this Design/Marketing theory that Alice wisely promotes. Whether online or in-print marketing, a clear marketing objective is the way to go. Otherwise you might as well throw your money down the drain.

Tamra Booth | Editor | Vive Magazine
Tel/Fax: 01753 857855 | Mob: 07798 501549 |
25 Hemwood Road, Windsor SL4 4YX | tamra@vivemagazine.co.uk

Alice’s comments: Tamra failed to mention the importance of headlines highlighting the customer’s pain, the subheading announcing your solution to that pain, bullet points listing the benefits behind the purpose of the advert, provide an incentive-laden, time dependent call to action and make sure your contact details are large, clear and accompanied by a demand to ‘do’ something!

How fancy design became impractical

Travelling home from London to Brighton on Saturday in the dark, my natural desire was to look out of the window when stopped at a station to see which one it was.

Instinctively I looked for the station name. Now it wasn’t during the Earth Hour so all the lights were on, but I couldn’t find the name plate. Oh, there it was – but it was so illegible I couldn’t read it.

Why? Because the person who designed these signs decided it would look really good if the background was that nice green that is so fashionable with a slim white font for the name on it.

Hmmm. That may look really dandy during the day, but I bet the designer hasn’t travelled by night to see how this stands up in the dark. The dark green became black, and the slim words melted into it so they could hardly been seen. Totally impractical for passengers who are unable to recognise the shape of the station buildings to know where they are.

Why, oh why, is there this trend to reverse design around? Books have black words on white paper for a reason. Any website I see that has a black background immediately has me gone – I don’t even bother to try to read it. Can’t people see that a dark text on a pale background is better because it is so much more practical?

Up-selling pizza blogs

Up-selling is a concept I have been thinking a lot about lately. The book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber explains how the idea of franchises combined with upselling have helped businesses become successful – but how do I transform this into my own business?

I want you to visualise a pizza base, which is an excellent medium for adding things onto. Not just tomato sauce and cheese, which adds value anyway in creating a Margerita, but all the extra toppings which make the pizza individual and appropriate for its consumer. You can add many different toppings to enhance the product, and its the combination of these when added together creates the final effect.

What if your blog was just a Margerita, serviceable on its own, but a bit boring? OK, it tastes nice, and it seems to do well, but do you think extra features would help?

Consider mushrooms as a link to other websites, peppers as a link to your newsletter signup page, chillis in the form of your picture, olives as RSS feed options, anchovies linking to your categories and tags, pepperoni as your social networking links, pineapple for your recent visitors and tuna to show past comments.

As long as all these ingredients are your favourites, it doesn’t matter if you put them all on at once! Although they all have an individual purpose, explore combining these tastes to see what effect they have. Test and measure the responses. Rearrange the positioning to highlight specific items. Work with your widgets!

But don’t forget the tomato and cheese, which should relate to the blog posts, as these are the mainstay of your pizza. Good quality and value should always be on the menu.

How does this relate to upselling? ‘How to beautify your blog’ offers a series of packages that can be added to the main staple, the blog itself. Investigate this concept and give me feedback – does this sort of thing appeal to you? More ingredients cooking away are advice on exiting posts and how to write them effectively, plus all the other marketing elements of blogs I am researching into. Should be the making of the most fantastic pizzas (sorry, blogs) ever!

Create a call to action on every webpage

I really don’t mind giving my opinion on website design. And it’s always so nice to comment on a really good one for a change.

A photographer friend of mine asked for my reaction to his new website design while it was being renovated. My first reaction was very positive, with its clean, clear, crisp lines providing a very professional layout. It was the grey words and logo on the white background that did it for me – how nice to see an uncluttered presentation with plenty of white space and light!

But I felt compelled to provide some comments to increase his website efficiency:

The index page should work to the three second rule. Three seconds to make up their minds that this is the right website and what they should then do. Getting the visitors to do something is paramount; they should be encouraged to go further into the site to learn more, or sign up to something with a suitable incentive (this is to gather their details for future communications). The last thing you want is for them to leave!

Also, don’t overload other pages with detailed content. My friend’s grey text may have looked elegant and contributed to the spatial atmosphere that was so pleasing, but it did make it very difficult to read in large quantities. Websites are not like books. People don’t find it easy to sit down and read through webpages with a cup of tea. Also if they are surfing they usually do not have the time to plough through densely packed paragraphs.

Your accompanying webpages should act like little landing pages for specific subjects. This means they should contain the same structure and marketing elements as the index page, because spiders direct surfers to the most relevant page to their search, and this may not be the index page of the website. Allow for drop-in visitors for that particular subject, and adapt the page for the three second rule too.

Design your webpages with the initial concept of getting your customers to make contact. Once you’ve got them across your threshold then you can give them all the necessary detail to seal your capture. Your content should be delivered quickly and concisely with poignant and relevant information. Separate each benefit with bullet points or paragraphs. This allows the eye to rapidly choose what it wants to read and then enables the reader to digest and take action.

It all comes down to quality in the end

This morning we all woke up to the news that Woolworths and MFI have gone into administration. Such well known institutions in the market place now reside in the hands of the receivers. But where did they go wrong?

One idea banded around at a breakfast networking group I attended this morning was due to the concept of ‘quality’. Both shops piled it high and sold it cheap. Inexpensive materials went hand in hand with trying to give the impression of quality, and advertising usually declared the latest incredible savings that could be made. Sometimes I wondered why MFI were offering over 50% off their sofas – is it because they couldn’t sell them? The quality of Woolworth’s stock sunk lower and lower, and the layout of their shops made it almost impossible to find anything you wanted.

Don’t be tempted over price compared to quality, especially in today’s economic environment. You can easily get your business stationery over the internet from interactive websites that seem incredibly cheap, but then the products they produce certainly are! The quality of card is inferior, the quality of print thin, the portrayal of your imagery is flat and uninspiring, there is no guidelines in how to place your information correctly, the templates are overused and easily replicated at networking meetings, and because the process is totally automated, I known some stuff to come back that was totally unsuitable because their machine broke down and a vital colour was not included!

When you’re handing out your networking stationery, you need be proud of your business cards. Potential clients are impressed by the ‘feel’ of the card, clarity of the layout and zinginess of your colours. This also goes for your letterheads, compliment slips, brochures, postcards, leaflets… in fact, all the promotional literature you produce needs to send the message that you are of the highest quality, and therefore the work you produce is the same.

During a credit crunch, it is important not to stint on your marketing, and certainly not to compromise on the quality of your message and the special offers you are broadcasting. Think quality and therefore deliver quality – it will always win in the end.

What goes into a newsletter?

When you write about a specific subject in your newsletter, the best way is to break it down into its basic components, and explain it simply using everyday language. This exercise is more difficult than it sounds, because the idea is to make it not only interesting, but to appeal to as many readers as possible to gain their trust and form relationships with them. By breaking down a subject, it will then lend itself to a number of other subjects which will become fodder for future articles.

Do a postcard campaign to gain interest and increase your readership. This is cheaper than creating a large quantity of the first edition of your newsletter and potentially losing most of them to an uninterested audience. The postcard campaign would have to be run over a series, as in today’s society not everyone responds immediately to information, they may need to be coerced into your way of thinking, seduced into the benefits of your profession, and stimulated by fascinating facts that they may not have thought of before. Sometimes it can take several goes to gain a follower.

Please don’t bore your readers too much about your business (this may sound unkind, but people are notoriously self-centered, and only think in terms of what is in it for them). You could easily explain the various features of your company through the benefits it offers, by writing about successful case studies, funny stories with good endings, witty and entertaining information articles about certain subjects you want to get across, special offers that cannot be resisted, competitions to raise awareness, ‘try before you buy’ offers to get them across your threshold…

Selecting certain pages for particular subjects is a good idea, because if you are going to make your newsletter a regular feature, people will like to look at a particular page first (like as for the local newspaper the sports section, the horoscopes, the letters page, the classified ads, for example) before reading the remainder of the newsletter. Keeping a consistency will help your readers in gaining confidence, and they will then look forward to the next issue. It’s like a supermarket that always has its basics like milk and bread, but the way there will offer all sorts of more provocative products to entice their interest.

But it is all very well giving them all this wonderful information if you don’t get anything in return. The idea is to get more people to try what your organisation has to offer. Therefore you must provide special offers that have a time dependent call to action. These must be worth the reader’s while, maybe even a lost leader to get them to sample what you have to offer them. Usually if you do a really good job, it will sell itself and you will get more customers. I say time dependent because if you leave it open ended, the lack of urgency will disappear from their busy minds and the opportunity will be lost or forgotten.

Why not create a blog as an archive medium for all the really important or successful features and articles of your newsletter. Because it is a blog, it would be frequently visited by the ‘internet spiders’ compared to that of a website, which can wait weeks for a visitation. The more frequent the postings, the more often the spiders visit. These postings could have links to your website or any other internet based information, which again would raise awareness and click value of your website, because it is not only spiders who roam the web and click on links but people too.

Create a sign-up form on the homepage of your website to increase your newsletter membership. You could have past copies in pdf form on the newsletter page, which readers could download if they’ve lost their original copy, or interested future subscribers to see what it is like. Again the spiders trawl the pdfs, so more info is passed onto the internet, encouraging more visits to your website, blog and sign up forms, especially if you include web links in the newsletter.

How clearly do you describe your business?

One of the most difficult things in networking is adequately describing your business so that your listener’s eyes don’t glaze over. With some networking groups you only get 60 seconds to give your pitch, which is actually a blessing in disguise. It makes you concentrate your mind on the most important parts, enabling you to condense your ideas into a few concise and well-chosen words.

But be aware of speaking value to your audience. Waffling on about unimportant details will cloud your description and waste your opportunity. Pin-point the areas that concern your customers the most, analyze exactly what they need in this present economic climate, and once you’ve understood their pain, offer a solution that cannot be ignored and highlighted as your USP to stand above your competitors.

For example, I wish to bring to your attention the importance of good design in promotional literature. There are various elements which are ignored because they are either considered as ‘old fashioned’ or are not properly taught, as they require what is termed as ‘having an eye’ for placement and positioning of text and images.

Today’s world is forever getting faster, and our brains haven’t time to stop and analyze subjects at length like they did 20 years ago. Concepts need to be understood in a nano-second, and this recognition will either result in taking action or being rejected. Multiple promotions are required to drive a message home, usually in various methods to avoid repetition, as on-the-spot decisions or reactions are rare.

The main element is the importance of margins. The eye needs to be navigated towards its passage across the page, guiding it to the relevant areas to aid comprehension. This cannot be achieved if the margins are too narrow or non-existant (as with bleeds and images set outside of grids) as is the wont with many ‘modern’ designs. Misunderstanding the use of ‘white space’ and therefore cramming in as much information as possible into the space will not enable the reader to fully understand the message and another opportunity will be lost.

In marketing terms, this concept could also be stressed by not having too many words in your promotional literature. The old adage ‘less is more’ results in summarising your message into a concise select number of words or phrases, especially if they have a ‘benefits’ bent rather than ‘features’, and will enable skimmers and scanners to ‘get’ your point quickly in this fast moving world of ours. They maybe will be able to retain the information somewhere, and remember the concept when it is presented to them again soon afterwards. Don’t expect instant recognition or action, people need to be coerced or seduced into your way of thinking, all aided by expert design and pin-pointed copywriting.

The importance of margins

Margins and white space

A colleague recently showed me her portfolio, which I admired appropriately, but something didn’t seem quite right – and then I got it – there was an inconsistency of edge space, the space around the outside of each piece of work. This lack of awareness within this area of design can be disturbing, as its purpose is to draw the eye inwards and navigate it where it needs to go. This breathing space, created by the margins (or borders) surrounding the page, provide a sense of both protection and presentation within its frame.

Let’s consider an example of cordon bleu served on a large white plate. Typically served in small portions, the food is aesthetically placed to unconsciously please the eye and draw attention to itself. The presentation revels in the juxtaposition of colour, shape and flavour, culminating in gourmet gratification.

Alternatively, if the meal was just slumped in the middle of your plate, unceremoniously swimming in gravy, would you be encouraged to eat it? Potatoes don’t appreciate balancing precariously close to the rim, rubbing shoulders with a steak that looms menacingly over vegetables cowering in a corner somewhere.

Design should not suffer the same consequences, and this was brought home when some leaflets I had designed were termed ‘crowded’. In spite of containing a lot of information, this was no excuse for clutter. I had adhered to my principles of allowing plenty of margin around the outside, but had neglected what was in the middle.

The answer was to adjust the font to a thinner, cleaner version, only slightly reducing the size of the words, adjust the leading to rearrange line positioning and enlarge the margins while preventing the words becoming crammed up to the edge. The overall effect was clean and crisp, creating more space while not overpowering the design.

If you would like to know more about how margins can affect your work, go ask Alice!

Simplicity in website design

I was invited by a local school to come and talk about their website. It was quite a good website as primary school websites go, but it did need some direction and modernisation.

School websites ideally should contain three areas: a brochure style department based on the prospectus; some official pages that contain necessary information required by OfSTED, the LA and the DCSF; and a fun section based on the children’s contributions, with safe links to other child-friendly sites.

Simplicity was also the order of the day, with a basic design which reflects the ethos of the school, as well as its corporate image, uniform colour and surrounding area. There are many sites that offer templates for schools, but apart from there being some terrible designs, you can’t lump schools into pre-determined categories, neither should they be fluffy, animated, cartoon-like or just plain ugly.

Navigation (accompanied by breadcrumbs) should be extremely simple, and as in one of my school designs, colour coded. You should (nearly – hence the breadcrumbs) be able to get to another area of the site via colours, shapes or motifs which are easily recognised by the children. Each site will evolve organically, as that is the nature of school sites, so a mechanism to enable growth in keeping with the recognition facilities is vital.

Keep to very simple link icons or graphics, with absolutely no flash or other technology gimmicks cluttering up the place. School servers are notoriously slow, so anything that aids a quick download is much appreciated. Also, for some reason, school monitors view sites differently than ordinary PCs, so this needs to be taken into consideration when compiling the design, and CSS and other similar techniques may not have the effect you are looking for.

The element of self-edit is something that is deemed essential for a school, hence why there are so many templates available. But I will be putting into place a method of creating a website for a school that can be maintained by themselves later (after a bit of training), made possible by keeping the whole design and process as simple and easy as possible.

How not to design your magazine

Which elements should you be aware of when producing a magazine? First is the layout and presentation that enables readability, second is its content and reputation for good value, and third is its readership and distribution.

Believe it or not, a magazine certainly benefits from being properly designed. Some are churned out by amateurs using a desktop publishing package downloaded from the internet, producing a collection of pages stapled together with pictures, page numbers and the odd headline.

Avoid cramming your pages up to the hilt with content with no regard for margins or columns. The result is a lack of space so the newsletter layout is unable to breathe, and provides an overall sense of clutter, impacting on the readability factor and easy access to the information required.

Magazines can easily be very busy publications, full of colour and conflicting designs, bombarding the poor reader so they are confused and overwhelmed. The smaller sized publications, such as the A5 versions, are not a very big space to work with, especially if you are including advertising, and particularly if you are typesetting for a customer who wants absolutely everything squeezed into a quarter page.

One thing that always makes me sigh is terrible front covers, especially those community magazines that have a sponsor or major advertiser on the front. As it’s the first thing a reader sees (generally), so wouldn’t a better designed version do more justice, not only to the advertiser, but also the magazine as well? Don’t stick with just the banner containing the magazine’s title (plus issue date and the name of the organisation) emblazoned across the top. Remember consistency creates professionalism. And the same goes for the back too – after all, what people see on the outside will also reflect what’s in the inside.

Images are important to maintain interest and emphasise a point, but use these with care. Don’t straddle pictures over columns to create unsightly word wrapping and without ample surrounding space. Get your photos suitably processed (such as correct sizing, converting to CMYK for printing, adapting to the correct dpi [dots per inch], lightening and fading facilities and colour conversions) to maintain quality. Avoid clipart like the plague as it only cheapens your publication, but finding a tasteful cartoonist is a bonus.

Getting a professional to design your magazine may be expensive initially, but the design factors will become costworthy in drawing in advertisers and increasing readership. And once the first issue has been completed, it’s generally easier to produce the next, therefore reducing the costs involved. Quality of print is also vital: don’t spoil your publication with smudges and misalignments – this doesn’t look good to the reader, and is not appreciated by the advertisers. Inexpensive flimsy paper (and also gloss finishes) can look cheap and nasty, and poor quality of colour, artwork and images result in the same reaction. Maintain your professional reputation by providing good quality from the beginning.

Start stocking up for stocking-fillers

Ah, September, a time for a new start!

My website has had a revamp and I’m starting out in my new venture in combining design with marketing to see what wonderful explosions that will create.

Meanwhile I have included a picture of some chocolate that was kindly made for me by Graham Harding of My Little Wrapper (tel: 01276 33718) – I know the design is very plain, but that was because I didn’t want to detract from the message: you must give your customers something that they would want and is of value to them, not what you think they need. OK, chocolate may not be essential, but nearly everybody would want a piece, surely?

How this applies to your leaflets, brochures, etc, depends on your target market, the product or service you are promoting, the purpose of your message, and the over-all purpose of the leaflet – to get customers now; to arouse awareness of your brand; to capture all prospective customers whether or not they are have an immediate interest; to act as a forerunner or teaser for something bigger in the future; the list could be endless.

Starting thinking about the message you are giving out – is it only banging on about how wonderful you are or your company is, and not concentrating on your customer? Could you turn your features around into benefits so that your customer will start to really understand what you can do for them? Don’t you think the first thing your customers should see is something to appeals to them, not yourself or your organisation?

Hey – I’ve just noticed the first thing you see on the chocolate is my name and logo – so I’m not practicing what I’m preaching – but make sure you don’t fall into that trap too!

More on chocolate in another post…

How to make a postcard campaign work

At a ‘Power Breakfast’ this morning I gave some tips away about how to design a postcard marketing campaign with marketing in mind.

In today’s world it’s not enough to design a pretty postcard and send it out to lots of people to see if any of them will buy from you.  Here are six of various factors that need to come into play:

First, assess your target market. Are you sending your postcard to the right people? Don’t waste your precious marketing material on the wrong kinds of business or individuals.

Second, how are you going to get a return from your campaign? The take-up rate for mail-outs is usually 0.5% – will that be enough? Is it cost effective? Would you like to capture your potential clients’ details so you can communicate with them later?

Third, when putting together a postcard campaign, consider these other elements. Do you have a good call to action your prospective clients will react to? Do you have something of value to offer them that they can’t refuse, but doesn’t quite give them everything? Do you have a method of collecting names and emails into a database for later use?

Fourth, if you have a website, could you set up a ‘landing page’ specifically for this postcard campaign? This is a stand-alone webpage that re-emphasises the information on your postcard, provides a large telephone number for contact, and displays a sign-up form to download a special incentive or free gift as part of your call to action. Its main purpose is to capture their details or get them to call you to find out more.

Fifth, the postcard itself will have to use the AIDA marketing technique, which consists of a catchy yet relevant headline to draw attention to the main message, bullet points of your benefits (not features) that are in the customer’s interest, a call to action by offering a juicy incentive, and clear and large contact details. A bright and colourful picture will help too.

Sixth, once you’ve got their email details, then you can use them to set up a relationship with them through an e-newsletter. It is quite normal to have to contact prospective clients several times in many formats before they come round to buying from you. Keeping regular updates on how your company is doing, any new products/concepts/services/etc on offer, crowing about any successes or achievements, testimonials from satisfied clients, descriptions of how you overcame particular problems and what results it had – the list is endless as long as it’s relevant, readable and entertaining. Make sure your prospective clients will read and look forward to the next issue, and if you include more call to actions within your posts, you will eventually get more sales.

If you want to know more, I will setting up a series of e-books based on combining design with marketing (or marketing with design – take your choice) which will explain this in more detail. Watch this space. Meanwhile, visit my website and join up to my newsletter to find out more about what I do.

HTML versus content in newsletters

So many e-newsletters are designed using HTML it is now assumed this is the norm. But does HTML contribute to your newsletter getting more likely to read?

The e-newsletters I most enjoy reading (which seem to be published by successful businesses) are quite plain, just with a logo and a few pictures. Content seems to be more important, with a highly relevant message combined with a call-to-action. Frequency depends on whether they have a valid point to promote or publicise, and always contain important information, impelling action points, contextual links to relevant landing pages, unrefusable special offers, good business or lifestyle advice, and clear, noticeable contact details.

In other words, does content take precedent over design?

Snail mail versus failed e-mail

My friend told me that she recently had an email from one of her newsletter recipients saying that she hadn’t heard from her lately and she thought she had stopped trading.

This was very worrying for my friend. How many other people hadn’t got their newsletters each month? OK, she wasn’t using an autoresponder, which would have made her life a bit more laborious, but the problem was that she was unaware that the emails hadn’t reached their destination.

One suggestion I gave her was to occasionally alternate with a paper newsletter, or even a newsletter postcard as explained in my previous post. It would help to maintain the interest from her subscribers, guarantee getting read and provide another focal point to her communications.

This leads to the question: can you rely on the internet for your communication? Especially nowadays with over-full in-boxes stuffed to the gills with spam and other missives. How do you know your e-newsletters are getting read and not swamped, forgotten or deleted? Sure, you may be able to track that they’ve been opened if you use an autoresponder, but that doesn’t mean they’ve even been scanned for interesting content yet alone properly scrutinised.

What used to happen back in the dark ages before email? Paper newsletters were used to impart news, tell stories and crow about your company. They were a media for advertising and articles. The news was both past, present and future. They were read without eye-strain. OK, you did rely on the Post Office and it cost to send them, but they were more likely to be read at the recipient’s leisure, more than once and passed around our friends and contacts. They were not as frequent, so were looked forward to the next issue. They were not deemed ‘a pain’ when they plopped onto our doormats.

The most important elements of a newsletter are: relevance, of interest to the reader, well designed for readability, legible, captivating and newsworthy, excellent copy, good spelling and grammar, striking pictures, grabbing headlines, and being well read. Can e-newsletters lay claim to all these qualities?

Colours, carstickers and pigs!

At a networking meeting this morning I had quite a number of thoughts come to me. One was stimulated by some vibrantly pink leaflets one lady was handing out. They were very noticeable, especially when everybody seems to be sporting one amongst their piles of business cards they were clutching beneath their cappuccinos. Maybe colour is important when it comes to being noticed.  An eminent marketing adviser told me last week that he sends out bright orange postcards with handwritten notes to follow on from his telephone information calls.  He doesn’t expect the readers to remember everything that is written on them, but that the colour should make such an impression he is remembered as ‘the man who sends out those orange postcards’. They are ideal, of course, for those fervent searches for his information amongst piles of other papers.

One business card I was given I noticed had a shape of a pig stamped out of it. Of course I soon realised it matched the pig logo, but this ‘hole’ marked it out from the sea of other business cards that get stuffed into your pocket during networking meetings. It belonged to Sue Wilson and her discount club. We soon got talking about marketing ideas, which led to the concept of how to get your website noticed without wasting your money on advertising. I asked her whether she had considered a car sticker, and suggested she designed one consisting of pictures of pigs displaying her website URL across the back window of her car.  The vision of a procession of five large pink omnivores nose to tail across her rear view tickled her imagination, and she promised to send me a picture of them once she’d had them done. Do you have a fun image you could use to display your URL on your car?

How many more ways are there to use a postcard?

Don’t think of a postcard as just a medium for direct mail. It is so versatile that if you are able to let your imagination loose you could adapt it for so many different purposes.

For example, in my last post I suggested breaking your business into its component parts, or small, bite-sized chunks and putting each of them onto a postcard.  Why? – so your customers can have the opportunity to truly understand what it is you do. There may be some factors that they haven’t associated with you before, leading to a “I didn’t know you did that” scenario. Adapt it to play on their curiosity – tempt them into asking questions and lead them down different avenues – allow them to explore more possibilities.  Display them for individual selection, or present them as a package in their own special folder.

Use a postcard to promote a new service or product you may be developing. To have a better impact target your postcards to a choice number of people who you know will be interested, and follow it up with a sample of your product, hand delivered in special packaging, to kindle their interest even further (especially if it is either useful or of good value).

If you’re holding a seminar or talk to publicise your service, send out postcards in a ticket-format with a tear off slip or stamped self-addressed reverse, combined with a time-dependent call to action with a free gift or another incentive to guarantee returns.

Spread your good news with a postcard – crow about your accomplishments, publish a glowing testimonial, share your fantastic results to impress your customers – let people know that you, your business and your product/service are succeeding!

Use it for PR purposes – newspaper editors might notice something different in their postbags rather than boring A4 press-releases. (And don’t forget to hit them between the eyes with a mind-blowing headline and make your contact details really clear to get that call!)

Use the stamped self-addressed idea for a marketing questionnaire.  Get some feedback from your client base, both past and prospective, to find out how to improve and provide a better service.  (Don’t forget to offer gifts and incentives by a particular date to get a response.)

Are there any more?  Of course, we haven’t explored postcard newsletters – marketing ideas from the USA.  More in a future blog…

Pandora and the Video

I had my video done last week by Gillian Gee of Oceanwake Services Ltd.  Gillian has an excellent technique of getting the right kind of material out of you through her interviewing techniques, and combined with her superb editing skills with her latest equipment and technology, I am hoping for a piece of visual media I shall be happy to show everybody!

One of the things she managed to worm out of me was my idea about promotional literature being a  source of curiosity. It should be designed so that the reader not only gets the message, but wants to know more by being enticed into opening and reading the remainder of the leaflet. The reader should be ‘navigated’ through the material by the design, which should be clear, concise and uncluttered and have a good structure and curiosity factor. A cleverly constructed headline especially formulated to grab the reader’s attention, deliver the content’s gist succinctly and maintain interest in the product, should be backed up with a relevant and striking image, quick and easy delivery of your promotion’s benefits adapted particularly for scanning abilities, an enticing incentive to take action to find out more or make a purchase, and your contact details clear, large and visually marked for easy absorption.

Stimulating the reader into becoming Pandora with the leaflet as her box is the first step towards getting your message across – hopefully this time being good news and not heralding the end of the world!

Websites – are they like clocks?

There are two different kinds of web designers. In spite of those who combine these traits and would therefore be classed as a ’super web designer’ (a rare breed), most lesser mortals are usually one of the following: either a web designer or a web programmer.

What’s the difference?  Well, let’s look at it through an antique clock.

You go to an antique fair and you see this fabulous travelling clock. It’s just the right size for your mantel-piece, made up with walnut veneer for the case and decorated with gold plating on the hands and face. The beautiful paintings inside just add to the finish.  Wonderful.  But just one thing, it doesn’t work.

So you take it to a specialised clock-maker. They look at it carefully all over and agree to mend the mechanism.  The carefully clean all the cogs, springs and internal workings and they discover that not only does it keep time, but it has a chime with quarters and an alarm. To make it work they had to replace some new cogs, re-balance the weights and adjust the tiny hammers, all in keeping within the clock’s original design.

The web designers are like the craftsmen who created the clock’s face and case, with it’s beautiful workmanship and sumptuous materials – what you see and appreciate.  The web programmers are like the clock restorers, who reinstalled the internal workings, made the clock keep perfect time and woke up it’s delicate click and enchanting chime – what you hear and understand.

A website is like a beautiful travelling clock which needs to have both sets of web experts to bring out its true qualities, to educate, enthrall, entertain and encourage its readers to understand its contents and therefore your business.

What’s my part in this?  Well, watch this space because I am looking to combine my web design (the clock face) with a web programmer (the cogs and springs) to create the wonderful websites especially for you!

Postcard Pointers for Pertinent Promotions

This is my version of the subject on postcards mentioned a few posts ago:

Take another look at the humble postcard. Size A6, although appears small, is actually quite versatile (and fits nicely into a C6 envelope if necessary), and even though it’s dimensions restrict the amount of content you can fit on it, there is no reason why you should stick to only one at a time.

Set up a series of postcards as part of a promotional exercise. Think of a story you would like to share with your prospective customers, or isolate valuable items or points you would like to tell them about. Put together a coherent message in separate episodes using a connective theme, target your audience, decide on a timeframe, chose which day they will receive your postcards, and remember to get them professionally designed and printed.

You will make it easier for your target market to cope by sending out your mail-shot in manageable bite-sized amounts, because at the end of your campaign you will need to call each recipient to ask them if they have received your postcards, find out what they thought of them, ask if they struck a chord with their business and whether they interested in what you are offering.  Restrict your mail-outs to a small number at a time to make the follow-up a little easier and less daunting.

Using this slow trickle of reminding advertising will give your potential customers a chance to remember you, especially if the theme is clever, relevant, amusing or eye-catching.  When you do make contact, remember to listen carefully to their answers and take their lead to arrange a meeting with them to discuss their part in your campaign.

What to include in your postcard

The beauty of the postcard is that it can be used in so many ways.  Both sides can be filled with information, or one side only with a picture that is relevant, coercive, stimulating, funny, different or influential. The other face could be designed like a postcard with separate areas for the message and address.  If you’re doing a long-term campaign remember ‘more is less’, especially if your message is thought-provoking, contains an incentive-laden cliff-hanger, or maybe includes a series of clues to culminate in the final issue.

An excellent headline is vital to draw attention to your reader.  Make it short and snappy, rememberable by being amusing, using gimmicks like alliteration or playing on a colloquial phrase, or posed in a question leading to an affirmative answer relevant to your purpose. A sub-heading or catch-phrase will help emphasise it further, or even explain or support particularly ‘clever’ examples.

Advertise your solution to your customers’ pain by highlighting your business benefits, arranged in a scanable format with jargon-free, simply digestible words. Add a time-induced call to action, laced with gifts or incentives, to keep the momentum going.  And make sure your contact details are always highly visible, just in case they don’t want to wait until the end of your campaign.

Presentation is always important, as good quality and well designed publicity reflects well on the professionalism of your company. Care should be taken on the materials used, colours and fonts for modern and noticeable effect, and layout for efficient use of space. If you want to know more, then just go ask Alice!

Postcard Possibilities

Having browsed through my blog list, I came across this posting about postcards, which I would like to share with you: http://www.businessofdesignonline.com/profiting-from-postcards/

I’ve always liked postcards – they’re such a versatile media to work with. You could pack all your details onto both sides, or design them so they can be popped into the post with the traditional stamp in the corner. They can be enclosed in a C6 envelopes (found in a myriad of colours to match your design) or just have your details on one side to leave on side-tables or counters as walk-past publicity.

Why not try the concept from the post above? Setting up a serial of postcards spread over several weeks to get your message across in small bite-sized pieces is an effective way of drawing attention to youself – I was once bombarded in the same way by a printer touting for my custom and I certainly knew who they were when they called me later to see if I had received them. They succeeded in making an impression because I have remembered them to make this post now!

And watch out for my own new postcard design, just getting it ready to hit the streets very soon!