How to effectively combine on-line and leaflet marketing campaigns

Adapt your marketing campaign to collect customers’ contact details, either to buy from you immediately, or to communicate, educate and persuade towards a purchase in the future. Use forward planning to understand how your customers think in relation to what you are offering them.

Leaflets campaigns use headlines to attract attention, which need to be extremely relevant and empathise with your customers’ problems. The same applies to advertising in magazines and other publications, and also on-line, such as pay per click, banner advertising, article writing, commenting on forums and social networking. Concentrate on your customers’ needs and wants and how you can help them, and do market research to find out suitable keywords for your headlines, or what is being typed into search engines.

Focus on one particular scenario and publicise it: create a perfect customer, give them a troublesome problem and provide a fantastic solution, and then market only that. Your customers will find it much easier to relate and adjust their way of thinking towards your perfect customer, rather than you relating to all of them.  Use the marketing techniques outlined in Parts I to IV.

Once you’ve got your customers’ attention, it’s important to collect their contact details before they disappear. Create a compelling call to action, such as an introductory discount, an explanatory video or audio, a ‘special report’ or an offer of free time or consultancy, and direct your customers to a telephone number allocated for this campaign, or to a special landing page on your website.

Website landing pages should have one function only: to get warm leads to sign up. Only use persuasive text to lead up to the sign up form, and delete any other links as distractions. Collect names, email addresses and other relevant data, but limit the number of fields to encourage a response. Set up an autoresponder behind your landing page to collect these details into a safe and secure database, to immediately deliver your call to action, and to create email messages to act as follow-ups. These will help to reinforce your message, provide necessary additional information, remind customers to act upon your special offer and allow links to other aspects of your business.

Some companies use e-newsletters or e-zines for more leisurely communication with their warm leads once the autoresponder emails have finished. (You could also send out paper newsletters if it’s more suitable for your customer base.) They have the advantage of being more visual, information based and provide long-term persuasion tactics through further education and exploration on the many parts of your business. After all, you may have used only one specific area to capture their interest, but by revealing the remainder of your business it may encourage them and their colleagues to learn more about other products or future offers and be persuaded to buy again.

Do they waste so much on marketing?

Sometimes it astounds me how much companies are prepared to spend in order to ‘market’ their products or services.

I usually enjoy getting packages through the post, especially when I know I’ve ordered something, like a book I’ve been recommended or a new gadget, and our postwoman rang the bell this morning to give me a surprise package. But it turned out to be a business card box containing one business card and a toffee rattling around in it from a printer who was touting his wares.

Eh? Another cryptic stance at some marketing which doesn’t ring home. I didn’t recognise the name, so this kind gesture was lost on me, though it did raise a smile. What a waste of postage and jiffy bag (though a good box for me to put bits in). Was I supposed to ‘feel’ the card and appreciate the ‘quality’ of the printing, but then don’t they all have that?

The other day we had a full set of Next Directory catalogues left outside our house. My daughter was delighted, but we hadn’t got a clue who they were meant for, the most likely recipient having moved away. We are amazed at a) how many hardback catalogues there were, b) the weight of the numerous pages, c) the sumptuous print quality and d) the cost of postage! We also wondered if Next really managed to recouperate the cost of producing these luxury products from its directory subscribers at such an obvious outlay. I knew someone who was involved in maintaining the quality production of these volumes, and it was not taken lightly.

Staples also provides another communication to plop onto our doormat. This arrives in various forms, from a very thin 16 page magazine to a fully binded catalogue. OK, the production certainly isn’t as high quality as the Next Directories, but the frequency is astounding (and noted they do use some clever marketing and upselling tactics), which again leads us to wonder if all this production actually makes it worth while? Obviously, or they wouldn’t be doing it – would they?

The purpose of this post is to question whether these companies calculate that their activity is successful in bringing in enough sales to make it worth while. What I mean is, does the quality of the Next Directories guarantee more purchasing power from its subscribers, or the frequency of the Staples magazines jolt more positive responses? And because these established businesses are doing it, and giving the impression that it works, is it the right thing to do for your business?

My reply is ‘no’, because unless you have an established name like Next or Staples, it would be a waste of money and effort. It is much better to market your organisation through relationship and expertise building, providing value and good advice to exactly the right target market at exactly the right place and time. This may be slow at first, but if you can maintain a good base of satisfied customers, ask for referrals and other viral marketing tactics, broadcast your successes and valuable tips where many can see them, publicise snippets of what you can do on social networking, and create a thoroughly interactive website used in conjunction with focused promotion campaigns, then you can market your business without wasting money.

Get your adverts to sing!

A client of mind proudly showed me one of her advertisements which had been placed in a magazine. This was relevant to me because I had designed that advert for her. Her comments were that the quality of her ad seemed to be much better than the other ads, why did her colours ‘sing out’ more, and what caused the 3D effect?

Very simple, I had converted the images in the artwork into CMYK before I created the pdf and sent it to the magazine editors. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and these are the colours printers use for their inks. By combining these colours together in a myriad of ways, they can create every colour under the sun.

The other ads looked flat and uninteresting because they were still in RGB, which stands for red, green and blue, the ‘light’ colours used on television screens and, of course, computers. If a publisher has to print a piece of artwork still in RGB, it appears flat is because the printer’s machines have to convert RGB into something more usable, and the colours aren’t compatible with CMYK. You don’t get a sense of ‘depth’, vibrancy and trueness of colour if the pdf is not properly prepared for printing.

Another factor was that the ad was exactly the right size for the space so there was no distortion, and suitable margins were allocated to navigate the eye into the ad, not away from it. I have written before about allowing sufficient white space in artwork, and my client also noticed that as her ad had a white background the content was therefore much easier to read. The ad was not cluttered by trying to fit everything in at once, and as she had booked a series of ads over a number of months, she had maintained the interest of her readers (and hopefully potential customers) with something different in every issue.

Another technique I had used for the copy or words of the ad was AIDA, the marketing method which means ‘attention, interest, desire and action’. Her advert began with a question which marked out her customer’s pain, and the sub-headline stated the solution which her company provided. Bullet points highlighted the benefits she could offer, and a call to action combined with clear, obvious contact details finished everything off nicely.

If you are thinking of placing an advertisement in a magazine or journal, and want it to stand out above the rest, then all you need to do is go ask Alice!

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.

Desktop publishing versus graphic design

What is Desktop Publishing?

Desktop Publishing (DTP) is the placing and positioning of text and graphics on the page to produce paper publications such as newsletters, magazines, brochures, books, etc.  It can be adapted to create other paper publicity such as leaflets, flyers, postcards, networking material, business stationery, adverts, cards, posters, signs and other visual communication.

How is it different from graphic design?

Graphic design uses art and creative forces to combine shapes, colours, text, pictures, imagination, fashion and other images to produce new graphics and art, such as graphics, logos, illustration, concepts and design. It conjures up something new specifically for the client. The design is then used to create paper or web marketing material.

Whereas DTP takes the designed graphics, logos, illustrations and concepts to combine it with text, layout and other materials onto the page.  Desktop publishers excel in arranging the material available in the most efficient, effective and attractive method ready for the printing process.  It is mainly paper based, but other media can be used and explored, such as plastics, clothing or whatever.

So in a nutshell, graphic design creates design, desktop publishing takes that design and puts it into a paper format!