How Do I Get More Business? Where’s The Magic Wand?

Source: Flickr

Here it is again the end of the relaxing summer. Here comes the bills for school, back to school accessories, the count down to the holiday gifts and the searching out of that perfect holiday getaway. The common theme is Money and plenty of it. There was a time when any business just needed a sign outside their door and poof, people came in to buy from you. Twenty or thirty years ago it was unheard of for a lawyer, doctor, dentist and accountant to advertise for business. These were safe professions. Get into grad school and you were set for a comfortable life. Those days are over! Welcome to the cold hard life of the twenty first century.
Yes there is competition these days in every field but the successful people are those who don’t sit back and get complacent. What this means today is that you must reward your present customers and give them a reason to stay with you and also entice new customers to give you a try. The first problem is dealing with your existing customers. Never take a customer for granted. A long with great service people appreciate when you let them know they are special and not just a number. Salespeople used to take customers out to lunch. Outside of a handful of people, most people I know have incorporated their lunch hour into their standard working hours. If you do take a lunch, chances are it is a quick one and you’re back to the office or doing some personal errands. How then do you thank your existing customers. The market for promotional products has exploded in the last 15 years. Buying buyers today is not acceptable, what is acceptable is giving them branded gifts or moderate token gifts at periodic times like holiday periods or product launches.
If you want to get into the game, you must come up with clever give away which is useful to the recepient and which doesn’t scream your compnay name to the point that they won’t use it. The most repeat impact you can have is with coffee mugs or calendars. Even with computer programs a lot of people still like to have a nice agenda where they can write important names, that won’t be wiped out with a computer virus. There are literally close to one million different items available. On my company web site you can browse over 700,000 items. My web address is www.solutionsink4u.com. How about giving out a thank you gift for long time patronage. Think of something personal they might like and have the packaging branded, either with a label or custom bag or box. Today the biggest companies, The Gap, Sharper Image, Coach, Movado, Mont Blanc, American Apparel, Bella, Cutter and Buck, Cross, and Nike are all in the promotional product industry. Hotels have gotten in the act giving their better clients umbrellas when it’s raining and customized chocolates on their bed before they retire. Going the extra mile really does help you retain your customer. Everybody must be competitive but you don’t have to be the cheapest. People remember the nice touches.
The second use is to attract new customers. Here you have the conventional way of advertising, newspapers, magazines, flyers, direct mail and cold calling. These are effective but tend to be expensive and the return rate you get for your investment tends to be low. A mass mailer with a response rate of 1.5% is considered a success. Consider for a moment that 98.5% of the people ignored your message. For the large companies it’s built into their advertising budgets. Tricks for medium and small business are to target smaller more defined prospects and spend more per prospect. The overall cost of your campaign will be much smaller and the response rate can be as high as 10 to 15%. An effective way to peak interest is to offer a specific discount to some or to come up with a contest with a prize where no purchase is neccessary. Contests are fun, people always like to win something and win or lose they tend to remember your company’s name or message associated with the contest. Today there are exciting ways to hold a contest on the web. People like the annonimity, have the freedon to register on their timetable and tend to see all the other stuff you have on your web site. Create your website in a way like an IKEA store, where the customer must see all your product before they can leave.
Other ways to capture this defined prospect market is to have give aways at industry conventions. The captive market are your ideal customers . Firstly give aways bring people to your booth and secondly nice give aways are retained in their possession for a long time, reinforcing your company name. There are products today to meet any budget and are well worth the investment. if you land 1 or 2 good customers because of the promotional product it tends to pay for itself, ten fold at least.
If these ides make sense, but you still are unsure of what to do next, give me a call at 514-337-2238 or visit us on our web site at www.solutionsink4u.com, yes we have a contest on our web page. We practice what we preach. Best of luck with your magic wand.
Steven Schneidman

Promote Your Tee Shirt Business with Mugs

Source: Flickr

If you are looking into starting your own T-shirt business or already own one, let me ask you a question. Are you promoting your business enough? Are you taking the extra steps to promote and advertise to help your company grow? You might think you are, but there is always more you can do to help your business.

For instance, promotional shirt printing mugs would be a great and useful way to advertise your service and reach new people in the community and worldwide as well. Some people do not think about taking the time to plan these kinds of things out where potential customers or even potential future business associates can see the idea in action and make a decision on it being a help to them.

Promotional shirt printing mugs would be easy and affordable for you to do. You can do some research to find the best place to buy bulk mugs. Another option is to locate a business that will copy your logo to the mug for you if you do not have the time and funds to do it.

You want to create an eye catching logo and phrase that fully states what you do, i.e., shirt printing, and be sure to put your website or a number where they can reach you. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing something you are interested in and having no clue where to go to find out about it. What do you do when you get your promotional shirt printing mugs and have no idea what to do next? First you want to make a list of how to go about getting them out. Do you drop them off at local businesses? Do you leave them in your front office for people to pick up?

The answer is something only you can decide. You can search around and decide the best way to go about doing it. Dropping them off at certain places would be a good option. Be sure to fill the mug with your business cards so that people can take one when they are visiting the place you left the mug.

Promotional shirt printing mugs are just a start to promoting your business further. There are many things you can do and will want to continue to do. When people see or hear your ad many times yet never go in, that doesn’t mean they will forget about you.

When and if something happens where they need your services, they will remember your ad and automatically want to try you out. It never hurts to overdo it sometimes because that will get you noticed and help you continue to grow in your business. It will also help you come up with new ways to expand your services and to the areas you provide your services to.

Give promotional shirt printing mugs a try, if all else fails and it doesn’t turn out like you wanted remember what you learned in the process and how much that will benefit you.

Increasing the business with the help of Promotional Gifts

Source: Flickr

Gifts are loved by one and all. Gifts are a way of expressing gratitude and marketing gifts are given to customer to thank them and most of the customers are more than happy to receive gifts from companies they pay patronage. The thank you gifts cannot only be presented to existing customers but also to potential customers when they try a new product of the company. This would encourage them to buy other products, which will increase the company sales. This practice can be made more advantageous by making it as marketing and branding strategy, which helps in expanding business along with earning customer goodwill. To make it marketing oriented, a lot of planning should be put it in so as to not to loose its essence.

Sending promotional gifts is a means of rewarding clients to appreciate their kind cooperation through out the years; they will make customers feel that they are valued. Flyers are discarded the moment they are received, and are seldom read. But when a person is gifted with something that he/she can use, there is a probability that they will not only enjoy it, but they will also keep it for sometime, might be for several years and until the time they have it, they will remember the company. One of the better methods is to print the name of the company on the gift. This doesn’t involve any strategy and can be implemented even if there is lack of imagination. Name and brand recognition can be established by getting the logo of the company or information of the company printed on the gift. This also helps build recognition among potential customers.

Also give the customers the gifts that last long. The longer the gift lasts the longer the customer will remember your company. Gifts like pen, key chain, coffee mug, calendar, refrigerator magnets, etc. which not only lasts forever but are something that is observed and used many times a day. There are certain gifts, which can fit the budget, promote marketing and at the same time serve the purpose of gift.

Calendars are one of the most opted gifts by small companies as promotional products. They aren’t expensive and are used year round. Following them are office supplies. Stationary tub, embedded pens, sticky pads and diaries containing the logo of the company are very good gift ideas too. Desktop accessories are the next best things. Things like pen stands, paperweight are hot giveaways.

For home gifts like fridge magnets, coffee mugs and thermo-flask make ideal gifts. They, too, get noticed many times a day. The good thing about them is they can be modeled in different colors, shapes and styles and can be unique when compared to other’s promotional products. And hence, they are more like collectible items. Innovation can increase the interest of the user in this regard.

Key chains are also something which is carried everywhere and they don’t even cost too much. Usually people use the promotional ones to store spare keys. T-shirts and cap are a bit expensive, but are worth the investment. They are usually worn outside and people around can easily sight the company’s name and logo and they function like a walking billboard.

Creativity is the key to selecting a right gift to market your and so is the money. The more the money invested, the better the gift, but the gift should be selected such that it earns maximum returns.

Branding Your Business To Make More Money

Source: Flickr

Branding your comapny should be the first thing a company does. You have to convince potential customers to buy from you. Very few people have a monopoly like Microsoft or Ebay, Everyone else need to steer business to their company or product. When people think about your company, what is their impression. For my company, Solutions Ink, I wanted to portray a fresh, professional, ease of use type of company whoose product meets their quality needs while helping their business. I wanted to portray Solutions Ink as always on the fore front of the printing and promotional product industry’s.
To achieve this I needed to tell potential customers of new and innovative products for the printing industry. Variable data, large format digital printing, digital printing with pantone colors, label and form combinations, magnet and form combinations and e-commerce ordering systems. How best to show customers then actually devise a campaign where the product you are trying to educate your customers about is sent out to them to give them ideas how to use this product to help their businesses. One campaign I organised was to compile a list of fashion retailers whoose logo’s were specific pantone colors that are not reproduced well in 4 color process printing. Today with 6,8 and 10 color presses you can print in 4 color process and 2 pantone colors quite easily. This keeps the integrity of the company’s logo intact in their big marketing or flyer campaigns. This is OK for large run printing jobs. The problem is that even for large chains, you tend to have regional sales in a small amount of stores. In store displays usually are done in small numbers and are printed digitally. Today there are certain digital presses that can insert pantone colors on top of the 4 color process printing. After devising a mock up campaign and targetting by variable data the buyers of these retail fashion chains, I was able to secure 2 large accounts for present and future business.
This technique can be applied to any industry. The key is to really now your product and the strengths of your company. The next step is to educate your customers on your company’s merits. Then you must reinforce your image constantly to stay in your existing customers mind, as well as peak the curiousity of potential new customers.
Once you have achieved this, giving out promotional products is a useful way of staying on their minds. The trick is to find a great promotional product, that fits you budget, is useful to the end user and doesn’t shout your name too boldly. Humour is a great way to have your customers keep your stuff. The items seen most times for an office person are calendars and coffee mugs. To be different in the Montreal Promotional Product market, Solutions Ink sent out to all existing customers a 14 ounze special mug which was imprinted with thermochromic ink. The ink is heat sensitive and evaporates on heat and returns on cold. With this you can print something underneath the thermochromic ink which is revealed when cold. On the outside we simply put the word STRESS in red over a black background. Most people who work know about stress. The humour side was that when you poured your hot coffee the message turned into stress free at Solutions Ink. A simple inexpensive idea that our customers really enjoyed and every time I stop at one of their offices I readily spot our mugs. On top of this I received 4 orders from these customers for these mugs with a different message for their customers.
Another great way for your company to be branded positively is to become associated with a worth while charity. Today we must give back to those less fortunate. Sponsering an event gives your company great exposure but the real treat is in knowing that you’ve helped others. Money is not the end all, all the time. A funny thing, helping others usually rewards yourself if not immediately some time in the future.
The trick is to plan out your actions. Research the market, research your company’s attributes and brand your company’s image positively and constantly. Following these steps should help your company stand out from the competition and make yourself more successful Best of luck. If you need help you can contact me at 514-337-2238 or visit us on the webb at www.solutionsink4u.com.
Steven Schneidman

Product Placement Makes Events Memorable

The CEO had just breezed through the office for his monthly back-office visit. Stopping briefly at Charli’s desk, he seemed to be mesmerized by the pumpkin shaped stress ball that had been sitting on Charli’s printer since she came back from the team-building seminar. The discussion soon turned to one about the value of team-building and how the CEO had been considering something similar for the senior managers.

“So, what was the name of the provider for your team building, Charli?” the CEO asked.

“Umm, I think it’s printed on the stress ball” observed a relieved Charli.

Who can really predict the power of product placement? If human nature follows its course, delegates on a workshop or seminar will return to their desk, file the event paperwork under “N” for “Never read again” and carry on with their normal lives. However, give them a gizmo, wotsit or doodah that has your logo branded on it and has some marginal functionality, they may well end up putting it on their desk or, if it’s clothing, wearing it. This form of advertising is not just the domain of Coca Cola and Nike, it can be applied to any brand.

The range of products to brand with your logo is enormous and includes everything from the ubiquitous coffee mugs, pens, mouse mats and memo holders to more expensive conference folders, USB flash memory keyrings, umbrellas and golfing jackets. Prices range from a few cents to $20 or $30 per item plus a setup cost which can be from $30 to $100 depending on the sophistication of the branding, so most budgets can handle some sort of promotional gift. Allow a month or more to have your gifts branded. Some simpler items with single color branding can be turned round inside a week; however it is always better to have time to check the quality.
Designing conversation pieces

Seminars, workshops and roadshows are prime candidates for cross-marketing your entire range of products and services. Where they are being used for in-company training, workshops can act as a vehicle for communicating company policy on a wide range of issues.

When your delegates arrive, when they break for coffee or break for lunch, there will always be some who may find small-talk and conversation difficult. Providing them with a combination of information leaflets, exhibition boards and perhaps an endless loop presentation on a small screen monitor may not only keep them occupied. This background activity could lead to additional sales, better communication and also act as a stimulus for conversation.

Although Charli had not consciously absorbed all of the information presented as a side-show at the seminar she attended, she was amazed just how much she had taken in at the subliminal level. For example, she was able to recall that there had been some mention of custom-designed seminars for senior teams and that the training company specialized in outdoor challenges for not-so-fit executives; managing to mention this without glancing at the CEO’s rather generous waistline.

Promotional Mugs

Source: Flickr

When you want someone to like you, associate yourself with something that they love. Take coffee for instance. How much of America, or the world for that matter, would still be asleep if it weren’t for this dark, smoky beverage?
Now coffee is messy without a receptacle. You can’t have coffee without a mug. Everyone knows that. Every morning a huge number of humans across the world seek solace in a mug of this steaming liquid. It makes us feel good, it wakes us up, and we consider ourselves debilitated without it.
We are also happy that it isn’t scalding our laps or streaming down our chins. The good feeling we have about coffee rubs off on the receptacle. No doubt about it.
Those of us who don’t have a special mug, wish we did and envy those brandishing theirs.
Now, whatever is emblazoned on this promotional mug of the world’s most popular beverage, is going to start enjoying some of the general good feeling emanating from the legendary coffee experience: every day, several times a day.
Here’s how it works: barely awake human gropes for the meaning of life in a promotional mug and starts to think that your company may just be related to all that is good. And if the connection fails first thing in the morning, then there’s always the lifesaving mug later that morning or early that afternoon.
Sooner or later the human makes the all-important emotional connection: coffee perks you up. Then there’s thought association; coffee perks one up, but so does ‘Joe Slows Wicked Wart Remedy’ or whatever you have cleverly custom printed on your promotional mugs.
Promotional mugs are a superior marketing tool to gain attention. Coffee makes you more alert, so by the time the drinker notices your name, he or she is wide awake and taking notes.
Promotional mugs come in every imaginable shape, size and form from the elegant Café Grande numbers to the humble bistro mug and the perennial travel receptacle. You can get them in plastic, ceramic or stainless steel. Some come with or without lids and others are insulated.
Having promotional mugs made is a simple procedure that can be done at the click of a mouse, online. Many companies have websites with catalogs that you can scroll through at your leisure and pricing to help you make your final decision.
When you find the style you want, check what the minimum quantity is to see that it fits your budget. A rule of thumb is that the most cost effective promotional mug offers seem to have a higher minimum quantity while the more costly items are sold in smaller quantities.
Prices for promotional mugs range from $2.35 for a fairly basic bistro mug to $7 and more for designer type insulated or stainless steel promotional mugs.

A Few Simple Ways To Promote A Website

Source: Flickr

When you are marketing your website, you have several choices. You can rely solely on the internet, or you can us a combination of online and offline promotion. Naturally, advertising online guides internet users to your site and they can easily browse the information, products or services that you have to offer. An offline approach, though, can also increase your traffic, particularly if you are targeting specific individuals or audiences. There are many different ways to promote your site. You can try one or two, or you may want to try them all.

Banner Advertising
A banner ad provides an enticing visual for the internet surfer which encourages them to click through to your site. Create your banner and distribute to a specific audience so that you can receive relevant traffic to your site. There are banner exchange programs that are quite effective, or you may trade links with another site that contains similar subject matter.

Get Your Name out There
Your website address should be on everything that you send out or hand out. Your email signature, letterhead, business cards, brochures and flyers should all have your web address. This increases your level of exposure and ignites a curiosity in people, leading them to visit your site. It is also a regular reminder for your site.

Online Contests
Many times, you can draw visitors to your site by running a sweepstakes or contest. Your visitors subscribe to an e-newsletter, complete a survey, fill out a questionnaire or register on your site to receive their free gift. You can offer something from your inventory, a gift certificate or an ecourse as the prize. Many people are very drawn to this type of contest.

Article Advertising
When it comes to the internet, it is content, content, content. Many people or companies will offer free, keyword rich content to other sites on the contingency that it includes a link back to your website. This is a win, win endeavor because your content is attracting traffic to the site it is on and your link is visible so that traffic can click over to your site.

Uniform Advertising
If you are promoting a company website, your URL should be on your employees’ uniforms if possible. This is a great way to provide “walking advertising” for your business and it does attract traffic. Make the site address legible (no fancy fonts), easy to read and somewhat understated so that it is not ostentatious

Promotional Items
Place your website address on your promotional items. This is an inexpensive and quite easy way to advertise while it also serves as a daily reminder of your presence on the web. Coffee mugs, bumper stickers, pens, T-shirts and key chains are all great for this type of advertising.

Yellow Pages
If you place an ad in the Yellow Pages of your telephone directory, make sure that you include the website address. This will draw targeted traffic to your site. If you include an interesting, but simple graphic or illustration and a snappy headline, your ad will be more eye-catching.

Company Vehicle
If you have a company car, you can place a decal with your logo and URL on the side. This way, people will see it and may be inclined to visit your site. If you have trucks that deliver products, they would be optimum for advertising your web address.

Catalogs
Catalogs are a great way for businesses to get information on their products or services in the hand of people who are interested in them. A phone number, preferably toll free, as well as the URL at the bottom of the catalog is highly recommended. Many people will read a catalog, and then place their order over the internet.

Effective Offline Promotion

Source: Flickr

Although, most of your traffic will still come from search engines and various online promotions, a little effort using traditional media might also bring a large number of visitors to your website.
Reasons, why you should take offline promotion of your website seriously include:
Internet is increasingly becoming a part of our daily life. However, still a big segment of the society – especially, the elderly – don’t spend that much of time online. Traditional media is a good method of getting their attention.
If a person sees your printed advertisement with your URL in a year-old magazine and gets interested in what you have to offer, he will still be able to check out your website. Research shows that at least four people browse through a printed magazine in its life time.
With planned media promotion, you can tap into particular target market, which otherwise might not be that easy to do. For example: if you sell car accessories through your website, a good promotional channel would be a specific radio station that commuters like to tune in.
Your offline promotion endeavor should combine advertisement, publicity and promotional items.
Advertising
Once you identified the potential target market that you would like to reach, you can try to communicate with them using various advertising methods. Advertising is a paid form of delivering message to broad range of prospective customers through billboards, posters, print, broadcast media, etc.
Each of your advertising campaign should have a clear goal and carefully crafted plan. Since advertising in some media forms is quite expensive, without a well-defined plan you might waste your money for nothing.
Your advertising goal might include the followings:
Bring targeted traffic to your website
Stimulate sales
Build brand recognition of your website
Increase public awareness of your product and services
Promote seasonal sales, clearance, etc. conducted through your site.
Once you established your advertising goal, you need to clarify advertising budget, timing and media. You should set your advertising budget based on your objective. In general, companies set aside a percentage of their gross sales as promotional budget. A new online business might choose to spend on advertising, amount allocated in its business plan. Timing and scheduling are also crucial factors in advertising.
Where should you advertise is a difficult decision, which should base on a number of factors:
Market reach
What is the market segment you would like to cover with your present campaign?
Message
Depending on your goal, you have to choose the right message to communicate with your prospective customers. The advertising media has to conform to the selected message.
Product and service that you offer through your site B2B and B2C products and services are usually different in nature and require different media to reach targeted market.
Budget
The choice of media depends vastly on your budget consideration.
Major offline advertising mediums
Newspapers
Newspapers are very popular media forms of advertising. If you are not planning to reach out to the mass, classified sections of local newspapers should be your first choice.
Magazines
Specialized magazines are good for targeting particular interest group. If you sell golf accessories through your site, you should definitely consider advertising in one of the local golf magazines. However, ad spaces in magazines are often quite expensive.
Radio
Radio advertising is a good option, if your business is aimed at certain social group like teenagers, housewives, drivers, etc. This is also a relatively inexpensive way of delivering your message to a certain community or locality.
Television
If the products or services that you offer have mass appeal, television is an excellent media of advertising. As the audience of a TV station changes depending on the show aired there is a limited possibility of target marketing. The ability to use audio visual scenes helps delivering certain types of message to the audience more clearly than any other media, which makes TV advertising highly effective but quite costly.
Yellow pages and other directories
You should definitely add your business along with your website URL to as many printed directories as you can. Industry specific directories are good advertising media for B2B businesses.
Outdoor Advertising
Outdoor advertising with billboards, posters, etc. are effective way of reaching out to a certain neighborhood. Since the exposure rate of billboards is very high – people often take the same route to work, it is a great medium to create brand recognition.
Transit advertising
Advertising on various transports, terminals, subway are known as transit advertising. Like billboards with this type of advertising you can target a specific route or area. This can be a very effective way to get your message to blue-collar workers, if that is your market segment.
Direct Mail
Excellent way of delivering you message in the form of promotional letters, catalogs, flyers, circulars, coupons, etc. to your prospective customers. If you choose your mailing list correct, the exposure rate and the response rate can be very high.
Publicity
Publicity is any form of presentation of ideas, products, or services delivered by the media themselves rather than as a paid advertisement. If your website carries a really new message or unique and innovative products or services, for you publicity will be definitely more effective than advertising. People, often, trust news stories and articles much more than they trust paid advertisements.
Press release
Newspapers, magazines, TV and Radio are the main publicity conduits. Press releases are the tool to get into these media. Whenever, you do something with your online business, which you think is newsworthy you should write a press release and send it off.
The main idea of a press release is to grab attention from a news editor so that he writes a story on the subject.
That’s why follow the following rules while writing a press release:
Keep it simple, clear and precise
Be accurate in facts and figures
The news highlights should be expressed in the first two paragraphs
The press release should have an eye-catching headline
Tell your story from different perspective
The press release should have less than 200 words
Mention your website URL at least in two different places
Business material and stationery
All your business literatures, materials and stationery should have similar consistent logotype and URL address. This is an extremely effective brand creation method within the group of people those, who one way or another, interact with your business.
Promotional Items
Give away items such as Pens, coffee mugs, key chains, coasters, calendars, sticky notes, etc. should have your company logo and web address. Apart from building brand this also work as a daily reminder for users of these items.