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Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

Business Stationery Is Here to Stay

A lot of businesses these days have almost easily moved to modern means of communication such as email, social media, and online marketing. They presume that printed marketing is old and should not be used again. Although modern communication is ideal in today’s fast emerging world, you have to understand that your business still needs to communicate and establish its name with printed marketing materials.

Compared to electronic communication, printed materials have a lot of lasting uses. They continue to be seen and read long after the emails or tweets have been deleted. They are also perfect to use in tradeshows, conferences, and direct mailings to tell the story of your business. It’s important though that the printed materials must put your business on a positive light. They must represent you impressively and professionally.

Business stationery is among the important printed communication tools that every business should have. But before you go running off to the nearest office supply store, have you ever thought of giving your stationery a stand out design? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a material that will let your stand out from the crowd? If so, why don’t you create your own business stationery? Here are useful tips to help you make your stationery design stand out:

• Understand that the design of your material should be a reflection of your business. It should highlight the good points about your business and tell people why they should patronize you. It would be best if you have your design professionally done.

• You don’t need to spend a lot to come up with an impressive design. A lot of designers these days can design your material affordably. Even the printing cost is significantly cheap with full color printing and double sided printing not relatively affordable.

• Make sure your stationery complement your other marketing materials. Use the same color or font to promote consistency. Keep in mind that a set of consistent and well designed materials will look professional and help improve your business image.

• If you want a unique design, you can always take advantage of embossing, die cutting, and spot metallic. Ask your printer which best suit your business and your budget.

• Make sure to put all pertinent details in your material. That could include your logo and complete contact details. You can also include your tagline and brief information about your products or services. Just keep the details short as there is not enough space to accommodate all details.

• Create a good letterhead. This will help set your business apart from the competition. You can use templates to make the design process quick and easy. Be aware though that your letterhead can look generic and won’t give you a unique image. If you have extra budget, opt for a custom letterhead design.

However you want to design your custom stationery, make sure you use a clean and attractive layout. This will help your materials become more compelling and effectively communicate your benefits.

What Is a Boilerplate in a Press Release?

The press release is an important advertising tool. It’s often free and can bring traffic to your business. Of course, you want your free advertising to do as much as possible for you. That’s why every press release needs to have a boilerplate.

If you are asking yourself, “What is a boilerplate?” you’re asking a common question. It’s important to know what a boilerplate is and what it’s purpose is. Let start by answering the question by looking at the history of the term.

“Boilerplate” is a term that began in the days when newspaper men were the kings of information and newspapers were the primary venue for advertising. An ad might run for weeks in the paper. Lead alloys didn’t hold up well over multiple print runs, so advertisements and syndicated columns were shipped to the presses stamped on steel plates. Because the same plate could be used over and over to print identical content, it came to be known as “boilerplate” content.

Lawyers use the term to describe contract language that’s standard and doesn’t require personalization. It’s the same for businesses. Boilerplate is a business description that doesn’t require personalization. No matter where you publish it, it remains the same.

Writing boilerplate content is a serious matter. It’s the official description of what your business is about and what it does. It needs to be short and to the point. The boilerplate must be carefully crafted.

What makes the boilerplate so important for a press release?

  1. A press release without a boilerplate won’t be taken seriously. Your boilerplate proves that you are a professional, and it demonstrates that you are familiar with business practices.
  2. The boilerplate summarizes very efficiently the primary facts about your business. It should include who you are, what your business does, and other details that may be of interest to the public. Many businesses will say how long they have been in business. You might include whether you are a private or public company. You can even include your unique selling proposition.
  3. The boilerplate is a 50 to 100 word elevator pitch for your business. It tells the person you send the press release to whether you are worth listening to or not.

Writing a boilerplate isn’t easy. It’s difficult to portray the right message in 50 to 100 words. There just isn’t room for anything less than the most important information about your business.

You want to stand out from everyone else in just a few words. So avoid industry jargon. Don’t brag about your business. No one’s going to believe you if you say you’re the “best” at whatever you do anyway. If you’ve got a really good “testimonial” from someone who is widely recognized, it might be worth dropping the name into your boilerplate, but do so with care. It’s one thing to be able to say “X business, recognized by X for X has been providing X services since X” if that will be meaningful to potential customers. It’s worthless fluff otherwise.

Crafting an Exceptional Business Letterhead

Business experts would often recommend sticking with simple designs in marketing materials. But to new and inexperienced business owners, simplicity is a complicated word. They find it hard to come up with an exciting material out of a simple sheet of paper. As a business owner, though, you need to traverse through difficult tasks effectively. Even though it may seem impossible to come up with remarkable materials on a limited budget, you have to use your creativity and imagination in order to make a seemingly simple material exceptional.

If you are truly on a limited budget, one of the best marketing materials you can invest in is letterhead printing. A beautifully crafted company letterhead will make a huge difference to the way people perceive your business. But in today’s high tech business world, why should you still invest in a letterhead when you can always use email and other modern means of marketing?

Understand that as a business, you need to convey the image of stability, credibility, and professionalism to your customers and prospects. A well designed letterhead will help you do that. It will should your customers that you offer high quality products or services, and that you are committed to providing good customer service. The letterhead will show people that you are stable and that you have enough financial means to stay in business for a long time.

Sure, websites and email are widely used these days, but you have to understand that not all your target customers are online. There would still be plenty of instances when you need to send written correspondences. This would require you to use your stationery which is printed with a remarkable letterhead. Both the stationery and the letterhead will help give your business a good brand image.

It’s vital that you lay a good foundation on the design of your letterhead. Don’t just focus on what you want to incorporate on your material. You need to also consider what your customers would want to see from your design. Keep in mind that they will view your business from a different angle as you, so their opinion would be an invaluable help to the success of your design.

If you can get your customers’ opinion, that’s better. It would even be ideal if you design with your customers in mind. Just don’t forget to put your logo and essential contact details to make it easier and quicker for them to contact you. You can also add your tag line so people won’t have a hard time understanding what benefits you can offer to them.

Perhaps the best way to come up with an impressive design for your letterhead templates is to look at what your competitions are doing. Collect their letterheads and see the good points from each design. You can then incorporate the good points in your own design or if you want to be unique, you can create an exactly different design from your competitions. The point is you know what your competitions’ letterhead look like so you have every means to do better than them.

What Every Effective Presentation Folder Should Contain

A good impression during a presentation is important in business. This will mean more business for you. But a lot of business owners don’t really know how to convey the right impression during a presentation. Most of them just make do with what is available. If you want to make your business flourish, you need to make sure that you effectively present not only yourself but your business as well.

There is actually an effective way of making a good presentation. This won’t take so much investment and you can use it over and over again. This is none other than the presentation folder printing. This folder is considered as one of incredibly proficient and valuable marketing tools today. It is low priced allowing you to create plenty of them for your business. It can even be custom designed so it will represent your business effectively and creatively. It can come in any shape and size, depending on what you need.

There are four elements that should be present in your folder if it has to be effective: concept, design, copy, and print.

Concept: Before you design your folder, you need to think of the best concept that will represent your business. It has to encompass everything about your business, from the products and services to offer to the business image that you want to convey to customers and prospects. In most cases, it would be best if you use the same concept that you use in your other marketing materials. This is to ensure a consistent image that will make it easy for your customers to remember you.

Design: After you have decided on the concept, you next task is to come up with an impressive design. It’s essential that you come up with a design that will make your business stand out and leave a good impression on people. After the meeting or trade fair, your presentation folder should be a reminder to prospects of your business and the products or services you offer.

It is vital that you pick the right colors to use in your folder. You don’t really have to put too many colors in your design. Two or three colors would suffice. If you can use full color printing, that would be great, but if you can’t afford it yet, you can always go for four-color printing.

There are several finishing options that will add to the exceptional appeal of your folder. This includes gloss finish, matte finish, foil stamping, and UV coating. Pick the best option that will make sure your folder get the right appeal.

Copy: Aside from an impressive design, you need to make sure that your folder contains the important branding elements. This includes your business name, logo, and tagline. You also have to ensure that your complete contact details are printed on the folder, so when people need to contact you they can easily do so. Nothing would frustrate a customer more than a contact detail that plays hide and seek with them.