Everyone might have at least one shade of blue they’ll count as one of their favorite colors, but voters are still out when it comes to the color purple. So where does that leave you when it comes to your company’s winter marketing campaign?

A Color for All Seasons?

Like blue, purple is a very cool color that’s most appreciated in the summertime and should be used with care during the winter months. Unlike blue, however, purple is different enough to be striking against a solid background of grays, browns and pastels, making it a color for all seasons.

What Does It REALLY Mean?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and over and over again throughout this color series, until you’re sick of hearing it). You want your marketing materials to catch the eye of any potential clientele that happen to come your way, but you also want to make sure you’re making the right impression.

Since studies show that adolescent girls are the most likely to count purple as their favorite color, you can see where we’re coming from.

Aside from it’s obvious appeal to females under the age of 20, what does integrating the color purple into your marketing materials say about you and your business?

Purple is a symbol of richness and prosperity, which is why it’s so often associated with royalty. Or it’s associated with royalty, which is why it’s so often associated with richness and prosperity. Either way.

It’s also associated with mystery, wisdom and sophistication, which is great for companies with a creative bent who want to inspire imagination in their clientele but not so great for businesses whose reputation is built on a platform of trust. And when overused it can make people think you’re being fake, so if you’re contemplating using purple in your marketing scheme be sure to keep everything in moderation.

Tags: color, designing, graphic art, marketing materials

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The human eye works like a camera, focusing light and transmitting the image to our brains, where it’s translated as good, bad, mildly pleasing or so incredibly bland and/or ugly that somebody should have tossed it back up in the ugly tree where it belonged! When you step outside, what thrills you more: Fields of snow stretching on for miles on a gray cloudy day, without a single burst of color in sight, or the brilliant glow of the trees and flowers that come out to play in the summertime?

There’s a reason why seasonal affective disorder isn’t usually associated with summertime. Our brains are pre-programmed to recognize and appreciate brilliant colors, beautiful sunsets and the sharp contrasts of summer as opposed to seeing life in an endless scale of black, white and gray. When you made your website, you made it with those sharp contrasts and brilliant colors in mind. You made it so that it was designed to stand out in the crowd and entice people to stop by and take a look. You made it so that it would appeal to the visual senses of your consumer.

That’s precisely what you need to do with your offline marketing materials.

I recently read an article on taking the CSS design of your company website and using it to create your direct mail marketing materials. The article in question actually advised that less is more-in other words, that what you needed to do was pick through the images and design on your website to pull out key features and leave the rest out on the web where it belongs. I’m here to tell you that I disagree. When designing your images on the web, take more. Just don’t do it all at once. Use your header for a direct mail response card, your website layout for your newsletter or your FBML page for the front of a flyer.

If you put time and thought into the design of your website, you already have amazing visual resources at hand that not only capture the eye of the reader, but also serve to promote your brand, and translate perfectly into your direct mail marketing materials. What are you waiting for?

Tags: create direct mail marketing materials, design, direct mail marketing, marketing materials, online marketing, small business marketing

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Welcome back! I’m hoping the reason you’re here is that you tuned in yesterday for our discussion on direct mail marketing and catching your neighbors’ eye. If you missed out on yesterday’s post, make sure you stop by there after you’re finished here. In the meantime, here are the highlights:

1) No one really has time to get to know every business owner in town personally the way they used to.

2) Businesses are all looking for that personal connection when they’re looking for someone to do business with.

3) Direct mail marketing offers the best of both worlds; an easy, hands-off way to reach local businesses and a venue with which to express your willingness to build a personal relationship with your clients from the very beginning.

So How Do You Turn Your Average Direct Mail Postcard into a Paragon of Modern Marketing?

It’s the million dollar question-literally. Direct mail materials can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in business, but only if you know what you’re doing. With that in mind, here are a few simple tips to turn your direct mail marketing materials into million(ish) dollar money makers:

• Choose an image that your target audience is going to relate to. Using your company image on the cover might sound like a good idea, but it’s not going to inspire the same irresistible urge to flip the postcard over and sneak a peek at the back as a postcard bearing an image from their industry.

• Talk to your customers, not at them. Yes, granted, it’s not like you’re going to get a whole lot of immediate feedback from a direct mail marketing piece, but that doesn’t mean your customers need to feel like they’re trapped in a used car lot with a rabid car salesman and nowhere to run!

• Be personable while remaining professional. There seems to be a mistaken belief out there that when you create a direct mail marketing piece you have to be a cut-and-dried professional. There’s plenty of room out there for warm, friendly sales teams, so don’t let the opportunity pass you by!

• Be true to your brand. The whole point of personal service and building a relationship with your clients is to convince them that you’ve got what they want. There’s no possible way you’re going to be able to do that if your direct mail marketing pieces don’t reflect who you and your company really are!

Tags: digital printing, direct mail marketing, marketing materials, marketing to local businesses, printing

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Marketing’s the name of the game around here. Not only our own, although we try and pay plenty of attention to that, but also creating amazing marketing materials for our customers. That means that over the years we’ve seen it all, we’ve heard it all, and not much takes us by surprise anymore. Therefore, we sometimes forget that business owners can find themselves drowning in the number of options they have for their small business marketing materials!

What do you really need? What don’t you really need? What’s just taking up time, space and money and what’s really going to help your business grow? How do you know before you invest a ton of time and money what small business marketing materials are honestly going to bring in business for your small business?

Unfortunately, when it comes to marketing materials it’s really a matter of trial and error. With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you slash your way through the jungle of small business marketing materials to find the solution that’s right for your business.

#1: Is it representative of your business? The best marketing materials are ones that really show off what your business can do.

#2: Does it reach your target market? There are a ton of companies posting their information here, there and everywhere, so mass marketing just doesn’t bring in the business it used to. Instead, you have to make sure your materials are going to reach the people you’re marketing to. For example, if you’re marketing to local businesses a small presentation packet and personal sales rep may do a lot more than marketing out on the web. On the other hand, if you’re a B2C company trying to reach the general public it’s going to be much more cost effective to post flyers and brochures than to send someone knocking door to door.

#3: Will it grab their attention? There’s a reason marketing materials don’t read like textbooks! You have exactly 3 seconds to grab the eye of the average consumer before they move on to something more interesting. If you can’t accomplish that, in that amount of time, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

#4: Do they work? Redundant question? Not at all. The best way to judge the success of your small business marketing materials is to set up a system to judge the success of your small business marketing materials! After all, how will you know what’s working and what’s wasting money if you never take the time to find out?

Tags: marketing materials, small business, small business marketing, small business marketing materials

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