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Your company website is live, you have business cards in hand, and now your’e ready for some leave behind print marketing materials. Small businesses often start with a standard, every-company-has-to-have-one-trifold, and others use company sales sheets. Whether you are a start-up company or second stage business, when choosing between a company trifold brochure and a sales sheet, first consider how you plan to use your print materials.
Company Tri-Fold-Brochure
Three panel brochures are standard letter size (8.5” x 11”) sheets that are folded twice, horizontally. The paper is usually creased in equal thirds, resulting in three panels on each side of the sheet totaling six panels for the entire piece. Designed to fit into a standard #10 envelope, trifold brochures are also known as #10 brochures for this reason. Brochures can be a combination of any amount of colors. Trifold brochures can be simple black ink with text only or full color, effects, die cuts and short folds. A trifold brochure template can open horizontally, custom brochures can be designed to also open vertically. You can choose a z-fold brochure or roll fold brochure, depending on the order in which you want the viewer to read each panel.
A custom company trifold brochure or brochure template, is often a gateway introductory tool. Brochures can be many different sizes and shapes, with multiple folds, single or multi-page. Multi-page brochures are, in essence, marketing booklets designed to wow the audience and support the corporate brand. Brochures with sleeves and die cuts can be used as folders that hold inserts. The shape chosen is dependent on how the print marketing piece will be distributed, along with amount of information to be communicated, and the style in which the company brand, product brand and services brands will be presented.
When a company trifold brochure is most beneficial:
- point of sale (check out)
retail store
bank
pharmacy
restaurant carry out menu - direct mail – fits easily into standard #10 envelopes
- general company information
- display in brochure racks
coffee shops, travel bureaus / Welcome centers, chamber of commerces, - event promotion
- other….
Sales Sheets
Sales sheets are standard letter size (8.5” x 11”) sheets that are not folded. They can be one sided or two sided, full color, one, two, or three color. One sale sheet could cover everything or multiple sheets may be needed to highlight individual products or services, pricing, etc. Sales sheets may also be designed for specific target markets. For instance if your company sells products or services to manufacturing firms and also to end users, your sales literature will need to be adapted to each audience.
A Sales Sheet By Any-other-name….
The term sales sheet is often interchanged with: sell sheets, brag sheets, capability sheets (capability statement sheets), product cut sheet, flyers, inserts, specification sheets (spec sheet), data sheets, and one sheets (often used for Professional Speakers, authors and other creative talent such as models and actors.) There are some differences in the content in each of these items but the purpose typically serves the same end – to promote.
When a sales sheet is most beneficial:
- leave behind after a sales presentation
- part of sales kits for use by sales staff or independent sales representatives
- company manufacturers or offers multiple products or services
- after sale literature for customer reference
Each marketing item that is designed for printing can also be included in digital format for posting to your website. All print items can be shared electronically in emails, posted to social media, and as downloads from a specified page on your website.
Do you need help with the design or writing of your company trifold brochure, sales sheet or booklet? Are you in need of a promotional kit with sales sheets? Connect with us today. We’ll plan a face to face meeting to discuss your ideas or schedule a phone consultation to clarify goals and outline marketing solutions.
The previous blog post covering automated marketing barely skimmed the service about the features and benefits of marketing automation for small business. I’m continuing here to be sure that I communicate clearly that there is a lot of leg work that has to happen for automated marketing to get rolling.
Automated Marketing Services Upfront Planning:
- create targeted landing pages (for each product or service)
- develop detailed customer profiles
- identify marketing automation database segmentation
- determine what events / actions to track
- create tracking methods to identify who participated in a campaign (attended a webinar, opened an email, responded to social media post, or clicked on a Google ad)
- view reports, determine common visitor traits or failed closings
- design messages that are graphically appealing
- write compelling copy
- tailor drip email campaigns to generate attention
- and more…
Create more leads and close more sales.
Because we are a design and marketing firm we have received sales calls from automated marketing services firms for years. We’ve tried out demos, reviewed benefits and features and inquired on pricing for each automated marketing company. Some companies were incredibly expensive and truly were designed for large corporations like GM who receive tens of thousands of hits per day. The ROI just wasn’t there for most small businesses.
Can automated marketing benefit small businesses?
The challenge we found with all of the marketing automation companies is that they all claimed marketing automation was easy. The only way marketing automation is easy is if you are a marketing firm who is already using digital marketing services like email, CRMs, visitor tracking, analytics, etc. and attempting to build comprehensive results from the different platforms. It’s a lot of work! Converting to marketing automation services is like a ride in the park after juggling all of those pieces and trying to make sense of them. Realistically though most small business are not doing many of those pieces on their own, so jumping into an automated marketing solution is a huge undertaking.
If you are a small manufacturing firm in mid-Michigan, a craft brewery in Lansing or a commercial builder in Grand Ledge, Michigan you’re too busy running your business to be working on all of the pieces needed to create successful automated marketing campaigns. You either need a full time website designer and marketing communication manager in-house or you need to outsource it to a marketing company like ours. We have found that the small businesses, associations, and community organizations in Grand Rapids and Lansing who we have met with who attempt automated marketing on their own seldom implement it to it’s fullest potential. There are far too many steps required to get it up and running.
- customer persones
- segmentation identified
- campaigns are built
- website enhanced for automation
- communication and call to action copy developed
- graphic design elements created
- review of reports
- sales department actions
Once all of the above are complete, you can monitor campaigns, traffic, and reports and your website marketing will truly be automated and leads will be forwarded to your sales team.
Do you think your company is ready for marketing automation services? Give us a call, we can talk about your goals and whether marketing automation is a good fit for you at this stage in your business. Connection Group can provide assistance setting up your automated marketing campaigns and turn it over to you or we can set it up, manage and provide input on the data and reports. We can help you rest easy and keep your business on track.
- Set goals – this give you something to measure progress with
- Complete your Page – fill in every part of the “About Us ‘ section
- Increase the visibility of your Page – include a Facebook page link on all your promos and in your email signature
- Be creative – Add content viewers will enjoy and share. Nobody wants to feel like they are being sold to all the time.
- Be Engaged – Respond to page posts quickly
- Develop campaigns – Organize shareable content, create contests. Generate more interaction by added a user generated content (UGC) approach to a campaign.
- Use Facebook Ads: You can choose ads that will gain page likes. Try this if increases likes are your main interest.
- Review analytics: Find out who is visiting, and when they are visiting to know what and when to post.
Marketing automation can help you turn website visits into contacts and ultimately sales.
Do you think you should be getting more calls or inquiries from you website? It makes sense visitors come to your site because they’re interested in your product or service. Marketing automation tools can help. Give us a call today, we can get you set up, provide monthly management or if you prefer, we can turn over the management to your staff and your cost will be limited to set up and monthly application fee.
Benefits of Marketing Automation:
increase your customer database- identify what pages / products and services are attracting visitors to your site
- capture visitor / prospect contact information
- create drip email campaigns to build and strengthen client relationships
- targeted emails to individual customers or groups
- increase leads to feed to sales
- identify who is on your website and what they’re interested in
Let us know if you’re ready to have your website drive leads your way. Call today and remember to mention the March 2016 discount of 15%.
On the Blog:
Get Onboard With Marketing Automation
Marketing automation services are essentially an expansion of digital in-bound marketing tactics. A customer expresses an interest in your product or service, they come to your website for more information and marketing automation tools spin creative webs to capture the prospect. From pop-ups, to forms, to email buy-ins, automated marketing is created to capture your virtual visitor…Read More…
Don’t Be Reeled In By Phishing
Tips to keep your emails and data safe:
- Be wary – Urgent calls to action, too good to be true offers, poor grammar, odd spacing, blurry logos, in emails should be red flags.
- Protect your computer – Keep your OS and other software up to date.
- Don’t click the link – If you are suspicious of emails or social media requests form people you don’t know (and often new follow/friend requests that you are already following) don’t click the links.
- Check the URL – Scammers often alter a popular domain slightly. Hover over links before clicking, often times you will see the actually links are a completely different URL address.
- Heed warnings – While online if a security certificate on a secure site (starting with https🙂 doesn’t match, read the pop-up warning and make a call instead – don’t just click through anyway
If you’re in the mid-Michigan area learn more from Nicole Rackov, Vice President with Fraud Services at Comerica Bank at the March 16, 2016 WISE event, RSVP here. You don’t need to be a member to attend.
Marketing automation services are essentially an expansion of digital in-bound marketing tactics. A customer expresses an interest in your product or service, they come to your website for more information and marketing automation tools spin creative webs to capture the prospect. From pop-ups, to forms, to email buy-ins, automated marketing is created to capture your virtual visitor.
Traditional inbound marketing is found in brick and mortar stores through the use of signage, in-store specials, packaging, point of purchase displays and customer loyalty programs. The customer comes into the store and posted specials attempt to convert their interest into a purchase. The addition of suggested customer loyalty memberships work to solidify the relationship and opens up more touch points for current customers.
Be one with the traffic
In most cases a visitor to your website is a hot prospect, the right time to sell to them is when they arrive, or when they perform a specified action. Marketing automation services answer this need by tracking, reporting, identifying, capturing and noting actions of each visitor. Each action on the website, whether clicking on an individual product page, downloading an ebook, or viewing a video, is noted. This information helps to identify what that visitor is interested in and helps to target follow up information. With automated marketing we can determine if the visitor has been to the website before, what pages they viewed, actions they took, etc.
Marketing automation is synced with a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Visitors can be segmented into specified lists depending on triggers set for each action you want to track. For instance if a visitor comes to our website and downloads our print marketing ebook the download form requests their name and email. This can then feed the CRM into a segment we have created for print marketing. Someone who purchases the internet marketing ebook could be entered in the internet marketing prospect segment.
Marketing automation can also be designed to provide suggestions to the visitor through popup windows or notifications. As an example, if a prospect we recently met at a Lansing or Grand Rapids event comes to our website and lands on a blog that talks about website maintenance, we might suggest they check out our website maintenance plans page. If they go to the website maintenance plan page we can create a pop-up or notification that suggests they call us for an instant quote during office hours. All of these pieces can be automated for prospect follow-up and to trigger numerous campaign actions based upon activity.
So are marketing automation services like digital cruise control for your internet marketing?
Did you ever hear the story that was spread around the time cruise control was first offered? It was said that a driver of a van turned on his cruise control and then got up to change his vinyl record. (Yes, cruise control is a vintage feature along with record players and 8-tracks.) Snopes has informed us renditions of that story are urban myths, but it illustrates my point. Cruise control helped alleviate one action required to drive a car but the driver still needed to be present and attend to other driving tasks. The same with automated marketing, although it eliminates a task or two, you still need to steer the prospect in the direction you want them and that takes time, planning and attentive follow up by your sales department.
If you’re ready to to drive up sales, give Connection Group a call today to see if marketing automation services could be the best route for your company.
Who is on Your Website Right Now?
In 2015 we began tracking visitors to our website. At the risk of sounding like Big Brother, our tracking doesn’t provide individual names. Since we serve businesses, being able to track companies who visit by their own IP addresses allows us to see who is interested in our products. We can see the name of the company who visited, what pages they viewed, for how long, etc.
Full disclosure, review of the results has been bittersweet. Reports indicated we were doing a good job driving prospects to our website. Sadly, the percentage of visits spurring communication or sales conversion was disproportionate.
We’ve responded by incorporating more inbound marketing practices. We’ve added opt-in forms, pop-ups, and calls to action on our most popular pages to engage visitors. Creating free content and incorporating easy ways to contact us and capturing their contact information helps us connect.
Would your product or service oriented company website benefit from knowing large companies who visit your site and the pages they visit. Connect with us today to hear how we can help you capture more leads from your website. Find out more information here.
On the Blog:
How to Rid the World of Outdated Website Designs
We are designers and marketers to the core. Bringing outdated website designs into a fully functioning attractive website design gets our hearts pumping. We know design, we know code, we know CSS, PHP and java script and a few other web language tricks. What we are not are high priced write-from-scratch-mathematic-genius- coding-geeks. Thank goodness, the majority of small business websites no longer need us to be code crunchers. Read more…
Taking Care of Business
10 Tips for Professional Business Card Design
A business card should clearly communicate who you are and what you do.
- Be Clear – Choose a font that is clearly legible.
- Keep It Clean – A business card should not replace your brochure or website.
- Stand Out – Nothing helps build a brand quicker than a custom logo design.
- Cover It – It’s important to include all points of contact.
- Hold On – Compare the weight of the paper from business cards you have received. Choose card stock, preferably 100+ cover .
- Finish Strong – A gloss or UV-coated stock is more durable than an uncoated sheet
- Add Value – Include a coupon, a calendar, or dates to remember, to encourage the recipient to hold on to your card.
- Look Closely – Whether you do it yourself or outsource design, make sure someone who hasn’t been a part of the design process proofs it before printing.
- Show Off – Photos are a custom touch to business cards. Realtors, consultants coaches and speakers benefit greatly by including personal images.
- Convey Class – A business card from your desktop printer screams low standards. Full color business cards printed on quality stock are very economical and present your business professionally.
We are designers and marketers to the core. Bringing outdated website designs into a fully functioning attractive website design gets our hearts pumping. We know design, we know code, we know CSS, PHP and java script and a few other web language tricks. What we are not are high priced write-from-scratch-mathematic-genius- coding-geeks. Thank goodness, the majority of small business websites no longer need us to be code crunchers.
The days of web developers holding small business customers hostage with inflated hourly fees over months and months of undelivered promises are in the past. When high end custom web programming is required or clean and simple small business website updates are needed, talented web programmers who are ethical, affordable and a pleasure to work with are just an email away.
Today, small businesses have a plethora of affordable options available when it comes to redesigning a website. Web design software, drag and drop content management systems, and even free website builders offer beautiful website designs at affordable rates. Redesigning outdated websites has never been easier.
Resources That Make Updating Your Website Easier
- Local experts – a small business in Lansing can work with a a local website designer in Lansing area. You don’t have to go to a large design and development firm in Detroit, or Chicago.
- Website Design Applications – from Dreamweaver, to Joomla, to blogging systems, website development is easier and faster
- CMS – content management systems, back end administration areas. With standard WYSIWYG editors these systems are as easy as Word or Facebook for adding posts
- Responsive – websites can automatically detect the size of the monitor or device the web visitor is using and elements are scaled to fit. Not having to constantly scrolls makes for a more pleasant web experience on any device.
- Standardized features – reduces the need for changes and troubleshooting features. A lot of code is Open Source and free to use.
How Do We Rid the World of Outdated Website Designs?
As web design software and systems flooded the market we researched and tested nearly every industry product. The solution we embraced is the WordPress platform. There were many reasons the WordPress platform stood out to us. First and foremost WordPress gives us the ability to meet customer needs by customizing existing themes. Instead of building CMS or custom features for every project, a superior system was ready to plug and play. Thousands of dollars and hours were saved and small businesses gained new websites they can update easily themselves.
We also needed to be able to easily customize templates. WordPress themes are like builder white walls – they don’t fit everyones style and may have very little personality. Most often we may start with a WordPress template and by the time we incorporate customer branding elements and add-on features, even the template developer could have a hard time picking out their design. Web designers, like graphic designers, are rebels – we always need to be able to break the mold!
Benefits of WordPress Responsive Websites and Blogs
- Small business owners and their staff can easily update website content. From website copy, to website photos, to adding new pages, and forms, staff with little to no website development or coding experience can update web information.
- Small business websites benefit from increasing their search engine optimization with each update made. Web spiders and bots travel the net devouring information. The newer the information the more likely your site will be indexed for search engines.
- Plethora of WordPress design themes available. There are endless WordPress design themes that offer increased functionality, built in CMS, and appealing design for your websites. Because of the amount of themes developed they are touted as a do-it-yourself web design solution…not always so, my friend… more about that later.
- Wordpress plug-ins eliminate the need for custom coding, add increased functionality and offer cost savings to small businesses. WordPress plug-ins can be used for web features such as adding a real time calendar, a slideshow, a shopping cart, a feed to automatically post content to your social media networks. Some plug-ins are free, others have a one time fee and still others have a monthly or annual license fee.
Outdated web designs be gone with do-it-yourself website design
We’ve established WordPress website themes serve as good jump off points for outdated website designs. All of the basic coding is done for you and installing a theme can be quick. Plus WordPress themes can, theoretically, be installed by any level of user. However, most people without html coding knowledge might find this to be a slight stretch.
There are still some technical steps that need to be understood right out the gate. Choosing a website hosting company, managing the domain, transferring the DNS correctly, optimizing photos fro web, to name a few. There is often a need or desire for some form of customization to a site also. If you’re not familiar with web coding, installing a theme and applying special functionality to a standard WordPress website design can be a nightmare. A manufacturing company website and a professional speaker website could take weeks or even months to complete without basic knowledge of html and web development.
Also, keep in mind when you purchase a WordPress theme you are not purchasing a service. The theme developer doesn’t help you build your website – even it there may be questionable coding issues – in most cases you are buying as-is without technical support.
If you choose to design your own website, remember to look at website themes that are responsive. Responsive WordPress theme designs will load well on any size monitor and they offer mobile website readiness. Plus, Google searches now put a precedence on mobile sites when returning mobile search inquiries. If you do not have a mobile or responsive website your site may not come up in mobile Google searches. Search our site to learn more about responsive website design in related blog posts.
Check out WordPress and learn how you can bring your outdated website into a contemporary, highly functioning marketing and sales tool. If you decide you prefer spending your time building your business, give us a call – remember, design is what gets our hearts pumping!
A business card should clearly communicate who you are and what you do.
- Be Clear – Choose a font that is clearly legible.
- Keep It Clean – A business card should not replace your brochure or website.
- Stand Out – Nothing helps build a brand quicker than a custom logo design.
- Cover It – It’s important to include all points of contact.
- Hold On – Compare the weight of the paper from business cards you have received. Choose card stock, preferably 100+ cover .
- Finish Strong – A gloss or UV-coated stock is more durable than an uncoated sheet
- Add Value – Include a coupon, a calendar, or dates to remember, to encourage the recipient to hold on to your card.
- Look Closely – Whether you do it yourself or outsource design, make sure someone who hasn’t been a part of the design process proofs it before printing.
- Show Off – Photos are a custom touch to business cards. Realtors, consultants coaches and speakers benefit greatly by including personal images.
- Convey Class – A business card from your desktop printer screams low standards. Full color business cards printed on quality stock are very economical and present your business professionally.
2016 Bargain – Two for the Price of None!
Last year we created the e-workbook Mastering the Art of Marketing. It is a compilation of marketing and design strategies your small business can implement right away. It’s in a monthly format and January is an ideal time to explore in monthly bite size chunks. You can also skip around the book and choose the practices that are most important to your business right now.
In December 2015 we released Mastering the Art of Print Marketing.
The new ebook covers tips on print marketing for small businesses. Printing has different rules than digital or web design. Not knowing file preparation can result in costly mistakes. Whether you’re producing your own print marketing pieces or preparing items to turn over to us, the tips in this book can save you time and money.
For the month of January we are allowing downloads of both books for our e-news subscribers. I hope they’re helpful. We’re hear with any questions on all that is design, print, marketing and web design! Please share this link to people in business who may benefit from the content. Download your free ebooks here.
On the Blog:
Regular WordPress Website Maintenance
Responsive WordPress website designs are an affordable, versatile solution for small businesses seeking a new or updated website they can update themselves. Those who already have a WordPress website know that WordPress works great on many levels. The biggest concern with choosing a WordPress website and managing it yourself is that the… Read More…
Taking Care of Business
Print File Preparation
Some things to look for:
- Proofread it
- Have someone else proofread it
- Check with your printer about pricing options
- Make sure document is created in the correct size (consider proportions)
- Quote any original text (cite author)
- Use only photos and graphics you have permission to use
- Photos and images must be in cmyk format or a specified Pantone® ink or black (no RGB)
- Images must be 300dpi resolution at 100%
- Print your file on a desktop printer check color, layout, flow of information
- Check the fold. Are the copy and images formatted in the panels as intended?
- Save the file as a high-resolution print quality pdf (Adobe Acrobat file)
- Send to print vendor
Some things to look for:
- Proofread it
- Have someone else proofread it
- Check with your printer about pricing options
- Make sure document is created in the correct size (consider proportions)
- Quote any original text (cite author)
- Use only photos and graphics you have permission to use
- Photos and images must be in cmyk format or a specified Pantone® ink or black (no RGB)
- Images must be 300dpi resolution at 100%
- Print your file on a desktop printer check color, layout, flow of information
- Check the fold. Are the copy and images formatted in the panels as intended?
- Save the file as a high-resolution print quality pdf (Adobe Acrobat file)
- Send to print vendor
