Printed leaflets, brochures and flyers could be an amazing way to expose your brand, or they could be a waste of paper. The success of an advertising campaign relies heavily on your understanding of your potential market, timing advertising to hit your target market, and in all honesty, a bit of luck.
Getting your message across can still be powerfully done with printed adverts and as huge companies like IKEA and Argos have shown, the printed brochure still reigns supreme. But it’s not something you can throw together at the last-minute without disasters consequences!
To take IKEA as an example, their catalogue contains over 300 pages and 12,000 products. Their huge team of graphic designers spend around 10 months to get it right. A company like IKEA also has to take into account the fact that it needs to make its catalogue seamlessly transferable across over 60 countries and in all of the languages that come with operating in such global environment. Unfortunately we don’t all have access to one of the largest graphic design studios in Europe to create our printed marketing, but there are plenty of graphic designers with reasonable prices online and many printing companies offer basic templates via their websites.
Fortunately today there are a lot of different ways that we can educate ourselves in the art of marketing. Since most of us spend the bulk of my time at a computer it makes sense to have a look at what online marketing courses are available, and if they can help to guide us through the ever-changing marketing minefield both off-line and online.
So what does a good printed marketing campaign involve? The answer to that will really depend on what you’re trying to achieve. Some of the best marketing campaigns both in print, online and on television, don’t really have anything to do with the product they’re selling, but they are simply branding or brand recognition exercises. For small businesses with small budgets, an abstract image to represent the soul of your company or brand may get overlooked. Companies like Guinness and Coca-Cola are already so well-known that their marketing is simply to remind people that they are there. Most small businesses are looking to tell people who they are and exactly what they do in the quickest and cheapest way.
Once you’ve decided exactly how and what you want your printed advertising campaign to be, it’s not hard to find a reputable company to print it for you. Companies like PrintPelican.com in North America or print-print.co.uk in Europe make it easy to not only get a quote online, but also submit your artwork and track your order.
One thing to bear in mind, whether you’re printing brochures, leaflets, catalogues or business cards is that you need to allow enough time to not only the printing but also the delivery to make sure you don’t get caught short. Modern printers have extremely fast turnaround times but it’s always best to err on the side of caution.