The Beginner's Guide for Creative 

Marketing Campaigns

Creativity in marketing campaigns is invaluable. 

Creative campaigns help you stand out, allowing you to reach more people. The more people reached, the more successful your campaign.

But how exactly can you come up with creative marketing campaigns? Below are some ideas to help you out. 

Get inspired for creative marketing campaigns 

Look to places such as social media and local or national news for inspiration. Try to participate in TikTok trends, especially if they connect well to your business. Look to the news. Is anything happening you can find a way to relate to your company? 

Use FOMO for creative marketing campaigns 

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is quite a powerful marketing technique. 

In fact, 60% of people make purchases because of FOMO. Usually, the purchase is within 24 hours.Tap into this through limited-time specials and discounts. Build up the anticipation through emails and direct mail, letting consumers know it’s coming up. Perhaps take it a step further by only making it accessible to people who complete an action, such as visiting your store or following you on social media. 

People will do a lot for limited-time opportunities. 

Be charitable for creative marketing campaigns

Consumers like to support businesses that care about and support good causes. 

82% of consumers prefer companies that support and donate to charities. Look around for causes that you and your employees care about. Find a way your business can support it. Perhaps give it attention within your marketing. Say X% of the proceeds will go to the organization. Or your business will be closed for a day so you and your employees can volunteer. 

Either way, make it known that your business cares about that cause. When consumers support you, they’ll also be supporting others. 

Engage daily for creative marketing campaigns

Not every marketing strategy has to relate to your business directly. 

In fact, sometimes it can be more effective if it doesn’t. Maybe customers don’t want to get an ad from your business daily. But perhaps they do want to get a daily quote, fun fact, cute animal picture, or joke. Allow customers to opt-in or out of this daily content.

Customers will associate your business with something positive while not getting angry for being overly advertised to.

Create interactive content for creative marketing campaigns

Customers enjoy participating actively rather than passively. 

Interactive content includes… 

• A decision tree to help customers make those tough decisions
• A quiz to help a customer discover new things about themselves
• Polls for customers to voice their opinions. 

Giving customers a way to participate in your marketing materials actively makes the experience more memorable and enjoyable. 

Beginner’s guide for creative marketing campaigns

Perhaps your industry has some barriers to entry. 

Help potential customers by creating an easy guide into the industry by defining complicated jargon, providing them with the dos and don’ts, giving insider tips, and everything else they’ll need to get started. 

Provide value for creative marketing campaigns

Stand out from your competitors by adding unique value to your customers. 

Conduct case studies or interview industry experts to get one-of-a-kind information that can only be found through your business. By contributing up-to-date and interesting material to the industry, you’ll draw people in. 

Being creative and coming up with new ideas to reach customers can be daunting. Look around for inspiration and refer to this guide for ideas. 

Every marketing campaign isn’t complete without a diverse method of communication. The more methods you use, the better your chance of reaching people. Limited-time sale notifications can be sent out through direct mail, and a beginner’s guide could be shared through a brochure.

Wherever your creativity takes you, we’ve got you! 

Check us out Today to Learn More Information on all of our Marketing Products Call at 516-561-1468 or Visit Our Website at: www.printcafeli.com

 

 Boost Your Productivity in 10 Steps

Employees lose an average of 581 hours a year to distractions, such as cell phones, emails, and other social media, to name a few.

This is over 14 weeks, per person, spent not actually working. You might be wondering if there is anything you can do to become more focused. We’ve compiled a list of 10 steps you can take to ensure you’re working smarter, not harder.

10 Steps to Boost Your Productivity

1. Limit how often you check your email. 

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit report In Search of Lost Focus, 70% of critical-thinking employees disrupt their own progress in order to check email at least once an hour.

And 18% check their email every few minutes.

Try to use email as a reward for accomplishing a large task. Set a time limit so that you don’t get caught up in social media. Then, go ahead and turn it off until your task is done.  

2. Get up and move around. 

Getting a little exercise is shown to improve concentration.

So, get up and make a cup of coffee or get a glass of water. However, use this as a break after you’ve finished a task. 

3. Quit multi-tasking.

Research shows that productivity can be reduced by as much as 40% by the mental blocks created when people switch tasks.

Try to finish one task before starting something else, which can take discipline.

4. Make a to-do list at night. 

Not only will this will help you relax and be able to sleep better, but it will help you get right to work in the morning without having to figure out where to start the day.

A word of caution, though, is to make sure your list isn’t overwhelming. Make sure it’s attainable. Cross off items on your list that are repetitive and don’t need to be done tomorrow.

5. Delegate tasks to capable people. 

If you micromanage, you will waste more of your valuable time because you will be watching over the other person’s shoulder.

However, if you truly delegate, you will free up your time. Pick someone you trust, then let them handle the task.

6.  Plan your phone calls.

Even if you don’t have a secretary to hold your calls, you do have the ability to turn off your ringer.

Set aside a certain time each day in which you will make your phone calls. It’s okay to use voice mail as long as you return those calls later during your scheduled time.

7. Get enough sleep at night. 

It may sound crazy, but 70% of Americans admitted to sleeping on the job in a survey done by William A. Anthony, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and director of Boston University’s Center for Psychological Rehabilitation.

It should go without saying, but make sure you get enough sleep at night to be more productive during the day. Set a schedule for bedtime and stick to it, then your body will get used to it.

A lack of sleep decreases your concentration, working memory, mathematical capacity, and logical reasoning. Shoot for seven to nine hours of sleep per night for ages 27 to 64, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

8. Decorate your office area with aesthetically pleasing elements. 

Grab some plants, candles, pictures, and anything else that puts you at ease.

By doing this, it can increase productivity by up to 15 %. It will help put you in a positive mood, which helps boost productivity.

9. Minimize interruptions as much as possible. 

It may seem trivial, but when coworkers pop their heads into your office to chat, it takes away from your productivity.

Keep your office door shut when you are working on an important project. If that’s not an option, choose to work at home until you are finished.

10. Set a timer. 

Research says that only around 17% of people can accurately estimate the passage of time.

With this said, you should set a timer for about 25 minutes up to 90 minutes maximum, with a 5-minute break afterward. This should help keep you on track and be more productive.

Saving Time Matters

Saving time is important when it comes to business.

And we want to see you succeed. That’s why we offer so many services to take projects off your plate. Our professional staff understands that your time is precious, and we make it easy to get your printing done right the first time. Contact us today to get started! 516-561-1468 or FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY OF OUR MARKETING PRODUCTS GO TO:www.printcafeli.com

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

 

Whether you’re starting a business, you’ve been around for 100+ years, or you’re somewhere in between, it’s important to conduct a competitive analysis.

A competitive analysis allows you to see gaps within the market that you can take advantage of. You can find ways to improve your business, create a better marketing strategy, and ultimately produce a stronger business.

Although time-consuming, breaking down the process into steps will make it more manageable. 

Tips to Help You Analyze the Competition

Find Businesses

Find businesses similar to your own.

These competitors will help you learn valuable information. When scoping out the competition, try using such tools as web searches, social media, and websites specifically geared to help answer your questions about other businesses. 

When looking for competitors, keep in mind that they can be divided into two categories: direct and indirect.

• Direct competitors sell the same products as you to a similar customer base.
• Indirect competitors sell similar products to a different customer sector.

Research the Business 

Now, it’s time to collect data on the businesses you've found.

Look at their online presence. Is their website consumer-friendly? Do they have social media accounts? How often do they interact with their customers? Research how happy their customers are.

Look up online reviews on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Google, and Instagram. Try reaching out to the customers who left negative reviews to learn more about their experience and direct them to your own business. Throughout this process, try to brainstorm ways your business could do better. 

Follow the SWOT framework 

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

This is an invaluable framework to keep in mind as you research businesses. SWOT is fairly straightforward:

• Strengths are factors that set the business apart from others.
• Weaknesses are areas the business falters in.
• Opportunities are external factors that give the business a competitive advantage.
• Threats are external factors that could potentially harm businesses.

Conduct a SWOT analysis on the businesses you are researching and your own. Then compare. Can you make their strengths your strengths? Can you benefit from their weaknesses? What external opportunities are available to you? Is there anything threatening other businesses that perhaps doesn’t affect you? 

Print Can Help You Beat the Competition

Print can be the tool your businesses can use to succeed.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that other businesses may not be utilizing print advertising. They are losing out on the advantages that print provides: enhanced customer respect, greater visibility, better customer attention and retention, and much more. You can turn their weakness into your strength to draw in a larger customer base. 

Create a Competitive Analysis Report

Simplify and organize your data into a competitive analysis report.

Your report should include your business’s target market, how your product(s) compared to your competitors, current and projected market share, sales, and revenues, pricing models comparison, marketing strategy and social media strategy analysis, and an overview of customer ratings.

Improve your business

You’ve acquired all the data; now it’s time to use it.

Your competitive analysis will have unsurfaced countless ways your business can improve and beat out the competition. Take action and create a better business! Need some fresh ideas? Contact us today to get started! 516-561-1468 or FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY OF OUR MARKETING PRODUCTS GO TO:www.printcafeli.com

 3 Non-Negotiables for Stellar Customer Service

Want to build connections that bring benefits?

You can do this everywhere you go by using people’s names. Career Coach Joyce Russel shared a story about a friend recovering from an injury. This man was staying in a rehab hospital and was not particularly happy with his care from the therapists and staff.

Unsympathetic, his wife noted that he hadn’t treated the hospital staff with particular kindness, “Do you even know the names of the people who are helping you?” she asked him. “No, why should I learn their names?” he replied. She reminded him that just by learning and using people’s names, he might get better care.

Sure enough, it helped!

Keep Your Best Customers Coming Back

Personal attention brings powerful results.

If you want a no-fail tactic to increase your sales, one of your best strategies is to entice proven customers to buy again. Here are just a few ways to keep customers coming back:

Greet People by Name

When you want to build loyalty, learn and use the names of your customers.

There should be a distinct difference between how you interact with your consistent clients and those you meet for the first time. Even if you don’t remember someone’s name, let them know you recognize them and are happy to see them. Say something like, “Well, hello! It’s great to see you again.”

When you take a phone call, the person on the other end usually identifies themselves immediately. Use this to your advantage and try to speak their name in conversation as the call progresses. As Dale Carnegie often said, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Keep Your Eye on the Customer (Not the Profit)

Clients want to be recognized as people, not as potential profits.

In what ways can you be helpful regardless of profit? If a VIP customer needs a minor repair or replacement part, could you offer it at no cost? If a valued partner is considering a service upgrade, could you provide a free month of benefits? Small gestures (like carrying someone’s bag to their car) cost very little, but they add up over time.

People will continue taking their business to places they feel valued, and they’ll tell their friends too.

Keep Your Commitments

Reliability is the foundation of good customer relationships.

If you make a promise, keep it. If you say, “your new grill will be delivered and assembled by Saturday,” make sure it does. Never make claims you can’t back up with certainty.

The same rule applies to client appointments, upcoming sales, deadlines, etc. Think before you speak because broken promises are a slight on your character and your business's reputation.

Need some fresh ideas? Contact us today to get started! 516-561-1468 or FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY OF OUR MARKETING PRODUCTS GO TO:www.printcafeli.com

How to Keep Brand Value

 

Your brand is everything.

It’s what makes potential buyers and customers recognize you and helps set you apart from competitors.

It’s important to maintain the value of your brand in order to make the most of your business marketing. Keeping brand focus and consistency is key. If customers know what your brand stands for, they’ll end up appreciating it more, and you’ll gain more organic traffic.

A strong brand value helps tell your company’s story, creating awareness, loyalty, and excitement for the consumer.

Sales and marketing trends will continually change over time. However, building the power of your company’s brand is an investment that pays for years to come.

3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Value

1. Business Visuals

Your logo is at the forefront of your company.

Anyone who knows your business knows what your logo looks like, including the color palette, typography, imagery, and graphic elements. These brand visuals are most important to maintain throughout your business advertising.

When marketing for your business, continue to use these same characteristics of your logo throughout. Over time, after creating enough brand awareness, you should simplify your logo, and people will still know exactly who you are. For example, the Chevrolet logo doesn’t need the word “Chevrolet” next to it for people to know who they are. They’ve been around long enough and created a strong brand value to be able to pull that off.

2. Business Values and/or Mission

Brand values and/or the mission of your business are just as important to show and maintain as the logo characteristics.

Use your values to strengthen your advertising, show what you stand for, and create awareness. When people see an advertisement, they should be able to tell what company it’s for before even showing a logo or a name.

3. Business Style

Your company’s style fits in with your brand value and is important to maintain across all marketing consistently.

Does your building’s interior design use a modern appeal or more of a rustic look? Does your website use a white and clean look or a dark and textured theme? Use this style as a part of your print marketing and other advertising. 

The Ultimate Marketing Combination

All of these things; your logo, values, and style all play an important role in maintaining brand value.

Used often and strategically, these brand elements will help strengthen your brand so that your business is better known, and you’ll gain more traffic online and in person.

Need some fresh ideas? Contact us today to get started! 516-561-1468 or FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY OF OUR MARKETING PRODUCTS GO TO:www.printcafeli.com

How to Build Trust and Rapport in New Business Relationships

When Brendan Kane scheduled a Fox Business interview, he never planned to bag a presidential candidate.

Kane, a social media influencer strategist, thought his Kennedy show interview was simply another media spot. Until he landed in the green room with Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney. Kane later admitted he didn’t even know who Delaney was – he just wanted to have a good conversation. But as they visited about their lives and interests, Delaney was quickly drawn to Kane’s magnetic, genuine personality.

One warm conversation bloomed into a partnership. Before the day was over, Delaney asked Kane to help him with his political social media campaign.

Sell Yourself, Then Sell Your Products

Do you want to create a rapport that quickly builds trust with others?

This starts with meeting people organically and connecting with them authentically. Brendan Kane never tried to sell John Delaney anything; he just took an interest in his life and story. It was Delaney who eventually pitched himself to Kane!

Great business relationships start with rich personal interactions, including conversations that flow from an authentic, nonthreatening place. Are you looking to sell yourself so you can then sell your brand or product? Here are three tips to get you started:

1. Offer non-judgmental validation

People feel heard and valued when you seek their opinions and input without judging them.

Seek the other person’s opinions and thoughts without jumping to conclusions. While you don’t have to agree with what they say, adopting an attitude of acceptance means respecting a person’s feelings or values as valid, even if they are different from your own.

If this is difficult for you, taking time to imagine yourself in the other person’s place can help you be more open and empathetic.

2. Listen with your full presence

Do you ever talk to someone who seems distracted? Even as this person listens, you can see a thousand thoughts racing through his head, as if he can’t wait to cut in and speak his mind.

One of the best gifts you can give someone is your full presence and attention – to truly listen. Beneath all the swagger or struggles, everyone has a story to tell. People are longing to be seen and heard, and when you ask questions and actually hear the answers, you’ll be amazed how quickly connections are built.

3. Establish a time constraint early in the conversation

Have you ever been sitting in an airport or your office chair when someone unexpectedly approaches you to start a conversation?

This scenario can be unsettling for many people because no one wants to feel trapped in an awkward, unplanned discussion (especially with someone they don’t fully trust). To quickly set an associate at ease, preview the end of a conversation before it starts.

Say something like, “I’d like to visit with you about ____, can I grab 10 minutes of your time?” or, “I’m on my way out, but before I left, I wanted to ask you _______.”

Enlarge Your Influence

Building rapport is critical for nurturing strong relationships and amplifying your influence on others.

When you build relational bridges, you will engage people on a human level, foster transparency, and fuel a culture of innovation, loyalty, and collaboration.

Need some fresh ideas? Contact us today to get started! 516-561-1468 or FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ANY OF OUR MARKETING PRODUCTS GO TO:www.printcafeli.com

What Makes A Label Great ? 

                         Color, Type Font, & Design

OUTLINE THOSE FONTS!

There are hundreds of thousands of fonts, also called typefaces, out there. And while The Print Cafe has thousands of fonts in our archives there’s a
chance a font may not exist in our system. Trying to find a font, or trying to find an analogous font, or manipulating a font to make a copy change/make a label more readable: all this increases turnaround time.
The simple solution: it’s called “outlining” fonts, and it’s a feature in most graphic design software. Basically, outlining a font converts it from a mathematical construction to a scalable series of lines and curves. When fonts are outlined, the font file associated with its respective font (.ttf, .otf, etc.) is not needed for type
to display properly. Sometimes a client isn’t particularly picky about which font to use. If that’s the case, just let us know. We’ll find the perfect one for the job!

 

SIZE  MATTERS

If a font is a “serif” font, you’ll notice little “flourishes” on it. If it’s a “sans-serif” font, it doesn’t have those embellishments. Most block-type fonts are san-serif fonts, and VASTLY superior for readability, especially in small print. The Print Cafe recommends using sans-serif fonts whenever possible for label work, especially for any small print that has a lot of type. Otherwise, the type will be difficult, or even impossible, to read.
    Common examples of serif fonts include Times Roman, Palatino, Book Antiqua, and New Century. Common sans-serif fonts include Helvetica, Arial, Futura, and Franklin Gothic.
 “There’s a lot that goes into a label! Your package design is your last salesperson
contact.  A typical product on a shelf has about two seconds to gain a customer’s attention.” “So think pictures first, then big bold letters, and then tackle the fine details. What are you getting across in those few seconds of ‘first glance’ is everything.” If you don’t design a label with your audience in mind … if the label is unreadable … the most valuable sales opportunity could be missed.”

TINY SERIF TYPE DOES NOT ‘REVERSE OUT’ WELL 

If you do decide to use a serif font and you reverse it extremely small (i.e., “reverse” the type to make it white or light on a dark background), you’re going to lose detail. If you’re going to do it, I wouldn’t go any smaller than a six-point font. If you have a sans-serif font … that is, a block letter … it’s a lot easier on the eye and can get a lot smaller and read much more cleanly as a smaller, reversed-out font than a serif font.”

CMYK, ALL THE WAY

Labels are, obviously, printed. But what some people don’t realize is that printing with ink is entirely different from displaying an image on a computer with pixels. Unlike digital or online art, which is usually rendered in RGB (Red-Green-Blue) color, quality printed materials often rely on a color system called “CMYK” (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black). CMYK is much more sophisticated, and thus capable of producing a much wider range of color. Even though a CMYK color may look close to an RGB color onscreen, it translates very differently on press. Richie says it best: “RGB colors are not going to print nicely in CMYK, which is our world. Colors will be dull. ”If your clients can “spec” CMYK colors, they will be happier. Even better than CMYK, however, is spotcolor printing when it’s available.
 

 PANTONE, PLEASE

As for how to “spec” that color,  “We use the Solid-Coated Pantone Color Matching
(PMS) system. Textile colors or cloth colors or even PMS Uncoated colors aren’t in our standard color processing. (FYI: PMS Uncoated colors are lighter than PMS Coated colors.) It’s wise to look up the Pantone Colors using their official online color picker to choose the Solid-Coated PMS color that best matches your desired outcome.”

VECTOR FOR LINE ART

There are many kinds of art, but we’ll deal with the two most common: “Raster” images and “Vector” images. For many label-art purposes, vector images are by far the best way to go. Raster images, which are often used to render photographs on a computer, have a set number of pixels in an image. So trying to enlarge a raster image will often result in a blurry result … all you’re doing is making the pixels bigger, until eventually they just look like squares of color. Vector images, which have been drawn or converted to mathematical calculations between each point in an image, are completely scalable. Simply put, vector images are much easier to enlarge, shrink, or edit than raster images, and will produce a sharp, “non-jaggy”
result every time.


MAKE SURE ARTWORK ALLOWS FOR A 1/8” MARGIN

“Here, we have a 1/8” printing area, meaning we have to leave 1/16” on all sides of your artwork … any imprint has to be inside that 1/16” margin” Bottom line: plan your design to allow for a sixteenth of an inch around all edges.

RESOLUTION: AT LEAST 300 DPI

Plain and simple, there’s a huge difference between how something looks onscreen and how it looks printed on label stock. While online materials are rendered at resolutions of 72-150 dpi (dots per inch) for fast uploading and display, print materials suffer terribly at 150 dpi. If you want crisp, clear art, text that’s easy to read, and images that truly pop, check your supplied art’s document settings to make sure its resolution is at least 300 dpi at actual print size. If the art is enlarged, the dpi reduces. Example: if a customer sends a 1”x1” art file at 300 dpi and enlarges it to 3 x3” the dpi plummets with the enlargement.

SOFTWARE AND FILE FORMATS

The Print Cafe primarily works with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop software, which are incredibly powerful image editing tools. However, even these can only do so much. And we understand that customers create artwork in all kinds of programs, even Microsoft Word. Still, your best-case scenario for label art is an Adobe
Illustrator (.ai) file. We can can also work with JPEG or PNG file formats, but an Illustrator file is by far the fastest, smoothest, and best. PDF images can also work – but only sometimes. “We advise caution when saving out of programs that aren’t compatible with Illustrator. If a file is saved as a PDF file that is not compatible with Illustrator it will sometimes convert images to “nonnative” elements in the file when opened in Illustrator.

We suggest if you have a link or placed image in your art, and have saved out of a different program (not Illustrator or PhotoShop), send the image with your PDF file. We can relink the file.”


OWN IT!

Make sure your customer has purchased any stock art or images that have been downloaded from the Internet. You’d be surprised at how many low resolution images we receive complete with a stock image company’s watermark. Those watermarks exist to protect copyrighted material, and we cannot legally (let alone neatly) remove them. Remember: Rights and royalties matter!

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC-SMS TEXT 516-253-4040 or Call 516-561-1468 or VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT: www.printcafeli.com