For this reason, Thanksgiving presents small businesses with a largely untapped marketing opportunity. Since most businesses focus on the Christmas holidays as a vehicle for communications with customers, Thanksgiving-themed promotions are a refreshing way to reach out to prospective clients.

Thanksgiving-themed promotions may not work for businesses in the retail sector, which will already flood consumer’s mailboxes with holiday shopping promotions. To be sure your mailing stands out from the Black Friday noise, take a printed piece and turn it into a Thanksgiving-themed gift that your customers will enjoy. Check out these Thanksgiving-themed promotion ideas below:

1. Recipe cards
What is Thanksgiving all about? That’s easy — food! So send out a mailing with a few great recipes enclosed. One way to do this is to include a brochure with recipes for each of the classic dishes that make up a Thanksgiving meal. Or you could incorporate some photography and create postcards with images of the food on the front and recipes on the back. To mix up the menu a bit, consider including cocktail recipes and dessert recipes, too! Don’t forget to brand each recipe card with your logo, company name and website so that customers will remember where the inspiration for their amazing apple pie came from!

2. Cooking bookmarks
You can help folks create the perfect Thanksgiving meal by including a special bookmark within a promotional mailing. The bookmark can feature a Thanksgiving-themed image such as a cornucopia overflowing with food or other autumnal imagery coupled with appropriate text. Or, to make the bookmark especially handy, you can print useful cooking information on it. Everyone can use a handy reference for cooking conversion tables, tips for kitchen safety or steps for cooking and carving a turkey properly. There are so many ways to make the bookmark useful to recipients. Again, don’t forget to place your business name and information somewhere on the bookmark to remind customers of your generosity.

3. Holiday cards
Sending out blank holiday cards is one of the brilliant methods that nonprofit organizations use to solicit donations. As the winter holidays approach, nonprofits will send a mailing to potential donors and include beautiful holiday greeting cards as a free gift to encourage reciprocity. Copying this idea for a small business mailing is easy. Simply design 3 or 4 different holiday or new year’s themed greeting cards and print enough cards for each person on your list. Your customers will greatly appreciate having a few extra holiday cards around the house, well in advance of the holidays. Place your business name, logo and URL in small type on the back of the cards. You may even include a message about your company, so that when customers send their cards out, your business information will reach new audiences.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

A: A Q&A or FAQ section on a printed brochure, flyer, mailing and even on a website, can help land potential clients by providing detailed answers to allay any fears, doubts and concerns about hiring a designer or copywriter.

Q: How do I brainstorm copy for a Q&A section?

A: Writing a good Q&A involves putting yourself in the client’s shoes. Think about a time when you purchased a costly service or product. Maybe it was the last time you set up a big printing job. You might have had some questions or doubts about the proofing process, turnaround time and total costs. The goal of the questions and answers section is to address such key issues, fears and doubts surrounding a purchase decision. Consider cost, deliverables, edits, project timelines and any other high-level issues your client would be concerned with upon hiring you.

Q: How do I actually start writing a Q&A section?

A: First, don’t sit down and write a list of questions right away. Instead, start by making a list of each issue you can think of. Next, for each issue on your list write a short paragraph that works through how the client might feel about the issue. For example, if you were writing about the topic “Fees,” you might consider a client’s preferences for an hourly versus a flat fee, what kind of payment terms they’d like, etc.

Then write a second paragraph about “Fees” that illustrates how you currently handle fees, and what the benefits are of your approach. If you offer no payment up front and payment upon project delivery, that would be something attractive to clients that you’d want to highlight.

The hard part comes next, when for each topic, you must fuse the client’s point of view and your point of view together into one paragraph. (You may realize throughout this process that you need to make a few changes in your business terms in order to be more attractive to clients.)

Finally, go through each issue and paragraph and write a question headline that summarizes the main idea at stake.

Q: Does it matter what order the question are in?

A: Yes! Go through the list of questions and answers and try to organize them in the way that makes the most sense if someone were to read through the list. Try to create a flow from question to question and eliminate any redundancies.

The overall sequence should be persuasive, building up to a final question that acts as a call-to-action, to get potential clients to take the next step and contact you. For the last question, you could write something like, “How do I get started,” or “How can I find about more about Company X’s services,” and in the answer section, simply provide your contact information.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

These copy elements work because they combine clever writing and design. In other words, it’s the placement of the text that drives the messaging home.

Every designer and marketer should become familiar with these three pieces of copy and use them whenever possible.

1. Teaser copy
Teaser copy refers to the line or two of text that recipients see right away when they pick up your promotion. On a letter, it’s found on the envelope and in a brochure, it would be visible on the cover page. Teaser copy is one of the best ways to entice customers to actually open up and read your promotion. Use teaser copy to let them know when: a) there’s something free inside; b) there’s a discount offer inside; or c) that they will learn something by viewing your promotion. If you let an envelope, brochure or postcard go out, without this vital piece of text, you may experience depressed response.

2. Headlines and subheads
Headlines work really well on letters, inside brochures and on Websites — basically in any promotion that includes a lot of copy. Headlines and subheads can help break up the content of your promotion into digestible bites that even the most impatient or distracted reader can process. Many customers will skim quickly over your promotion looking for something to jump out at them. By using headlines that capture important information such as product benefits, offers and calls to action, you can still reach those skimming readers.

3. The P.S.
The P.S. or postscript in a letter may seem like a tiny detail, but leading marketers will attest to the power of the P.S. in printed promotions. For some reason, people tend to jump down to the postscript even before they finish reading a letter. If you are including a letter, or message of any kind then definitely include a P.S. In the P.S. it’s best to reiterate or summarize the gist of the entire promotion. Write it so that, even if its the only thing a person reads, they’ll still get the big picture.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

It doesn’t matter if you are searching for a job as an agency copywriter or a freelancer, there are five basic mediums you have to know how to write.

Print Ads

Make sure to learn about print advertising. Once you understand what makes these effective, you can move into flyers, newsletters, postcards, etc. Print ads make great additions to your portfolio.

Brochures

You need to know how a brochure fits into the overall marketing scheme before you try to sit down and write one. You have to know if it is meant to stand alone or within a larger marketing campaign. Knowing the five types of brochures will start you on your way to writing an effective brochure.

Direct Mail

After you have begun to create brochures, you will want to tackle direct mail. It will expand on your knowledge base. Not every direct mail package is the same. Some may just be a sales letter or postcard, while others may be more indepth. Some agencies specialize in direct mail, so if you like direct mail then you have a niche.

Commercials

Writing for television helps you learn how to write audio that match video. A 30 second t.v. script is an excellent copywriting experience. The writing has to end on time and match the video seamlessly. Now is a good time to learn how to write a radio commercial. Both can be used as part of your expanding portfolio

Websites

Learning how to write for websites is a standard requirement for any novice copywriter. Every company needs a website that has clear and concise copy. In steps you, the copywriter to save the day.

Website copy can be used in your portfolio, also.

These are just the five most basic forms of writing that a good copywriter needs to know. Advertising mediums take all shapes and sizes. Master them all and you will master your future.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

But what about the simple, time-intensive tasks graphic designers tediously undertake? Things such as identifying a font, changing a CSS style, or choosing a complimentary color can take hours away from more “important” tasks such as creating your designs and choosing imagery. The creative can be stifled by the banal.

Some of my favorite productivity software for graphic designers include:

FileZilla — An FTP application that lets you instantly edit server-side files. This comes in handy when you need to make a simple CSS change or swap a banner image.

7-ZIP — Lets you compile, compress, and unpack a myriad of file types that the built-in Windows application can’t. If you work with large file transfers, Z-ZIP and FileZilla are necessities.

IdentifFont — Identify a font by name, style or by answering a series of quick questions.

Open Source CMS systems — Content Management Systems, once put in place, save time and money. When you need to make a portfolio update, you simply fill out a form and upload your file. If you want to change content, add products or do anything else in a flash, there’s probably a CMS that facilitates the action. Learn to design and find a good developer (if you don’t code) for systems such as Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal. Content is still king, and Open Source CMS is here to stay.

Color scheme generators/color wheels — Here’s a great list of 25 color scheme generators.

Whatsitscolor.com — Upload an image or submit a link to an image and Whatsistscolor generates a color scheme based on the colors in the image. This is valuable if you like the look of a website, brochure or postcard and want to emulate its color scheme. Color Hunter does the same, perhaps slightly cleaner.

Don’t forget that Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Quark and other software have add-ons, plug-ins, actions and a whole host of other time-saving devices available for free download. Try this list of Photoshop plug-ins for starters.

Of course, software suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice deserve a mention, as well as the many commercial project management applications. For free and simple project tracking, check out FreeMind.

Image CC License Flickr.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Instead of trying to capture everyone, you should write your pitch and design your materials for just one customer. This helps you tailor your sales materials — whether they be brochures, postcards, websites, e-mails or something else — to the perfect customer who is ready to buy.

Start by defining who your perfect customer is and giving that customer a name — we’ll call her Jane. If you know what Jane is looking for in a product, where Jane lives, what Jane makes, what Jane’s values are, and other demographic information it becomes easier to succinctly sum up the portion of your pitch that Jane is likely to respond to. Sure, you have other customers, but your goal is to target a specific customer type and giving your perfect customer a name helps you refine your pitch on a personal level. Other customers will still appreciate your pitch, and you can refine other materials to speak to them.

Amateur designers often load their designs with graphics and images that are more distracting than facilitating. Amateur copywriters pack line after line of features and benefits into their copy. On the other hand, seasoned professionals tend to keep it short and sweet.

While long copy sales letters and web pages do have a place, short pitches work best in most applications. Google once conducted a study to see whether long or short copy performed better, and found that short copy won out by a long shot. Why do you think Google’s pages are so sparse?

Being concise doesn’t mean you can’t make an impression — quite the opposite, in fact. Since you’re forced to write and design “light,” you have to find a way to say more with fewer words and to evoke emotions with fewer graphics. That’s why great taglines are more powerful than paragraphs, and a single image is more meaningful than a collage.

Examine your sales materials. What happens if you delete your first paragraph, or paraphrase it into a short headline?

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.