I thought not. You run a small business, and you already know success takes a lot of hard work. What you might not be aware of is the proven power of personalization. When each individual prospect feels as though you really have them in your thoughts, your overall response rate will skyrocket. It’s a proven fact: make them feel special, and they will respond.

Whether you’re hosting a conference or you’re simply inviting new clients to a free consultation, personalized invitations will go a long way toward making your campaign a success. It starts with sending your invitations to a specific person (and not a title or the dreaded “current resident”). But there’s more to personalized invitations than a printed address label:

• print stationery and hand-write your invitations
• hand-sign all invitations
• print matching envelopes and hand-write the addresses (this will fetch far more opens)
• print greeting cards or response cards with a spot for you to hand-write an individualized note

All of these take extra work, but they all yield big results. Yes, I know: You don’t have the time. I counter with this: You’ll actually save time because you’ll land more sales. That’s less work you have to do per customer in the long run. In addition, you can recruit co-workers, spouses and employees to help hand-write your personalized invitations. Unless your customers would recognize your hand-writing, the effect will be the same.

Personalization equals profits, ask any marketer in the know. Try it out and see for yourself.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

A major part of being legitimate is registering your business name with the state. This is important for filing your taxes, going into contractual agreements and starting bank accounts. Think about your business in the long term. You might one day acquire employees, which means creating a payroll. You could one day rent or own an office space. Whatever you do with your business, your business name is going to be involved somehow. Making sure that it is officially listed as a registered business with your Secretary of State’s office is a necessary step toward being a legitimate business owner.

The first step is to go to your Secretary of State’s office. A quick Google search will direct you to their website. I live in Ohio, so I would do a Google search for “Ohio Secretary of State”. After finding the website, you want to look for the section of the site that focuses on businesses. A business filing or name registration tab is normally on the home page. During the process, you’ll be able to do a search for your business name to see if anyone else is using the name you’ve chosen. This is why it’s important to do this step before purchasing those business cards!

After verifying that no other business has your name, you want to fill out a registration form. Remember, just because the name you’ve chosen doesn’t come up (or does come up) doesn’t mean that it’s available (or not available). There are regulations on having a business name, but if someone’s chosen the same name in a different industry, it may still be available for you. The same goes for a business name showing as available. Someone might be in the process of registering the same name in the same industry, so filling out the form and applying is the only way to know if the name you’ve chosen can be registered by you.

The form is normally one that you’ll have to print off and mail back to your Secretary of State. It involves signatures and a filing fee. The fee for Ohio is $125, but you should check your specific state to see how much they charge. If your application is approved, you will receive a certificate showing your official registration with your state. Your Secretary of State’s office will also notify you if there is a problem with your application, or if your business name is not available.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Blogging is easy because your subject matter comes from your own education and experience. As a graphic artist your everyday business life is the inspiration for your writing. If you constantly design flyers and rack cards, you can blog about rack card printing tips or places that offer deals on printing flyers. If you grew your client base through networking, you can blog about events that you’ve attended to build your network base or topics on how to strike up conversations and promote your services upon just meeting a potential client.

Here are five great websites that pay designers for blog posts. Most of them pay per post after an approval of your post by their staff. It’s a great way to make some extra money and promote your business at the same time!

• Design Reviver.com
• SmashingMagazine.com
• ProBlogdesign.com
• CrazyLeafdesign.com
• Gomediazine.com

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

When I first started designing, one of my first big clients was a publishing company. Pretending to know what I was doing, I fumbled through my first book cover design and humbly made the list of adjustments that needed to be done due to my amateur mistakes. If I knew several important rules about book cover printing, it would have saved a lot of time and headache.

Here is a checklist of the basic things to remember when designing a book cover:

Use bleeds
As designers, we deal with bleeds all of the time. The bleeds on a book are normally no different: One-eighth or .125 inches around all sides of the book is standard.

Know your spine width
A book’s spine width is determined by its page count. The equation for determining spine width is dividing the number of pages in your book by the text paper’s pages per inch or PPI. The PPI is a number that you will need to find out from the printer of the book because it is based on the type of paper the printer will use. For example, for a 300-page book with a PPI of 400, the equation would be 300/400 = .75. Your spine width would be .75 or three-fourths of an inch.

Keep the barcode clear
The barcode might be one of the most important parts of a book. It holds so much necessary information, such as the book’s International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and price of the book, so making sure it can easily be scanned is critical. The background of any book’s barcode should be completely white. The actual barcode should be 100 percent black and should not be altered in any way.

Include standard content
On the front of your cover, you want to make sure that there are two key pieces of information: the book’s title and the book’s author. Remember, most authors and publishing companies are concerned with sales, so the easier it is for a potential buyer to recognize the book title and author, the better.

On the spine, the same information applies as the front cover. The title of the book should be clear and at the top of the spine. The author of the book should follow below the title, and normally the publisher’s name or logo will go at the bottom of the spine.

The back cover will normally include the book’s title again, a brief synopsis of the book and the barcode. You could also include the address or contact information of the publisher and any favorable reviews of the book.

A book cover has many of the same design rules as other printed material, so there is no need to shy away from these projects. It’s always a good idea to speak to the book printer beforehand and get their specifications as some printer’s regulations may vary. You might also want to suggest a custom bookmark design to help promote the book, boost sales and put even more money in your pocket!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The "Kick Me" sign concept draws on the same impacing power as the flyer printing and distribution strategies listed here. BONUS: You can get your own "Kick Me" sign here.

Flyer printing is perfect for marketing to the masses, yet it still allows you to control your targeting. Everyone who has studied marketing will tell you that you have to get attention first, and so you have to have a compelling image, a powerful headline and on and on.

Spare me the Marketing 101 lesson, right?

The best way to guarantee your flyers will get noticed is to focus on placement, and the more shocking the better. People remember the unexpected; it catches them off-guard and forces their brains to recognize, analyze and remember. Isn’t this exactly what your flyers should be doing for you?

So let’s establish that flyer placement is just as important as flyer printing in the first place. Let’s also acknowledge that shocking your audience with creative placement will be far more effective than, say, tacking your flyer to a community bulletin board (where everyone is competing for attention). Additionally consider that sometimes context and placement work together to make a flyer shocking. For example, a flyer inside a grocery store is not shocking. A PETA flyer inside a grocery store, on the other hand, has the potential to be rather shocking indeed.

Thus, here are my five favorite shocking places to post flyers:

1. Restroom stalls – Shock your target audience by giving them something to read while they’re taking care of business.

2. Ceilings – Anywhere your customers are forced to look up is a great place to catch them off-guard. Good examples include the ceilings in dentist and chiropractor examination rooms, and you can also pull this off in hair salons and in tandem with a wall-based flyer that says “Look up!”

3. Inside books – Work out an arrangement with a bookstore or library to stuff targeted books with flyers. Imagine your customers’ surprise when they flip open to your “page”!

4. Coat racks – Coat racks are perfect for a “what’s this?” moment between you and your customers.

5. On people – Remember the “kick me” signs of our youth? We’ve been compelled to read anything taped to another’s back ever since.

Image use via Riding A Buttertub

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Photo cards are a great way to share with family and friends.

Are photo cards addictive? I’m just wondering because I see them everywhere anymore. Every Christmas our mailbox is full of photo cards of family and friends. Every time one of her four children takes a new school photo or joins a sport, my cousin sends us a photo card commemorating the event.

Not that I’m complaining. I love photo cards. They’re so much better than off-the-rack greeting cards, especially since I can tack them on the fridge and build my own wall of family and friend portraits with little effort whatsoever.

My grandma loves receiving them, too, and it’s a cheap way to send out new family photos that can be used in frames and on fridges alike. My mother has a curio cabinet that she sticks received photo cards in; my sister-in-law frames them in a large display on her kitchen wall. My son tacks them to his bulletin board.

Ten years ago, photo cards were virtually non-existent. But today it seems as though we receive a photo card every other week. I’m considering sending one of my own every year – Grandma would probably like to get one of the kids – but I’m a little concerned. With the proliferation of photo cards (they’re obviously extremely popular), I don’t want to get hooked into something I can’t get out of.

I mean, I already have hobbies – like aimlessly surfing through television stations when nothing is on – so I’m a little afraid that if I start sending photo cards I won’t be able to stop. I could get hooked, unable to do anything else until I get my photo. It’s already has a hold on nearly everyone in my family!

So, are photo cards addictive? Either that, or… they’re simply fun.

Image use Creative Commons license via Flickr.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.