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.

The mailing list, copy, offer and design can all be instrumental in addressing a local audience. Here are some tips on designing a successful local direct-marketing mailing.

1. Use a saturation list
The idea behind a saturation mailing is to reach every house in the neighborhood with your promotion. List brokers offer local lists, which blanket entire zip codes and can usually be purchased for a lesser cost than custom lists, which target particular demographics and other information. If you meet all of the US Postal Service’s requirements for a saturation mailing, then you can achieve lots of savings on postage, too. With the cost savings on the list and postage sides, most marketers find they can afford to print and send out a greater number of pieces.

2. Show a photo or map of your location
If there is enough space on your postcard or direct-marketing mailing, show a photograph of your storefront or map of your location. This will drive home the point that your business is local. The strategy is for prospective customers to see your office, store or location on the mailing, and keep that information top of mind, so that the next time they drive down your street, they will stop in!

3. Add local flavor
Another creative idea is to use a photograph or illustration of a local landmark in your mailing. The image could sit on the outer envelope, near the return address, or stand alone on the image side of a postcard. It could be a natural site, such as a waterfall, mountain or park, or it could be a piece of celebrated architecture such as a courthouse, town hall or lighthouse. Also, if your area has any common slang or lingo, that might be something worth slipping into your copywriting. Using recognizable images and copy on your promotion show recipients you are part of the community and have something in common with them.

4. Demonstrate your sense of community
If you do any personal or professional volunteer work that benefits the community, it can be a nice touch to mention this in your promotion. A blurb about volunteering or community service can be worked into the copy of a letter or offer, or just mentioned on its own as a bullet point or caption. You can also tailor your offer to reward community members. Try offering a discount to parents with children on the local honor roll, or to those who voted in a local election. Promoting and rewarding community involvement shows that you care about more than just profits, and it can be good for business.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The e-mail inbox is over-saturated. Between personal and business messages, subscriber newsletters and – of course – SPAM, there are hundreds of messages to sort through.

Now think about your regular mailbox. Unless you are obsessed with catalogs or donate to hundreds charities, you’re probably collecting only a handful of mailings daily. While e-mail messages are less expensive to send than printed promotions, marketers generally get more exposure and a higher response rate from printed pieces.

Then there’s the sheer physical nature of mail as opposed to e-mail. In a second, you can click and the e-mail message is deleted permanently. Throwing away mail takes a walk inside the house, then over to the trash can and may even require some tearing or shredding. Sometimes its just easier to bring the pile of mail inside and put in on the kitchen table, isn’t it?

Let’s say your promotion does make it safely inside the house and it’s sitting in a stack of mail. What happens next? Well, according to a U.S. Postal Service study of 1,500 consumers, conducted in 2004 and published in 2005, 77 percent of recipients will sort through their stack of mail immediately. It is usually the head of the household that manages this task. This person probably has an unconscious ritual, a place where he or she sits to sort, keep and throw away the mail. According to the study, the person managing the household usually reads the mail in one of these locations:

• Living room: 36%
• Kitchen: 22%
• Den/study/office: 15%
• Bedroom: 8%
• Dining Room: 8%

As the prospects are going through their mail, think about all of the distractions – family members, a knock on the door, the telephone ringing, internet browsing – that they might experience. Amidst all of these distractions, they will judge, sometimes in a split second, whether or not they’ll even look at or open your mailing. Postcards, flyers and door hangers have an advantage here, in that they don’t need to be opened to be seen. With any format, to avoid the trash pile, you need to put your offer up front, make it clear and make it resonate.

Now, one more fact to reassure you that a printed promotion is still a great way to reach prospects. The U.S. Postal Service, in its study, determines that due to the majority of personal correspondence being conducted online, consumers are anticipating marketing-only messages and not personal messages in their daily mail. Here’s what the study found:

• 67% of consumers overall do not expect any personal correspondence in their mail
• 88% of consumers under the age of 40 do not expect any personal correspondence in their mail

So when you reach out with a printed piece, you’ve got an audience who is ready to hear your marketing pitch. No need to pull the wool over their eyes. That’s why its important to make your offer up front, loud and clear. If your offering something relevant to their needs, then they’ll be ready, willing and able to respond.

©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.