“Best Of” winners aren’t necessarily the best, however. There’s a lot of campaigning going on. So if you sit back and just hope your customers enter your name on the ballot, think again. Business owners have been known to stoop to cutthroat tactics such as stuffing ballot boxes with fake names and launching smear campaigns against competitors.

You can play fair, though, by reminding your customers new and old to vote for you. Here are three campaign strategies.

1. Print and hand out postcards to your customers that urge them to vote in your local “Best Of.” Include a link to the ballot or remind them when the publication is distributed with the ballot. Be sure to include which categories are relevant to your business, and think beyond your niche. For example, I’m urging people to vote for a lunch spot I like for more than just sandwiches but also “Best Staff.”
2. As soon as the “Best Of” ballot link goes live, post it on your website, again asking clients to vote for you as well as suggesting specific categories.
3. Do you have a newsletter – e-mail or snail-mail? Do the same as above, and don’t hesitate to remind customers if you send another newsletter out.

When the “Best Of” winners are announced, publicize your achievement outside of the newspaper or magazine – order stickers to hand out and post on your door, print a banner proclaiming your victory and announce it on your website and through your newsletter. You worked hard to be the best – now let everyone know it. After all, a crowning achievement given by your peers is some of the best marketing you can get.

Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Rock star posters serve as excellent inspiration for unique baby announcement designs.

Let’s start with rock poster baby announcements by Rattle-N-Roll. Based on the premise that some of us are just born cool, you can design similar baby announcements that practically guarantee you’ll have the most popular kid in daycare.

Commemorate your special deliver with baby announcements inspired by magazine covers.

If your baby is destined for stardom, you could design a magazine cover birth announcement to commemorate her birth. Or make it a booklet, with interior pages that offer background on parents, grandparents, siblings and plenty of photos from your baby’s first few days. It will be a keepsake you’ll have forever … as long as the paparazzi don’t steal it!

Design a baby announcement like a B-movie poster.

If you harbor a penchant for B-movies and have a great sense of humor, take a cue from Brandon Buerkle. The artist created this birth announcement when his baby was born, and you can use it as inspiration for your own creative birth announcements.

Make your baby a star with movie poster birth announcements.

Five Star Baby designs custom baby announcements based off of popular movie posters, and you can use these as inspiration for your own theme-based baby announcement design.

Now it’s your turn. Use the inspirational sources listed here, add in a dash of creativity, and you can design some really cool birth announcements. When you do, send me a link!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

It’s my turn this year, so I’ve been researching St. Patrick’s Day party invitations online to see if I can glean inspiration from others’ designs. Here, I thought I’d share with you a few of my favorite designs from the search.

I love a festive theme for St. Patrick’s Day party invitations, and this design takes the cake with patterned shamrocks that seem to pop out of a translucent shamrock background. A unique font that seems to mimic the outer edges of four-leaf clovers and the multi-hued green wave accents add class to this incredible design.

Unique and elegant, the suede background of this St. Patrick’s Day party invitation is the perfect backdrop for a faux embossed shamrock. This is one of the best party invitations I’ve seen for any holiday.

In my St. Patrick’s Day party invitation search I stumbled across the website of Erin Condren, and if you haven’t had a chance to check her designs out you simply must. Erin’s work is absolutely amazing, and even more so when you learn that she is a stay-at-home mom with twins! Here’s one of her party invitations…

… and here’s another. What I love about Erin’s designs is that they’re quirky and fun. She knows how to turn fonts into design elements and use a minimalist layout to make a lasting impression.

Last but certainly not least is this St. Patrick’s Day party invitation design that can’t be ignored. Risqué yet classy, this reminds me of those World War II era pinups sometimes seen on the side of planes, always seen on man walls and definitely a killer party invitation idea!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Image courtesy of Custom Paperworks

Image courtesy of Custom Paperworks

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

PsPrint is now offering three paper stocks to choose from:

• Top-quality gloss sticker paper with crack-and-peel backing (for indoor use)
• Premium vinyl sticker paper with glossy UV coating (for indoor or outdoor use)
• Clear polyester sticker paper with glossy UV coating (for indoor or outdoor use)

Marketing your business with stickers is easy-peasy because you have a smaller space, and you don’t want to overload it information. Here are some ideas:

Pique your audience’s curiosity by including your logo and website – no company or band name.

Make sticker business cards.

Create a custom die cut to make your sticker stand out.

Bumper stickers never go out of style! What easier way to grab attention than when a driver is stuck behind you in traffic?

K.I.S.S. = Keep it simple, stupid. That’s a crude way of reminding you to not go crazy with your stickers. Stick with just a couple of bold colors, such as a white background so that letters or graphics show up clearly.

Think of your green efforts when it comes to stickers. Maybe your business is already well known, but stickers are a great way to remind potential new customers that you recycle or switched to energy-saving light bulbs. Hand out stickers and paste them on your store windows. Green sticker marketing goes both ways, too, since you can choose soy-based inks, and stickers aren’t as easily tossed away as other printed marketing materials.

What are some of the creative ways you’ve used stickers?

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

It seems everyone wants to chip in when there’s a newborn. From the minute they receive the birth announcement, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and colleagues feel a desire – if not an obligation – to shower the baby (and parents) with gifts.

Thus, as a father of two, I’ve come up with three ways you can get more stuff by leveraging birth announcements to subtly tell potential gifters that yes, you are in need, and to direct them to buy what you want.

Tell your story – Most birth announcements simply state when the baby was born, who the proud parents are, siblings and perhaps list extended family members. But why stop there? Offer a brief background of the parents – how you met and how your love culminated in your new bundle of joy (leave out certain details, of course). This establishes your situation, which is especially useful if you’re living out of a half-bedroom apartment above a crack house on the wrong side of the tracks.

Share your plans – You have a philosophy for how you’re going to raise your child, and sharing this philosophy can earn huge brownie points with wealthy benefactors. Briefly explain how you’ll give your baby a foundation upon which he or she can develop into a successful adult. Start with your plan to move away from the crack house.

Direct buyers to what you need/want – Take a small portion of your birth announcement to place a URL or two that lead to baby gift registries. Don’t openly request items, but definitely mention where you’re registered. And make sure a 50-inch HDTV for the baby isn’t on the list.

If you don’t have a gift registry (or already have everything you need from the baby shower), open a college fund for your baby and detail how contributions can be made to that fund. Trust me – you’ll yield handsome contributions from even the unlikeliest donors when they know their money is going toward the education you shunned.

Be tactful in your approach; under no circumstances should you come across as needy or expectant. Instead, subtly nudge those who want to give in the right direction. And, of course, everything should be in the best interest of the baby … Remember, the fewer diapers you have to buy the sooner you can get that HDTV!

Image use Creative Commons license via Flickr.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.