Small businesses often find themselves competing with much larger foes. They are usually at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to the ability to advertise their services or products against those of their more powerful competitors.In this environment, small business owners must find creative ways to increase their customer base and, in turn, their share of the market. They must think in unconventional terms in order to compete with the conventionally-minded monsters against whom they are battling.

One very effective way to bring in more customers is through promotional giveaways. While it seems counter-intuitive to “give away” your service or product when it seems that every single dollar of revenue must be poured back into the business, giveaway can actually generate much more than they cost.

An advantage that small businesses have over large corporations is their proximity to their customers. Most small businesses target customers in their immediate area. this means that promotional giveaways can be easily distributed to a large number of potential customers almost overnight. Small business owners will usually begin seeing profits generated by their giveaways in a very short period of time, making the cost of the promotions themselves much easier to tolerate.

There are a wide variety of ways in which businesses can distribute a giveaway. A service-based business can offer their service for free to customers for a certain amount of time. This free offer can be advertised by giving coupons to other business owners to give to their employees and customers. Or, the small business owner can send postcards out o local customers that include the offer right on them. Postcard printing is relatively cheap, and can be done very quickly and effectively. The business owner can have a number of postcards printed, and then take them to the post office for distribution to a certain zip code or street.

In the same way, postcard marketing plays a major role when doing a promotion in this way. Just as small business owners should send their “free offer” postcards to customers in a specific area, they should also target a specific audience within that area. A pay day loan company, for instance, would not want to target high-end businesses where customers tend to be wealthy and self-employed. Instead, they would target traditionally “blue-collared” neighborhoods where people generally have only one or two sources of income.

In addition to postcard printing as a promotional giveaway, there are other options as well. Business owners can print a small magazine-type publication (if they have the necessary resources) and distribute it for free to generate sales and name recognition. They can also use more traditional ways to advertise their giveaways, such as newspaper or radio ads.

There are many ways to let customers know about promotional giveaways, but the point is that small businesses can greatly benefit from them. They will spend a certain amount to giveaway their product, of course, but the resulting increase in profit is usually well worth the initial expense. Promotional giveaways are effective for small businesses because they can be directed right at the company’s intended customers, and can generate a remarkably fast turnaround in profits.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Postcard Marketing, Postcard Printing

1. What Is Business Branding And How To Do It?Every body today wants to brand their e-business, but what is branding and how is it done?

Branding is building a compelling association between your company and the biggest benefit you can offer your customers. It is your promise to your customers about what they can expect from you.

Effective branding is what causes people to walk past all the no-name, on-sale colas at the grocery store and pick up the six-pack of Coca-Cola that costs twice as much.

So, how can you apply this kind of branding to your business? Branding is a mix between art and complex science and that is just the beginning.

In Online Marketing, many of the classic branding strategies don’t apply to your business, but there are some valuable lessons to learn from these strategies.

2. Three Major Branding MythsYou will make a mistake in thinking that you have to brand your business the same way big companies do. Internet Marketing is very different than selling laundry detergent on the supermarket shelves.

Myth #1

Making Your Company or Product A Household Name

The Truth is that not every household is going to buy your product! You will be most successful by closely targeting your market. Rather focus on getting your business name and advertising in front of your best potential customers.

It will only be a waste of money to advertise to a broad audience.

Myth #2

Spending A Lot Of Money To Gain Brand Recognition

The Truth is that there are plenty of free and low-cost techniques to brand your e-business. Just make sure you do not use strategies that are outdated, because they would not be as effective in the marketplace today.

3. Consistency Is KeyIn order to have your target market remember you, you need to repeat your message to them consistently. Your message should be reinforced by your web site design, logos and graphics.

However, this is not all branding entails – there is a branding moment with every contact your customers and visitors have with you.

Every thing you do to get your customers should all contribute to your branding message.

4. Make Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) PowerfulYour unique selling point would be the message you will give a potential customer in one sentence to clearly communicate how he or she will benefit from doing business with you. Your message should be clear, the language simple, and easy to remember.

You want your market to be able to identify you by and associate you with this message.

5. Target Your MarketWhen running an online business, you have an advantage and that is that you can reach hundreds of thousands of potential targeted customers all over the world for little or no cost.

You can effectively and cheaply advertise only to those people who are most likely to act on your offer. It is tempting to try and sell to the world when you have the ability, but don’t do it! It will be much more effective to have your message and brand received by a targeted audience. Your goal should be to be heard by your niche market on a global scale with targeted advertising.

Advertising and marketing for a small business take effort and a plan to be successful. Many small business owners become discouraged too quickly because they do not receive the windfall of customers that they expected after they ran their initial advertising campaigns. You must keep at it. Advertising is a art that takes constant monitoring and refinement and a long term plan that will lead to your success. Here are three things that small business owners can do in to increase their chance of success in their advertising campaign.

1. Be Committed To Your Long Term Plan – This strategies assumes you have a long term plan. If you do not, then you need one, fast. Just like planning to open your business needed a business plan, your advertising needs a plan. This helps you to meet deadlines for publications and lay out different messages that you want to to get in front of your customers at different parts of the year. You should at a minimum have a six month advertising plan, but really it should be a year. This will help to establish longer term contracts with advertisers which helps to bring the price down of each advertisement.

2. Add Shock Value – As a small business you are competing with major corporations for your customers. You have to be different. Speak to what your customer needs and how you can provide, but you have to make a scene. Just being average and boring when competing with small and large businesses will be very frustrating as you will not get the returns from your advertising that you expect. By being different you have a great opportunity to acquire those customers who usually would not have paid you much attention.

3. Take Advantage Of Free Services – The most common free service that small businesses fail to take advantage of is press releases. If you have a new product or service or just an interesting tidbit about your industry that you think your customers should know about, write a press release. A quick Google search will give you dozens of free press release services. You can also send them to your local papers individually. There is no guarantee that they will be printed, but if they do, this is a lot of free advertising that only cost you a little bit of your time. Something to consider: How long will it take you to write a 250-300 word article about your business? Not long I bet. This should done right away.

This article was written by Brian May of Small Business Local. Small Business Local focuses on business advertising in Columbus Ohio and business marketing in Columbus Ohio.

Mention discount printing and a person may think twice about quality, especially with something as critical as working on your marketing materials. Rest assured though that most of these fears are baseless, and larger printing companies with more professional machinery provide prints cheaper.

In printing, a change in the way prints are done can spell the difference of as much as 50% of the price cost. Just compare the printing cost of online printing as against a small local printing company to get a clear picture of the price difference. There are several factors that affect the price of your printing.

Here are a few tidbits about how big companies can afford to sell cheap:

• Economies of Scale:

In simple terms, an increase in the scale of production brings down the cost to produce individual units. There are several reasons why the overall cost per print goes down as the output of a printer increases.

1) Printing companies order their supplies like paper and ink from third party suppliers. The large volume can be used as leverage to get bigger wholesale discounts from these third party suppliers.

2) Large businesses have to maintain an efficient work flow to keep up with the printing demands. They have to train their employees, and with repetitive work, they gain more experience and skill in their specialized area. This minimizes wastage and maximizes productivity.

3) Fixed overhead costs are spread over a larger volume of print jobs. Overhead costs are sometimes unrelated to the print job itself, but should nonetheless be recovered by the business. The rent of the factory for instance, or the cost to hire management is spread over more print jobs.

• New Technology:

4) Investing in new equipment allows printing companies to automate many tedious and laborious processes that cut additional costs. The computer to plate technology for instance cuts a big portion of the prepress process that used to involve manually developing plates, stripping the negative to plate, etc.

5) With the lighter plastic parts, the printing equipment is easier to manage and to set up cutting down related fixed costs.

6) Globalization allows a faster transport of goods and services across borders. Printers can simply outsource their customer service to call centers, or their design templates to graphic artists in other countries.

• Gang Run Printing:

7) Gang-run printing combines different print jobs into a large plate and is run as one job so that the setup and plating costs is shared. And because a big part of the printing process is taken up by plating and setup costs, it gives customers bigger savings.

• Competition:

As the prices of printing companies become more accessible and easy to compare, printing companies make sure they keep their prices competitive. They keep their overhead costs low, streamline their production line, and keep their profit margins minimal.

The small profit margin on each printing project is made up for in volume. These discount printing companies rely on providing the cheapest services to get the best value for customers. Next time you hear discount, be sure to take advantage of the cheaper costs.

This article aims to inform readers how to avail quality prints through discount printing jobs. For more related topics and tips please feel free to visit Color Printing Wholesale

One of the most difficult aspects of operating a small business is attempting to decrease your customer acquisition costs to improve profits and in many cases high acquisition costs are what prevent the business from being profitable at all. Most small businesses do not keep track of acquisition statistics so they are unsure of how much it costs for them to acquire each new customer. Without knowing this statistic, it is impossible to truly measure the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing.

One of the ways to help reduce acquisition costs is to use free advertising resources to increase your customer base. With these resources the primary cost is time, which for advertising is a relatively low price. Here are a few resources that small businesses should be taking advantage of to grow their customer base as it will definitely give you a competitive edge over your competition:

Craigslist – Craigslist.com is an online classified website that is free to post listings. Craigslists is one of the top 10 visited websites in the United States and can drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your business. Craigslist has a services section where local businesses can list the products and services that they offer for potential customers. Craigslist is organized by local geographies, therefore you have the potential to drive very local customers to your business. Total time to post an ad on Craigslist is probably about five minutes and will be less once you get the hang of it.

Google Base – Google Base is a free online classified that benefits from the large amounts of traffic generated by Google.com. A simple listing on Google Base can help to drive traffic to your website and although Google claims that it does not make a difference, it is a good bet that the more activity you have on the web properties, the better you will rank in their primary search engine.

Press Releases – The days of needing to be a professional writer to submit a press release are long gone. Now anyone that has knowledge of a product or service should submit press releases to media outlets and can be done easily with free resources. A couple of the sites that I recommend are prleap.com and prfree.com, but there are many others. These services submit your articles to the Associated Press which in many cases will be a distribution of 40,000 subscribers. If only a fraction of the subscribers pick up your article, you benefit. It first establishes you as an authority on the subject matter, but it also generates links back to your website which will increase your search engine rankings. The benefits of these free services can be massive in reducing your customer acquisition costs.

Merchant Circle – Merchantcircle.com is an online business directory that is focused on offering small business websites to promote their business. The main benefit of their service in my opinion is that their pages rank highly in the search engines, therefore, increase the ranking of your website in your local geographic ares. To set up you page only takes about ten minutes.

These are just a few examples of free resources that your business should be using. Think out of the box and do a little research to find out other free resources that will benefit your business. With only one new customer, this form of advertising pays for itself.

Creating postcards is not that difficult. In fact, you don’t need to dedicate a lot of time, money and effort to print and mail your own postcards. Nevertheless, when done right, any postcard printing project can be a successful marketing vehicle especially this holiday season when bringing good tidings and holiday cheer are part and parcel of celebrating this special time of the year.  

Instead of your typical holiday greeting card, use a custom-printed holiday postcard that will be enjoyed and appreciated more by your target readers without having to open an envelope to see your holiday greeting. You can include these wonderful tips to this yuletide’s season’s postcard project and add good tidings to your business.  

You make a list and better check it twice. Revisit and drop a greeting to your list of customers who have made a purchase before. And don’t forget, there’s always potential in your list of customers who just browsed or inquired about your products or services. Send them a quick greeting by dropping a quick holiday postcard in the mail.  

Make this season bright. To catch your target readers’ attention, make sure that you paint a bright picture not only with your images but also with your message. Emphasize the thing that makes this holiday season so popular: the warmth and cheer of the season. Make your target readers feel warm and fuzzy with your  printed postcard  piece.  

Give your clients an open invitation to visit you–with some incentive. This can be in the form of a free gift or a special discount when they bring your postcard to your shop. Or you could also throw a party of sorts to celebrate with your most loyal clients. This can also be a thank-you party where you let your customers feel that you appreciate their loyalty and the business they bring in.

‘Tis the season to be jolly and different. Change your size and shape by breaking free from the postcard norm. Make your holiday postcards stand out from the rest. Try custom shapes. A Christmas tree, a bright star, christmas ball, mistletoe–these are some ideas that can distinguish your postcard in a pile of mail and send a clear message even before your reader starts reading your greeting.  

The bottom line for this exercise is to make that special  holiday postcard  that would not only spread your good old cheer and happiness in this season of joy but also allow your business the opportunity to stand out from the rest. Once you’ve established this unique identity, not only will your customers be enjoying tasty savings from your discounts but your business will be jolly, merry and bright from your postcard printing success as well.

 For comments, inquiries and further info about this article, visit: 

 Postcard Printing Service

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/create-an-effective-holiday-postcard-this-season-255606.html

About the Author:
Janice Jenkins is a writer for a marketing company in Chicago, IL. Mostly into marketing research, Janice started writing articles early 2007 to impart her knowledge to individuals new to the marketing industry.

True or False – I’m always impressed with the packaging I receive when I order stuff online.Based on our experience and a little research we think you probably answered false.

We think most online retailers could use some package presentation improvements; CafePress included. We’ve also seen that shoppers feel better about the stuff they buy online when it’s presented well, so we’re looking at what we can do to improve the experience a shopper has when they open their CafePress packages.

We have a few things we’re working on, but starting today we’re launching step one – new receipts!

Until now our receipts have arrived in the form of an 8.5″ X 11″ printed piece of paper, often poorly folded, and simply not reflecting the quality and care that has gone into the product design, or the product itself.

Beginning today we’re sending a new and improved receipt with every order. For the most part the information on the receipt is the same, but it now includes the shop/product URL (example: www.cafepress.com/shopID/product#) for each product listed, and it looks more like a receipt you’d receive when you make a purchase at a department store.

To make the presentation complete each receipt will be placed into a “receipt jacket” featuring artwork and copy designed to help buyers understand the unique nature of the item they’ve purchased, the diversity of merchandise available at CafePress, and the vast network of Shopkeepers that make it all possible.

You’ll see the final product on your next order, we hope you like it as much as we do!

Cafepress has long favored branding their site over the sub sites of the shopkeepers who have given them millions of designs to sell. This is a step in the right direction.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

Aside from letters, one of the most effective marketing campaigns for any business is your postcard printing project, minus all the work associated with developing a promotional letter campaign.

Not only do you lessen your workload with your print materials, your postcard printing project, when mailed in 3 to 8 weeks time, allows your prospective clients to think of you when they need any of your products or service, and contact you to purchase. Your postcard printing materials are definitely hardworking tools in small packages that you can add to make your marketing arsenal a powerhouse.

Over time, your postcard printing campaign can be your most effective hard sellers. However, you need to remember a few things to make your postcards work:

1 – Don’t use paper stock that looks cheap. Your postcard printing project is generally made from small sheets of paper that you need something big to create attraction to them.

Without even resorting to flashy and dazzling images and unusual design, your postcard printing project can be attention-getters on their own right with the help of excellent quality paper stock to write on your postcard printing copy.

In bulk postcard printing projects, the cost of your paper stock is often just a small fraction of the overall postcard printing expense. So don’t go stingy on your paper. Go for the excellent grade of paper. Never use cheap stuff if you can afford it.

2 – Don’t use gloss for finish when you’re printing your postcards, unless of course you are doing your postcard printing project in full color. You know why? Your glossy postcard printing pieces would get marked, mangled, and scarred when you bring them to the post office to be mailed. One graphic designer recommends a bright-white 80 pound linen stock if you plan to mail your postcard printing pieces.

3 – Don’t get stuck with the standard size of your postcard printing project. If you want to create a sensation with your postcards, go for the biggest postcard printing size you can think of (of course, without having to spend more on postage.) The post office charges not more than 20 cents for a size larger than the regular postcards (which is 4 ¼” by 6″), mailed first class.

4 – Use your postcard printing copy to entice levels of readers to your marketing print: a big, bold headline for the “scanners”; a well written and designed subhead for further readers; and a smart and sharp first paragraph of your copy for the “keepers”.

The headline would be the first thing to grab your target readers’ attention. At first glance, your “scanners” should be able to take a quick look at your postcard printing material and be able to get the idea right away. If you have something clever to say in your headline then you’ll get your target readers hooked. The bottom line for your headline is to compel your target readers to read the rest of your postcard printing copy.

The subhead should be able to entice and intrigue your target readers to learn more. Here is where your target readers evolve from a “scanner” to a definite reader.

And lastly, your body should only have one goal in mind – to keep your readers reading.

Creating a successful postcard printing project is easy. With these tips to help you, you’ll no doubt be able to develop something that will steer clients to your business.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Postcard Printing Service

About the author:
Lynne Saarte is a writer that hails from Texas. She has been in the Internet business for some years now, specializing in Internet marketing and other online business strategies.

Top 5 searches: Wedding Vintage Funny T-Shirts Native American Breast Cancer

Top 5 tags used: Photography Cartoon Cute United+States Fashion

Top 5 busiest contributors: kitty23 forsakenreality thecuteinstitute mildred ZekeySpaceyLizard

A word of advice however. If you are going to jump in with well established keywords and product designs be ready to fight your way to the top. If you’re not, then you could get very disappointed.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.