You only have one opportunity to make a first impression, and trust me, you don’t want to risk making a bad impression with an unprofessional marketing piece or confusing your audience with items look like they are from completely different companies.

Each and every piece of branded marketing material, whether it is online or offline, should represent your brand, your promise, and your value authentically and consistently. A cohesive marketing strategy and strong visual brand will not only help you communicate feelings of stability, credibility, and dependability, which are key factors in building trust, but they will also help the recipient decide whether they are going to save your sales piece, or throw it away.

So do yourself a favor, hire Bourn Creative to create compelling, eye-catching marketing and sales materials that will blow your competition away and pull your ideal clients right to your doorstep! Or, if you’re still on the fence, check out my blog post on Why Do I Need to Hire a Professional Graphic Designer?

What Marketing Materials Does My Business Need?

You know you need some professional marketing materials so you can get out there and promote your business, your products, and your services. But what do you need exactly? A brochure, ezine, stationery, folder, flyer, website, blog? With all of the different options you have to choose from, how do you know what to do first and how do you know which is the best choice for your business? And more important, which pieces will get you the biggest return on your investment and bring you the most value?

These are questions I get asked all the time and my answer is always the same. There are three main marketing pieces that every solopreneur, entrepreneur and small business owners must have. They are:

1. A business card
2. A website or blogsite
3. A follow up marketing piece

Check out my blog post on this very topic: 3 Marketing Pieces Entrepreneurs Must Have and learn more about why these items are the top three I recommend and what they need to include.

Unfortunately, the next thing that usually happens is that others try to copy the successful ad for their business.

Here is the problem, they don’t adjust the ad to fit their marketing or their focus and the ad fails to answer the three key questions every marketing piece must answer for its audience in order to be successful.

The result is failure and money and time wasted on a marketing piece that was copied instead of thought out and planned.

I don’t want to see you make the same mistake, so I am sharing with you the top three questions every successful marketing piece needs to answer to produce the results you want and attract the clients you want.

1. What is this about?
First, you need to make sure that the content and the message is crystal clear, ensuring the reader can quickly figure out the purpose of the marketing piece, who it is for, and what action you want them to take.

2. What’s in it for me? / Why Should I care?
Second, you must communicate the benefits the reader will receive as a result of taking the requested action. Tell them how it will help them, make their life better, or increase their business. This is your chance to tell them why they should care about what you have to say.

3. What makes you an expert?
Third, you need to establish your expert status and build your credibility. You need to let them know why they should listen to you and what makes you qualified to be an expert. Your audience needs to trust you and believe you before they will take the action you are requesting.

By answering these three questions in all of your marketing materials, you will soon see your conversion rates increase. Just don’t forget to include your contact information, including your address, phone number, and website at minimum!

See something I missed? Let me know!

Sometimes the budgets are endless, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes offset printing is the best choice and sometimes digital printing is the best choice. The choice between the two often depends on the quantity you need, the paper you want to use, and how fast you need your printed materials.

If you are on a tight budget and you need marketing materials printed, digital printing is an affordable solution that often yields great results.

Often, I am asked, “What’s the catch with digital printing?” and “Why is digital printing so cheap?”

Here is the answer: The paper choies are very limited, usually to either a white coated stock or a white uncoated stock. The paper weights are limited to just a couple different choices such as text weight, or cover weight. The color choices are usually limited to full color or black and white.

While some digital printers like PSPrint will run offset print jobs for large quantity orders, the best option for offset printing project or projects with very large quantities will probably be a professional printer in your local area that will deliver the finished pieces at no cost.

If you think digital printing may be a good choice for your business, here are a few great resources I recommend:

• www.psprint.com – I use them!
• www.modernpostcards.com – I use them!
• www.printrunner.com
• www.vistaprint.com
• www.printingforless.com