Electro Image LLC

It’s an exciting time for St. Louis businesses: consumers were busy checking off names on their gift lists the entire month of December. As a business owner, you know that just because the holidays are over, consumers aren’t done buying. They’re still visiting storefronts, comparing products online, and searching for deals that make big-ticket items budget friendly. This means that you need to answer a few questions about your advertising strategy for the coming year:

  • If you have a storefront, could someone walk or drive by and know what you have to offer?
  • What is it exactly that makes your storefront stand out from the surrounding businesses?
  • If you offer gift certificates or cards, do your customers know that this is a gift option? What about members of your local community?
  • Are you allowing virtual visitors to order gift cards or certificates through your website for convenience?
  • How successful is your current advertising? Are you efficiently targeting the right market?

The most powerful marketing approach is one that integrates both online and offline campaigns so begin strategizing for how to streamline your digital marketing and how to take of advantage of professional business printers in St. Louis.

Social media and email blasts may have helped you pull in some of the last-minute dollars floating around during end-of-the-year holiday spending, but with the frenzy over, you’ll need to evaluate your long-term game plan for the future.

If you’re operating in a crowded industry, don’t do what everyone else is doing—get creative to earn your share of the market. While you don’t need to take the concept of “going viral” to the offline realm, you do need to advertise effectively and differently to stand out from your competitors. Here are the top strategies and creative projects to help you utilize your business printing and advertising initiatives in the New Year:

Involve The Senses

Fanta took advertising to new levels when they printed an ad on edible paper that tasted like oranges. You don’t have to go quite that far for your advertising campaign stand out, but the underlying principle is useful: involve as many of the senses as you can. In addition to using eye-catching colors, compelling images, and a strategic design for visual appeal, the use of smell, taste, sound, and touch in advertising can have an incredible impact on the amount of attention your promotional printing items receive.

You don’t need to attach a scratch-and-sniff sticker or a tiny bell to your media (although both are not door-hangers_true-cleanbad ideas), because using the senses in your advertising efforts is much easier than that. Invoke the senses with creative and evocative words that call up the senses, instead.

  • Avoid non-evocative content, like:Visit our dealership for low prices on last year’s cars.”
  • Do write content that asks the consumer to use his senses, like:Last year’s models still have the same new car-smells and sleek interiors that they did last year—at a discounted price. Come see us to start driving your new car today.”

The industry that you’re in will naturally define which senses are most appropriate and compelling to your audience, so don’t feel the need to appeal to all the senses in your promotional material. If you’re in the restaurant industry, taste and smell will clearly be important senses to include in your content. On the other hand, if you’re in the IT industry, invoking the sense of taste would obviously not be a helpful advertising tactic. But a malfunctioning computer beeping, or the familiar sound of an Apple product successfully booting up may be incredibly effective.

Print Strategic Loyalty Cards: “Buy Now, Save in 2018!”

With almost the entire New Year ahead, offer consumers 2018 loyalty cards. If they buy now, they’ll be able to take advantage of deals for the entire year. If you want to set a different timeline, look at customer buying habits and decide what length of promotion will be most valuable to your ideal buyer.

Loyalty cards typically feature a variety of small discounts that buyers can take advantage of from many local businesses, but you can use the same idea to create unique deals from your business throughout the year. Offer deals that make it advantageous for the customer to purchase the loyalty card earlier, so she can receive more discounts and value for her money, like a 20-percent discount off each purchase, or a complimentary product once she purchases a certain number of products or services.

Use Door-Hangers For Maximum Exposure

Professionally printed door hangers are the equally effective alternative to EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail). Everyone goes in and out of their home, so your advertisements will have a high view rate. Advertise special new-year deals and promotions that will appeal to your customers’ budget after the holidays.

Follow the same design principles as for other printed promotional media, like brochures and postcards. Use bright and bold colors, and be concise but informative. Since you won’t have the luxury of space that a brochure affords, your advertising content will need to be especially impactful.

Do these ideas inspire you to come up with your own creative printing projects for the New Year? Once you have a project in mind, think about eye-catching add-ons, like UV high-gloss varnish, Akuafoil full color foil, and raised ink.

Timing is everything: get creative, take advantage of the New Year, and stand out from the sea of competition. Post-holiday advertising in January is an opportunity to increase local awareness of your company and secure new customers for the year to come. If you aren’t sure how to bring your creative printing ideas to life, partner with a St. Louis printer and take advantage of all that custom printing can do for your advertising campaign.

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