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BASICALLYBUSINESSIN THISISSUE

Marketing In Real Life— Training Seminars Streamlined With Web to Print

Go Green & Grow— Understanding ‘Recycled’ Paper

Biz Tips— Keeping Customers Happy

Building Brand AwarenessDo potential customers know you’re out there? If not, you probably need to increase your level of brand awareness. Brand awareness is a marketing concept that refers to the level at which customers recognize the existence of your company and the availability of your products or services.

Customers buy brands they know and trust. Their perception about your company, products and/or services is a major factor in their brand preferences and their buying behavior. All perception is subjective and based on experience because people generally interpret information according to their own existing beliefs, attitudes, needs and moods.

Creating brand awareness is one of the key steps in promoting a product or service. This is especially true for commodity-related products which have very few factors that differentiate them from their competitors. The product that maintains the highest brand awareness compared to its competitors usually garners the most sales.

Consistency and repetition is vital in building brand awareness. All your marketing and promotions—in fact, everything you develop—should have the same look and feel, and include your logo, colors, typeface and, most important, a consistent message.

Don’t forget, however, to go for the “WOW” factor to differentiate your company from your competitors. At Sir Speedy, we can help you with design services that capture the attention of your customers and prospects alike—all while building your brand.

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Don’t forget, however, to go for the “WOW” factor to differentiate your company from your competitors.

Printing and Marketing Services

Printing and Marketing Services

Taking Your Brand OnlineBranding is often considered one of the most important marketing objectives because it is often the tiebreaker for an unsure customer. When it comes to taking your brand online—and encouraging customers to purchase your products via your website—we can help with our integrated direct marketing services.

One way to drive customers to your website is with a personalized URL imprinted onto a direct mail piece. We can help you purchase the URL and create the website landing page that can be used to drive customers directly to your site. Website landing pages can be tailored as questionnaires so you may learn more about your prospects and customers to more effectively market to them in the future.

Branding today is all about being innovative with targeting and speaking with your audiences. Your message should be clear and precise and delivered across various media. Our integrated direct marketing services provide all these and more.

For innovative ideas on how to attract more customers to your website, contact your Sir Speedy representative.

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Francis FranchiseeOwnerPrinting and Marketing Services

BrainstormA brainstorm is just a fancy term for thinking without any boundaries. Often the most outlandish ideas contain the seeds of something practical. In fact, the wilder your brainstorm session is, the more likely it is that you’ll hit upon a truly creative concept, one that could grow into a great new revenue source.

Here are a few tips for running a group brainstorming session:

• Clearly define the problem you want solved, and keep the session focused on the problem

• Appoint one person to note down ideas that come out of the session for later evaluation and analysis

• Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session.

Even if none of your new ideas turns out to be noteworthy, a brainstorming session is still time well spent; in the end, all who participate will have stretched and strengthened their creativity.

Marketing in Real Life Go Green & Grow Biz Tips

Keeping Customers Happy

Happy customers ensure the successful growth of your company through repeat —and referral—business. Are you doing everything you can to keep your customers happy? Here are some tried-and-true ideas:

1. Mean what you say and say what you mean. (Don’t just say what you think your customer wants to hear.)

2. Don’t make promises you can’t deliver on.

3. Underpromise and overdeliver.

4. Call each customer regularly instead of emailing.

5. Schedule a face-to-face meeting at least quarterly if not more often.

6. Keep your customers apprised as to the status of their orders or the progress of your work.

7. Don’t take your customers for granted by assuming they will always order from you and that your account with them is safe.

8. Acknowledge your customers’ feedback, and then act on it.

9. Ask yourself how you can serve your customers better.

10. Always treat customers, no matter how small, as though they are the most important customer you have. You never know whom they may refer to you.

Understanding ’Recycled’ Paper

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Training Seminars Streamlined With Web to Print

CHALLENGE A medium-sized manufacturing company developed a new product and needed to create and distribute training materials for their vendors, distributors and end users. The nature of their business and products required frequent changes to all training materials to accurately reflect each product’s capabilities. At seminars held across the country, participants receive a large amount of materials to enhance the learning experience; however, it takes a lot of work for the company to get the materials to each seminar site. They needed to find a way to streamline the creation, printing and distribution of these materials.

SOLUTION Using our Web to Print online ordering system, all seminar instructors were able to get everything they needed via the Internet by just clicking on a few items in their personal online catalog of materials. In addition to individual items used in the seminars, “prepackaged” seminar kits were created and posted to the online catalog that made it even easier for the instructors to get what they needed, ensuring that they did not forget to order something. The kits included training binders, pencils, name badges, directional posters, welcome banners, podium cards, tote bags and notepads, as well as a CD of additional support materials. The inside content for the binders was printed on demand, tabs and covers were added and each order was fulfilled as needed along with other items since each order was customized to the seminar location and instructor. Finished materials were delivered directly to the seminar site.

RESULTS The customized and secure Web to Print online ordering system provided this company with an effective method for keeping their product training materials current while also streamlining the process of getting the materials across the country to each instructor. Customer support representatives noticed a significant decrease in phone calls due to the increased effectiveness of the training process. The online ordering system also helped manage the company’s brand integrity through the consistency of all materials being ordered and provided from one, convenient, online source.

Developing tailor-made multi component products are just some of the ways we can help you run your business more efficiently.

If you’ve shopped around for paper lately you may have noticed there are two “green” options: recycled paper and post-consumer waste (PCW) paper. Choosing either of these for your marketing pieces makes a statement about your brand and your commitment to saving forests and conserving energy. So, what’s the difference between the two?

Recycled paper contains different grades of recycled paper fibers, such as wood chips and mill scraps (pre-consumer waste) left over from the manufacturing process. Recycled paper can have virgin fiber (wood that has never been used) or pre-consumer waste, but generally it contains little or no PCW paper.

Post-consumer waste paper comes from paper such as old newspapers and paper that you recycle in your office. Although this paper is kept from the landfills and recycled back into paper, the process of deinking does consume large amounts of energy and chemicals that lead to waste and increased recycling costs. Environmentalists consider PCW to be greener than recycled paper.

Today, paper is also made from alternative fibers such as hemp, bamboo, kenaf and straw. Whatever your sustainability goals are, at Sir Speedy we can help you find the right paper for the job.