Is It Time for Your Company to Do a Marketing Refresh?
Overtime, all things need a refresh—paint, tires, wardrobes, even your marketing. Even though bringing marketing materials in-house can sound like a daunting task (especially when you have always outsourced it) you might be surprised at how easy it can be with the right equipment.
The good news is that digital printing has reached a point that you can barely tell the difference between a digitally produced image and its offset equivalent. Digital printing is also much less expensive and gives you the flexibility to print on demand. Why wouldn’t you want that kind of marketing freedom?
If you’ve ever considered bringing your marketing materials in-house, now is the perfect time to take an honest look at what you have, and consider adding the right devices to your fleet to make it happen.
As a general rule, marketing materials should be refreshed every 2-3 years just to keep your brand relevant. Once you’ve decided to take the leap, here are a few steps you can take to get the ball rolling.
1. Start by collecting all of your marketing materials in one place
2. Ask teams to submit any and all materials they use on a regular basis
3. Review your collection and sort pieces based on relevant content
4. Purge any pieces that promote products or services that you no longer provide
5. Combine any pieces that have similar messaging or offerings
6. Determine what, if any, service or product offerings are missing
7. Create an outline listing out all of the pieces you plan to refresh from high level to more detailed and prioritize completion deadlines for each
8. Decide what size and type of paper you would like to print all of your materials on (most devices can print on heavy or coated stocks, and up to 13" x 19.2" for a a full bleed 11" x 17" print when trimmed)
9. Meet with your office equipment provider to see if your existing equipment can handle the job, or if you need something else
10. Locate all of the native files associated with the existing pieces so you know what pieces can be edited, what pieces need to be recreated, and get to work!
The Work
Ask yourself: Does your business name, logo and tagline (if you have one) still accurately reflect your company’s brand image? From a visual standpoint: Does the design and color scheme of your materials appeal to your prospects?
Once you know what you don’t have, consult a professional designer to help fill in the gaps. If you can’t afford one, try to identify companies with collateral that embody the look and feel you would like to go for and seek out hidden talent already on your payroll. You might be surprised at what you can do on your own.
Most page layout applications come standard with free templates, in addition to extra content for a fee if you dig into the software features. Xerox also offers professionally designed business templates customers can use to create everything from postcards and brochures to flyers and coupons on some of their production devices too.
Use Color
If your materials are primarily black and white, don’t forget to add some color. Marketing materials will pack a bigger punch when color is used. In fact, printing even just your phone number in color has been shown to generate 44% more phone calls.
Make Your Materials Accessible
Once you’ve finalized all of your new materials, make sure you communicate to everyone in your company how they can access them. One way to share the materials for self-service printing is to upload them to a cloud-based storage utility. For Xerox ConnectKey® Technology-enabled devices, common applications such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Microsoft Office 365 are good ones to use.
While bringing your marketing materials in house might seem overwhelming at first, with a little planning, you can be on your way to significant print savings and freedom in no time. Not sure if your fleet has what it takes? Give our production specialists a call today for a free evaluation of your equipment capabilities.