365 Days of Advertising

In this competitive marketplace, a business must constantly promote and market themselves to stay competitive. This can be expensive and time-consuming to plan, design and run. What if I told you there is a great way to setup up a marketing device, you only have to set-up once a year that gives you 365 days of promotion.

We are talking about calendars and wall planners. Now you might be letting out a groan about this idea. We have all seen the ones that that turn up in your mailbox, generic and boring. That is the biggest issue with the traditional ‘branded’ calendar and wall planner is that they are so generic. They are a mass produced item with a space for the overprinting of a business’s details, usually in black only, and quite often not even designed for the New Zealand marketplace. This is why they don’t work: because they don’t sell the business that is paying for them.

It doesn’t have to be like this. I am going to show you how to make a calendar or wall planner not only make the recipient want to hang them on their wall but sell you every day of the year.

• Cover it with your branding. While it can be as simple as putting your business card in plain sight every month – we suggest that you do more.  Use your corporate colours everywhere, feature your products and related images, even put photos and quotes from your staff.  A custom calendar gives you so much more control than a generic calendar with overprinting.
• The image for every month can be directly related to your business. For instance, if you are builder it can be pictures of houses you have built. A beautician can have different types of treatments. Vets can have different animals. The only limit is your imagination.
• Make it local. If you don’t want to put images of your products, then put images of places and things from your local area. Parks, historic buildings and public art are good things to use. Also put local events for the city and region as way to reinforce that you are the local option.
• Highlight important business dates. Do you have roadshows, training sessions, product close off periods? Have them marked on the calendar with reminders prior to the events. Do you plan your promotions a year in advance? You could put them on your calendar with a tear off voucher that has time limits.
• Put messages that directly relate to you and what you do. The trend these days is to include pithy quotes and wisdom statement on most pages. Why not select ones that relate to you and remind people what you can do or even come from your own team members. If you have products or services that have ‘quiet’ periods, then this is a great way to boost interest in them.
• Personalise them for your team. If you have agents or sales people why not have a master design that promotes the company, but then adds an extra layer of information for each agent. It helps build the brand but also reinforces the relationship that the customer has with your organisation and doesn’t add much to the printing costs.

Wall planners work much the same as calendars. The key difference is that you trade off advertising space for price. A single sheet of paper or card is always going to be cheaper to make than a set of stapled pages, but you won’t have the room to do as much customisation.

Some other points to remember about calendars and wall planners

• Calendars and Wall Planners don’t have to be for a year. You can make a seasonal (3 months) or half year item. This can be useful if you want to have more flexible promotional plan. You can make them longer too if you want.
• They don’t have to start in January. Many businesses have peak seasons so why not have the calendar start a month or two before the main season starts as the warm up to the event.
• There are a lot of different formats and options when it comes to making a calendar or wall planner so you can pick one that best suits your budget. See the companion article ‘Calendars and Wall planner formats‘ for more on this.

Now you know what a calendar or wall planner can do, how do you go about setting one up? In short see us at Copy Express. We have ready-made templates for the common formats of calendars with all the holidays and other important information marked. What you supply is up to you. It can be as simple as just your business card; it can be as much as a list of dates, logos, images and promotional information. This is what makes a Copy Express calendar/planner stand out over the generic ones: the flexibility to make up a product that suit your needs, so see us at Copy Express about investing in a promotion that can last for 365 days.