The Calendar Question – Are physical ones relevant in 2020’s?

Here at Copy Express have introduced a new product range of calendars and wall planners ^🔗 which we think are pretty cool. In the age of internet calendars that integrate with your applications and smartphones providing a range of features that no physical calendar could, are the physical ones relevant any more? I say they are, and can be a useful marketing tool for your business. I will show you how

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Yes, I realize that this article will sound biased given we are a printing company and highlighted a range of products that we have added to our services. While I would love for businesses to print off a load of calendars, I’m talking to you with my marketing hat.

I’ve said before that calendars are ‘365 days of advertising’ ( 395 days if you use our 13 month calendar^🔗). By that I mean that when a client uses it, your company details are there too, being seen by them every time they look at it. Even if you do nothing else with the calendar, it’s reminding the client of your company so it will be your business springing to mind when they need your type of services again. And that is all you can do when you buy those standardized calendars from the big printing firms. Generic designs with the blanks filled in with your business details, identical to everyone else who goes to that same printing firm. But it can be so much more than that through the power of personalisation.

The key thing to think about is that you’re not treating this as a bit of generic marketing. You will be treating it as a targeted marketing, trading quantity for quality and giving them the important clients that have given you the most business over the year. (If you want to give everyone a calendar but keep the costs low then look at our hanging & magnet calendar range.^🔗) You want to make sure that every page carries impact with your customer and reminds them that you are the go-to business for those services you supply.  

How do you make that impact with a hanging, desk, or 13 month calendar? Start by replacing the generic themed photos of the design with ones that relate to your business. Take as an example a plumber. Each month could be an image of a different type of service they supply. It could be images showing the history of plumbing and gas fitting, including some information about what is shown. For other businesses marking important dates on the date part of the calendar would be equally effective. An accountant would mark off cut off dates for various tax returns, and more importantly when their clients should be starting the preparation work. A property care company could list the periods where different services are needed, such as best time to prune trees or planting different types of plants in a garden.  It could be the close off dates for various services that your business offers, such as the Christmas – New Year shutdown period. I wouldn’t recommend listing any promotional periods as that just incentivises people to hold off buying till the products are on a discounted price. And there are more things you can do besides those examples, but I don’t want to give away all my marketing secrets.

There’s still the issue of people now preferring to use their phone as their calendar. Not an issue as they can be setup to be integrated with the digital calendar too. As I covered in my article about QR codes there are many ways you can make the physical link to digital with a simple scan. The obvious one is using the calendar standard that lets you set an event on their calendar complete with start and stop dates, locations, and a detailed description of the event. If you highlight a different service you offer on each month of the calendar, then it makes sense to have a QR code that takes them to that service on the website to let them know more about it. Maybe you do want to drive sales of different products/services in periods when they are normally less in demand, devoting a month to them with a scannable discount might be something you will find profitable. These are just a few ideas to help you integrate your digital and physical marketing, and we have more if you give us a call and book a time to discuss ideas.

So you can see that physical calendars still have a place in your marketing tool kit, be it low cost brand promotion, or high quality personalized customer gift. The only limit is your willingness to customize it to drive clients business to yours.

If you need ideas on how to make your own unique marketing focused calendar, or would like help creating one to best fit your needs, Copy Express is just a phone call or email away.