Why Not Print More Money?

If the government can print money, why doesn’t it just print some and hand it out? Wouldn’t that be the simplest way to solve problem? Nope. Economics professor Antony Davies explains that we can understand why printing money doesn’t work by looking at why money was invented in the first place.

Prior to the invention of money, people relied on bartering to exchange goods and services. Bartering has two problems. The first is what economists call the double incidence of wants problem. To exchange goods and services, you have to find someone who not only has what you want but who also wants what you have. The second problem with bartering is the retention of value problem. When bartering for goods and services, it is difficult to save up what you produce because items produced may not hold their value. Money solves both of these problems.

Money is valuable only because people will give you goods and services in exchange for money. It derives its value from the goods and services. Printing more money will simply spread the value of the existing goods and services around a larger number of dollars. This is inflation. Ultimately, doubling the number of dollars doubles prices. If everyone has twice as much money but everything costs twice as much as before, people aren’t better off. Having the government print money will not increase wealth.

As always, keep reading, keep in touch, and keep being innovative. Call 877.990.1616 or browse online www.marketinkgroup.com

Source: http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/why-not-print-more-money/

5 Tips for Making the Best Holiday Mailers this Season

The holidays are a special time. If you have not yet started planning a direct mail marketing campaign, you have best be getting a move on! The holidays are a great time for you to do some promotional activities for your brand and product offering. They’re also a time when customers are really looking to purchase items. Thus, it’s important to make sure that you get a fair share of that holiday market.

Before you start sending out the usual holiday postcards and catalogues, it is important to note that you are not the only company who will be sending out mailers to their prospective clients. Other companies would also like to promote their products and/or services and secure their share of the holiday market. That being said, it is important to make your direct mail package stand out. Here are a few ways you can achieve terrific holiday direct mailers.

Holiday Design
Enlist the help of a few elves from a commercial printing company. They can greatly help in terms of design to make your mailer look appropriate for the occasion. Also, they offer a variety of services that speed up the packaging process and ensure that your mailer has all the right components just in time for the holidays.

Dimensional Mailers
As stated earlier, yours won’t be the only company that will be sending out direct mail to clients. When your potential client finds a stack of ad mailers in his mailbox, their tendency is unfortunately to just chuck it out. But if your mailer has bulk or is three-dimensional, your customer will be curious about what it is. That’s the opening you need. Dimensional mailers naturally cost more but the profits they generate make them worth it. Most direct mail companies offer holiday discounts which could greatly help you in terms of costs.

Promotions
Attract them with discounts, freebies or special deals. Create a sense of anticipation by adding special contest prizes which they can win if they avail of your product or service.

Reward Your Loyal Customers
Tis the season for giving. Reward your loyal customers with discounts, freebies or exclusive deals. For example, if you have a customer who purchased an mp3 player last year, offer them a huge discount on this year’s latest model. If you sell clothing, offer a discount on your most popular pieces or on next season’s collection. This will make your customers feel valued and will ensure that they will be your clients for a long time. These can also help bring back clients who looked elsewhere last year. 

QR Codes
The advent of QR codes present many retail possibilities. You can instruct your printing co. to include QR codes in your mailer representing a free small product that your clients can claim when they scan and send it to you. You can also arrange a scavenger hunt with these QR codes. Have your clients scan as many QR codes as possible. When they rack up a certain number of points, reward them with prizes which may include freebies, discounts, tickets, etc. This will make shopping more fun and exciting for your customer base.

Here at Marketink we are happy to provide you with free 20 minute marketing consultations. If you’re looking for some help brainstorming, feel free to schedule your appointment. http://www.marketinkgroup.com Happy holidays!

Is Print Marketing Still Important?

What we couldn’t have possibly imagined just a decade ago has become a reality: everything has moved online. We shop online, we do our banking online, we play online, and we even socialize online. In addition, research shows that when making buying decisions, the first place people go to for researching their options is the Internet.

Which brings up the question, if everything takes place online these days, and especially if you’re an online business, should you still use printed marketing materials such as brochures as part of your marketing strategy?



Why printed marketing materials are still valuable
The short answer is yes. Marketing is never about just one medium. It’s always a mistake to focus on just one aspect of marketing and to neglect the others. A good marketing campaign utilizes many different mediums to generate many different leads, then nurtures them until they are ready to become customers.
So, while “online” is really hot these days, the physical world still exists, and there are enough potential customers who, after the initial online research, expect to see printed material. These people typically find it difficult to trust a business if it’s completely virtual. They need to know that you have a physical address, a phone number, and that they can see a brochure or other types of printed material before they commit to you.
If you ignore these consumers, you have just lost a segment of the population that could have been interested in your solution.
No doubt, when you plan your marketing budget, you need to pay special attention to online components, including your Web site, your blog and your social media accounts. Ideally, you want to have a great logo, and you want your logo to appear on all online venues (main site, blog header, Twitter background etc.)
To keep your brand highly unique and identifiable, you should also have the same logo appear on your business cards and on any printed marketing materials such as brochures and flyers.



How to create an effective brochure
Now that we’ve established the importance of brochures and of other printed marketing materials, here are a few handy tips for writing and designing an effective brochure:
1. Make it visually appealing. Design is extremely important when it comes to brochures. If the design is boring or cluttered, people won’t bother to read your text. Look for a small business graphic designer who has a lot of experience and can show you samples of their previous work. Better yet, make sure they have positive testimonials on their site, or on a third party site.
2. Focus on benefits rather than on features. Prospects don’t care about your product’s features. They want you to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?” and your brochure needs to be able to answer that question, or it will be tossed!
3. Keep it short. Do you really need a 10-page brochure? Generally, short, catchy brochures with a large font and a clean design are better than long, tiresome, technical brochures.
4. Make it personal. Write your brochure in a direct, conversational tone – as if you are talking with a person face to face. The more personal and direct your tone is, the easier it will be for prospects to connect with your message.
5. Include a call for action. Every marketing material should include a call for action, and this is true for brochures as well. A call for action can be as simple as ending your brochure with the sentence “Need ____? Call today” and your phone number. The idea is to present the pain, your business as the solution, and to encourage the prospect to take immediate action by calling you.
6. Get it printed right. Align yourself with a print partner that understands your needs and goals and that is willing to work with you to help you achieve them by providing with you with professional knowledge and great quality yet cost effective printing options. 
Whether you have a physical location or fully operate online, your small business marketing strategy should include online marketing materials AND printed marketing materials. This combination will make sure you don’t neglect an important segment of your potential market.

If you would like to discuss in more detail your ideas about this or other print marketing materials please call us at 866.245.6723, our team at Marketink is ready to brainstorm with you and help you produce great print collateral to fit within you marketing strategy and budget.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://www.designleap.net/blog/2010/04/importance-printed-marketing-material.html

5 Thanksgiving Marketing Tips to Wow Your Clients

Thanksgiving represents one of the most crucial marketing seasons of the year. You’re trying to cash in on the upcoming holiday season by promoting Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday sales, and this year we’ve got Small Business Saturday too. To complicate things, all of your competitors (at least, those worth their weight) are ramping up their own Thanksgiving marketing efforts so you have to anticipate their moves in order to beat them at their own game. Your goal is to craft creative marketing ideas that will help you stand out, get noticed and reel in a hefty return on investment this Turkey Day. Here are five Thanksgiving marketing tips that will help you do just that.

1. Send calendars to your customers

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the end … of the year. Many people buy calendars for the upcoming New Year while they’re out holiday shopping for friends and family. Head them off at the pass by printing and distributing your calendars before Thanksgiving. If you can design a calendar that strikes a chord with your customer base, you’ll be positioned to market to your customers each and every day all year long. What better investment could you ask for?

2. Launch a cross-promotion with a nearby business

See if complementary and non-competing businesses are interested in partnering with you on a creative cross-promotion. Theaters, restaurants and hotels are all great promo partners; but if you’re creative you can find a way to partner with just about any business there is. A grocer might offer discount Christmas tree print coupons from a tree farm to anyone who purchases a turkey, for example.

3. Bring people together, host a Thanksgiving event

Whether it’s a publicity stunt or a charitable turkey dinner, hosting a Thanksgiving event is one of the best marketing strategies on the planet. If you can show potential customers a good time or give back to the community that gives to you, then you can earn free press and a loyal customer base that will make yours a happy Thanksgiving for years to come. Promote your event by printing postcards, posters, flyers and banners.

4. Start marketing as soon as your finish your Halloween candy

The early bird gets the warm isn’t just an old adage or contemporary cliché, it’s a true statement. When it comes to branding, repetition is key. You can’t simply say you have something on sale once and expect potential customers to remember it weeks down the road (even if your offer is phenomenal). Combine these two concepts and you know that if you want to turn a profit from your Thanksgiving marketing, you have to start early and maintain momentum through the holiday season. Start right after Halloween don’t let up until the eve of Thanksgiving (or morning, if your local paper delivers on Thanksgiving and you can print flyers) for best results.

5. Don’t skimp on marketing materials

Customers equate the quality of your products and services with the quality of your marketing materials. If you print a cheap and flimsy desktop postcard, your products will appear cheap and flimsy. If you print a professional postcard, however, using state-of-the-art printing presses with quality inks on high-quality paper, your postcard will transfer that aura of quality to your products and services, and you’ll yield a higher return on investment. Gobble, gobble! Let us know what creative ways you’re marketing to your clients in a comment below and please do feel free to share, we’re very THANKFUL to have you here!

The Power of a Handwritten Thank You Note and How it Will Help Your Business

Not Just a Thing of the Past

Handwritten thank you notes are not just a thing of the past. While you might not see many these days, the cards you do send or receive will mean more than you’d ever think. Handwritten notes are a powerful way to send a message to a customer to thank them for doing business with your company. They don’t actually take that long to write, and your company will stand out amongst others because of the 5 extra minutes you took to write the note.

Why don’t many companies send handwritten Thank You Notes?

The Psychology Behind Colors in Your Marketing Materials

13 Really Cool Examples of Outdoor Advertising

Billboards are the most common form of outdoor advertising. Large and prominently placed, ad agencies are continually thinking of new and innovative ways to use them to grab the attention and imagination of their target audience. The following brilliantly creative examples of billboard design do exactly that. Which is your favorite?

Unlocking the Code - QR Code Success for Marketers

A QR code is basically a barcode in a square shape. (Without bars, ironically). It is scanned by a smartphone. It could direct someone to a website, an image, a text message or, even, a phone number. (That’s totally up to the QR code’s creator). For marketers, a QR code allows you to get smartphone users to call you without forcing them to actually type in a phone number or URL.

QR codes reduce friction.

How Popular Are They, Really?

Hello (INSERT NAME) Variable Data Printing Will Get YOU Results

What is "Variable Data Printing"?

Variable data printing (also known as one-to-one marketing or personalized printing) offers customized, targeted encounters with prospective customers, placing a powerful marketing tool into the hands of even small organizations. VDP has been shown to dramatically increase response rates while reducing overall printing costs (due to shorter, more targeted print runs as opposed to traditional "shotgun" campaigns).

It is an ideal solution for

Why Macklemore Understands the Art of Commercial Printing

–For his new album, The Heist,  the hip-hop artist Macklemore wanted to provide his fans with more than just an average cd and case. He wanted the listener to have something tangible and outstanding instead of something to load up and throw away. In this video, he explains his desire to package his music in a unique and modern look. Not only does this set him apart as an artist, but as an entrepreneur this is an excellently designed concept. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htfwq7EK2-A

How To Measure the Success of Your Direct Mailer Marketing Efforts

If you send out 1500 direct mailers to potential customers, you need ways of knowing how many of them interacted with your direct mail in some way, and how many made purchases because of your campaign. That way, you can make adjustments to your future direct mailer campaigns and enjoy increased sales. Here are some tips on how to measure your direct mailer marketing efforts.