\nWhen\n you think about it, the fact that companies like The Warehouse and \nPack-n-Save can have multi page mailers in your mailbox week after week,\n all to the same high quality standard is pretty impressive. Granted \nthey have dedicated marketing teams in their head offices whose job it \nis 40 hours week, but to have that volume of printed material week after\n week and only have the occasional rare error is something to aspire too\n for your marketing. Now as a small business, there is no way you could \nto that sort of volume of marketing design work, and why would you as \nit\u2019s not your job. However if you do marketing on a regular basis, then \nyou are no doubt spending hours of your time doing that when you could \nbe using for growing your business. You may not be pay for people to do\n all that for you, even though we at Copy Express offer very competitive\n rates. So what\u2019s the solution? Standardisation, and I\u2019m about to \nexplain how it can make your marketing tasks easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have already briefly touch on this matter with my article \u2018 5 marketing to-do’s for the summer holiday’<\/a>\n where I cover the ideas of \u2018Set up a Marketing\/Design \u2018Bible\u2019\u2019 and \n\u2018Create a set of Generic Flyers\u2019. I am now going to look at this in more\n detail so you can understand why you should be doing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take\n a look at the aforementioned Warehouse and Pack-n-Save mailers. Notice \nhow they always use the same standard layout. Different pages in one \nedition of the might use different layouts, but of you look at them at \nover a couple of months you will see the same standard layout again and \nagain. This is the key for them to be able to produce so many pages of \n\u2018unique\u2019 content week after week. The have standardized frames works \nwhere they simply fill in the blanks for the images, product details, \nstock codes, and prices. Speaking as someone who\u2019s done a bit of this \nhimself, this will save you so much time and avoids a lot of common \nmistakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The question is now how can you do it. I\u2019ve actually covered it quite a bit in my previous blog posts, such as \u2018 Designing to a Theme<\/a> \u2019, \u2018 What’s the most important part of the flyer<\/a> \u2019 and \u2019 Six simple steps for small space design<\/a> \u2019. However there is always more that I can talk about here to help you in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This\n is the first thing you should do before anything else. Design a generic\n template. It doesn\u2019t have to contain a promotion, it can be more of a \nsketch of one. Just layout your logos, artwork, standard text like \ncontact details, and then put in blocks where you want to have \ninformation and artwork but leave them blank or put in filler images. \nWhen it comes time to make the flyer, you make a copy of the master, \nopen that copy up and drop in the art and text you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n All\n desktop publisher programs support grid layouts, and come with a few \ngeneric sets to get you going. If you are using Word or Powerpoint, then\n use the table function to lay out a grid of cells over the page \ndividing it into smaller sections. Then place your text and art into \neach cell, using the cell merge where you need larger areas. There is no\n hard or fast rule on how you should set up your grid, but I\u2019ve always \nfound that you want a cell to be no smaller than 40mm wide x 30mm tall \nis a good rule of thumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n One\n of the big mistakes that everyone makes is to cram as much information \non the flyer as they can. You really shouldn\u2019t be doing that; it makes \nharder for your customer to read, and harder for you to set it up and \ncheck for mistakes. If you want a guide of how much you should be \nputting in read about my \u2018 the 5\/15\/60 second rule for marketing<\/a> \u2019 to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Again\n harking back to examples of The Warehouse and Pack-n-Save, you\u2019ll see \nthat they have variations on their design. This allows them to pick the \nright format to match the promotion’s contents. Don\u2019t be afraid to have \nmore than one design for your marketing material, both in layout and in \nsize. Sometimes a A6 postcard is ideal, other times you will need a A4 \nfolded to a DL. As long as you keep the same consistent look through all\n of them, then it will still be easy to use and you won\u2019t have to fight \nit trying to fit a A5\u2019s worth of information into a A6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n One\n of the reasons why we have gone through the expence and labour of \nsetting up our Web-2-Print is to give you our clients an easy to use \nsystem to do this sort of work. Not only can you setup your own \nmarketing templates to use time and again, but we can tweak them for you\n but we can do full design work for you and leave you with a template \nwhere you just \u2018fill in the blanks\u2019. If you want to expore our \nweb-2-print system, just visit www.copyexpress.co.nz<\/a> and click the \u2018order now\u2019 button. When you think about it, the fact that companies like The Warehouse and Pack-n-Save can have multi page mailers in your mailbox week after week, all to the same high quality standard is pretty impressive. Granted they have dedicated marketing teams in their head offices whose job it is 40 hours week, but to have … Continue reading “Simplify your marketing with standardization”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,27],"tags":[35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":955,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions\/955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Create a master design
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nDesign to a grid
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nLess is more
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nHave more than one template
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nMake use of Copy Express\u2019s Web-2-Print and design services
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n This covers the basics of standardization of your marketing but to \nlearn more please do contact us about what Copy Express can do for you.\n\n<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"