Modern Marketing Still Needs The Printed Word

It's a rather obvious point but it bears repeating: the way that businesses market their products and services will make or break the success of the business itself. However, many businesses make the mistake of letting marketing materials lag behind in exchange for higher quality customer service or products. While these are also important elements to a business, poor marketing materials can ruin the chance for future profit no matter how great the customer service is.

Instead of neglecting this aspect or marketing, consider the benefits of creating a booklet that not only advertises your products and services, but also contains informative content that will inspire sales.

Research the Audience

Before you can even start creating the content for your booklet, it is important to understand who the audience is and what their needs are. Entrepreneur.com offers some great questions for researching and understanding your audience. The demographic to which your products appeal should directly correlate with the way you present those products in the booklet.

Create Clear Content

Useful content is the core element in marketing. People now have the ability to delete emails, skip commercials, and ignore magazine ads. That means that content is even more important to marketing than it ever was before. People want to be educated clearly and quickly on the information they seek. It makes content creation detrimental to the success of marketing materials.

• Use SEO in everything you write. Search engines will determine how broad your audience will be.
• Keep PR in mind. Instead of trying to sell your products and services, write informational articles that help them understand the need for your services.

The Content Marketing Institute offers great tips to successful content marketing strategies.

Eye-Catching Design

For booklets, creating organized and eye-catching designs is important as well. Booklets that are attractive and colorful are more likely to be picked up than those which aren't. Before you begin, you need to understand what sort of booklet you need to create. If you are creating a handy booklet with instructions, the design will be different than a booklet for a community project.

Audience is also important in design. Young adults are going to be attracted to more colorful, creative, and splashy designs. Middle-age adults look for creativity combined with function and practicality. The elderly are less impacted by color and more by how easy the content is to read and how practical it is.

Consider the important elements of design:

• Font -- It needs to be easy to read, but reflect the branding of the company as well.
• Color Pallet -- Sticking to a four color pallet keeps designing easier, while giving you the flexibility to create what you need. When choosing colors, consider the audience. The older the audience, the more subdued the tones should be.
• Layout -- Yes, it's a booklet, but some designs require a bleed from one page to the next. It also includes the size of the pages you plan to print. Consider what sort of layout will work for your needs and your audience.

Understanding Printing

You can't just create a document and ship it off to the printer. There are different important aspects of printing, especially booklet printing, to consider before sending it to the printer.

• Bleed -- It is recommended to leave anywhere from 1/8 in. to 1/4 in. around the edge to be trimmed in printing. This is called the bleed.
• Resolution -- Different printers require different resolutions for printing quality. Adhere to these standards to keep from having blurry or pixilated images.
• File Format -- Printers required high quality DPI file formats. These are often RGB or CMYK for best printing results.

If unsure what to do, contact a company that specializes in these services. They can advise you on what you need to know to print with them.

Author Rachel is a freelance writer and young professional who most enjoys writing about business best practices.

This post first appeared on nancy-rubin.com