I’m the editor and co-owner of the web site Sell66stuff.com, which was created to help increase commerce on Historic Route 66 by bringing the right products together with the right buyers.
I did a lot of updating on the Sell66stuff.com vendor guide over the last few days. Any businesses with Route 66 related merchandise you want to find an outlet for, check it out! http://www.sell66stuff.com/vendor_guide.html
I’ve been working hard lately promoting my upcoming class, “Polymer Clay Beads with Pearl Ex Pigments”. It’s the first in a series, so I’m figuring out some new processes and making several new promotion pieces. The next one should take a lot less time to promote, but only if I remember what I did and can find all the parts – there are quite a lot as you will see!
First I’ll make an action list of all the tasks to perform in a logical order.
I recommend you use my list above as a starting point and use it to make your own promotion checklist, adding and subtracting action items as needed. Then make some kind of master document that includes notes, links or whatever information you will need to carry out the tasks and remember what you did so you don’t have to figure everything out again the next time you have an event to promote. It’s useful to make this document in some kind of format that supports tables such as a private web page, Word document or Excel spreadsheet. Then you can put appropriate links and info in the row next to each action item to make everything easy to find and remember. If you are part of an organization share this document with others involved in the project so you can all benefit from the knowledge you’ll gain during the promotion.
When creating an identity for your company, it’s important to present a unified look and feel across all channels. A few examples of channels are emails, web sites, print ads and mobile apps. Common elements that help identify your brand can be logos, colors or fonts. Sounds, type of paper or photography styles are examples of other choices that can play a role in forming your brand identity.
Few would argue that this concept is wrong, but believe it or not at one of my former jobs I had to persuade some people to make the branding more consistent. Today I had an experience that illustrates why consistent branding is important. I was working on one of my mailing lists, and needed to find a first and last name for a contact in my database. I did a search online for the email address, and found a web site with a logo and color scheme that made me remember a business card that I collected about three years ago. I looked in my business card folio, and voila! There was the information I needed. I never would have remembered where I made this contact if I had not remembered the logo and color scheme. If your potential customers want something that you have, making yourself as memorable as possible with consistent branding can help!
I’m planning on using tent cards when I exhibit my crafts in the upcoming year to highlight certain products or draw attention to deals and sales. I designed templates for two different sized tent cards to hold changeable inserts in two sizes – 3.5 x 3.75 inch and 5.25 x 4 inch. The latter is a good size for postcards. Tent cards can be used for other functions also, such as business events, parties, receptions and more.
One example of how you could use these at a business event is to put promotional messages with QR codes on the tent card inserts. Prospects with smartphones on their person can scan the codes and see mobile content that you have prepared for them.
To use these templates, first print out the four pages included in the PDF download. Cut out the two tent card templates and inserts and if you like laminate them for durability. Trace around the tent card templates on card stock and cut out. Cut four diagonal lines in the front of the tent card to make corners for holding the inserts. Score and fold tent card piece along dotted lines and tape the end tab to the back of the card to form a tent shape.
Create inserts and push them into the corners on the front of the tent cards to hold them in place. I’ve included sheets of inserts laid out so you can see how many fit on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper. If you want you can scan or import the insert sheets into the graphics software of your choice and use them as a guide to create content to print out.