Calendars That Work

If you've been doing any research on how to brand your company, get more sales, and put your products and services in front of potential customers every day, then you've undoubtedly learned that calendar printing can be a powerful force to assist you in achieving those desirable outcomes. Many businesses print full-color calendars because they add value: Nearly everyone wants and uses calendars, and they're likely to be hung in prominent places and viewed every single day. Thus, calendars represent an incredible opportunity to brand through repetition. That being said, calendar success is not measured in the number of calendars that actually make it to the wall. Instead, it's measured in response. Sure, branding is important; but all entrepreneurs and marketers would prefer to have sales instead of recognition. They go hand-in-hand, and if your calendar does nothing more than brand your company you're missing out on some amazing calendar marketing techniques that could drive many more customers than branding alone. Try the following tips for printing calendars that work:

Market direct

Many, if not nearly all, calendars simply brand the companies that distribute them. What a waste of a perfectly good direct-marketing opportunity! You can increase your calendar response by including coupons, deals, events, sales events, specials and VIP offers available only to calendar holders by simply adding some text and/or graphics to your calendars. Each holiday, each month, each week, and even each day can have some sort of offer. This technique also enables you to track your calendar response - make sure your customers bring in a clipped portion of the calendar or repeat a phrase unique to the calendar and record your response rate.

Make it fun

You can make your calendar fun and interactive by printing stickers to distribute with it. Each sticker could represent holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other special events so your customers can mark off their favorite dates. You could even turn your calendar into a puzzle, treasure map or a stick-on scene to entice your customers to interact with your calendar (and thus your company).

Match the medium

Your calendar design should be themed to bridge you to your customers through a single passion. Don't make your calendar a product catalog (though it's good to include a number and/or URL to order one). If you want to showcase your products, you should match your products with something else or show them being used. Many mechanics have wall calendars with models using a wrench manufactured by the calendar distributor on a classic car, perhaps. The calendar distributor is showcasing their products alongside images that their customers want to see. In a similar fashion, a dog food company is not going to benefit from a calendar that features pictures of dog food, but it could benefit from a calendar that depicts playful puppies with the occasional bag or bowl of food in the background (or sometimes even as part of the image, such as a puppy that spills a food dish).

Print gracefully

Calendars are every bit a part of a person's décor as framed photographs, so it's important that you print full-color calendars through a professional printer such as PsPrint. High-quality inks on sleek, durable paper makes your calendar images look great and last all year round. A great-looking calendar has a great chance of being effective, so opt for a 100-pound gloss cover stock for your calendar cover and either an 80-pound gloss text, 100-pound gloss text or 70-pound matte text paper stock for the inside calendar pages. The better your calendar looks, the better your company looks to your customers. If you want to simultaneously brand your company and market directly to your customers, there's no better way to do both efficiently and effectively than with calendars printing. Nothing else puts your message front and center to so many people every single day.