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Soft openings are a great way to launch a new business to a select crowd, before an official “Grand Opening” for the general public. Many industries have successfully used soft openings to generate buzz about their new business before they’re officially open, but it’s not as easy as just sending invitations and hoping for the best.

Just like with a grand opening, you should have goals beyond getting customers in the door for the first time. The allure of a new store or restaurant is often enough to bring out the masses, but without some creative marketing ideas thrown into the mix, they aren’t likely to come back to support your business down the road. There are a number of soft opening ideas that you can implement that will help to make the most of your pre-launch launch.

First thing’s first though. You have to let your guests know about the opening. Unlike a grand opening when you can hang a custom vinyl banner in front of your location, a soft opening requires invitations be sent on personalized greeting cards or handed out with customized club flyers.

Great job, you have 100 people showing up for your soft opening – now what?

Make Your Guests Your Priority

Planning for a soft opening can be stressful, and odds are, that not everything will go 100% according to plan. That’s Ok. If you are able to get the right people in the room, you’ve done your job. Opening a restaurant? Make sure to have local food writers in attendance. Identify people in your community and industry that have the power to influence others, and do everything you can to make them your priority.

Another benefit of a soft opening is that you can actually spend a bit more per guest to enhance your appearance too. Step it up a notch, print plastic business cards and postcards for guests to take away from the event. If you can get the most influential people in your area to support your business, the rest of the community will follow.

After the Soft Opening Comes The…

You thought we were going to say “Grand Opening.” Nope. Thank you cards. Not everyone will pick up a plastic card on the way out, or remember to bring your postcard from the car to the office, but you can make sure they don’t forget by sending a thoughtful card thanking them for attending the event. Plan it right, and you could be reminding them just in time to write an article or tell their followers on twitter in time for your Grand Opening!

Nobody wants to go to the dentist. The sticker and pretzel stick is old and ineffective on patients over the age of 8, but you aren’t sure how else to market your dental practice, right? Odds are that you have done some marketing for your dental practice before, but didn’t see the results that you were hoping for.

Just like brushing your teeth, consistency is key. Running a marketing campaign month by month isn’t likely to grow your dental client base – not everyone think’s that they need a dentist today, but at some point, everyone will. By staying in front of your potential clients with a consistent marketing plan for your dental practice, you can become the obvious dentist to call when the time is right.

With years of experience printing promotional products for dentists, we’ve seen how the most successful accomplished their goals of growing their practice. Based on what we’ve learned, our team identified 3 dental marketing tricks that actually work to share with you.

Advertising for Dentists is a lot like Dental Care

While every dental office is different, they do share one thing in common. They all push preventative care, provide emergency repair, and offer general checkups. Your marketing plan should do the same…

1. Preventative Care = New Client Marketing: You might not have any cavities now, but you should keep brushing every day. The same way that you might not have a shortage of clients right now, but you should keep marketing to the local community. Printing custom color postcards that you mail quarterly to the surrounding area will keep you in front of your target audience year round.
2. Dental Emergency = Client Engagement: Turning same day emergency appointments into lifelong clients happens all the time. Just because you got them in the door doesn’t mean the job is done. A friendly, knowledgeable staff – along with some pain relief, can go a long way. Be sure that all clients have copies of your business card, along with custom printed brochures that answer common questions related to the reason for their visit.
3. General Checkups = Checking-In with Current Clients: You encourage clients to come in regularly for checkups, even if they don’t think the need a dentist visit. Sometimes you find small issues before they become big problems. Checking-in with current clients works the same way. Reach ouch with personalized greeting cards to thank them for their loyalty, and they will remain loyal for years to come.

We Want to See Your Smile

Using these 3 dental marketing tricks, you can customize your plan for the upcoming year to fit your current needs. Our website offers tools that allow you to create, customize and perfect all of the promotional products needed to execute your new dental practice marketing strategy. Get started online or contact us today to work with a professional designer.

There are benefits and downfalls of having a storefront in a strip mall. Built in visibility from customers patronizing businesses located in the same plaza & ample parking are some of the most obvious benefits – but they aren’t enough to keep most businesses alive. You still need to market your business by grabbing the attention of new customers and bringing back existing ones over and over again. In order to do so, you will need to know how to stand out with a storefront in a strip mall.

Unlike standalone buildings, stripmall businesses leasing space often don’t have the luxury to customize their storefront to their liking. In many cases, business owners are instructed to use specific paint colors, sign lettering size / fonts & given other limiting specifications upon agreeing to a lease.

While these constraints can be frustrating when trying to stand out in a strip mall, there are still plenty of ways to separate your storefront from the rest.  The whole goal is to get people into your store the first time, and making sure that they come back. If you can’t change the look of your actual storefront, you need to get out in front of it instead.

Rule 1: Get out in Front of Your Storefront

Get out in front of your store and onto the sidewalk. Odds are you can’t put up a permanent structure advertising your business in the middle of a walkway, but you can use custom roll up banners. Put your banner out during business hours when there will be people walking by your business. Not only will this help introduce your business to new customers, but it will help people looking for your company to find it more easily as well.

Not everyone who visits the stripmall is going to walk by your business though – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get in front of them. Once again, you can use the built in traffic within the plaza to your advantage by putting your business flyers on cars, or bulletin boards located around the area. Be sure to check with local laws and to get permission before flyering around your business area – you don’t want to make the neighbors mad.

Rule 2: Be a Good Neighbor to Good Neighbors

When working in such close proximity to other local businesses, being a good stripmall neighbor can go a long way. Have a restaurant located a few doors down? Make sure to have some of their take out menus ready to hand out to your customers.

Not only will the patrons come back to visit BOTH businesses, but now the restaurant may be willing to hand out your business cards to families that could use your services as well. Turning the stripmall into a community instead of a competition can be advantageous for all businesses in your area.

Both public and private golf courses have continued to thrive in the rejuvenated economy, and country, with growing membership and player numbers in many places. Thousands of dollars and man hours will be spent each season to upgrade and maintain golf courses to cater to amateur players across the country. While golf may be a sport of leisure, promoting a course to increase membership and tee time reservations requires serious hustle.

There are plenty of creative ways that you can promote a golf course, but many places avoid stepping outside the norm. Golf is a relatively easy difficult sport to start, but very difficult to master – which should be a marketer’s dream. If you can get find creative ways to promote your golf course to get new players on the greens, you have the opportunity to turn them into a client for life!

Like any industry, it’s important to know who your are trying to promote your golf course to. Times have changed, and many younger people are playing golf than ever before, so it’s important to include a strategy for both young new players, and the “old pros” in your golf course marketing plan.

For New Players and Old Pros

Many smaller courses don’t have their own restaurant or bar – which puts them at an advantage for reaching out to the community. One creative way to promote a golf course is by printing table tent cards with pictures of your fairways, location, hours & contact info. Nearby restaurants will be happy to keep these on their tables and bar tops – the more local golfers, the more repeat customers they get too!

While reaching out will target new golfers, you don’t want to forget about your course regulars either. Have a mailing list? Perfect! Take the time to design and print postcards to mail before the start of your season to bring back your regular clients. They’ll be excited to see the changes and updates you’ve made to the course!

Make Each Season Better than the Last

Whether your golf course is open from Spring to Fall, or lucky enough to be year-round, it’s important to continue making each season better than the last. We offer full service online printing services that can help you bring any creative way to promote a golf course to life. Contact us today to get started on your next project with PrintFirm!

The weather is getting nicer outside. Kids will be getting out of school for summer break soon. May is the month when families pack away the winter close and plan their summer vacations – changes that marketers should take note of. We took some time to find the best “May Marketing Ideas” that will benefit your business this month, and throughout the upcoming summer.

Here – we’ll start with an obvious one. Run a restaurant or bar? Printing table tent cards advertising your Cinco de Mayo drink specials is one way you can make sure to kick off the month right. Make sure to have them on tables for at least a week leading up to the 5th for maximum impact.

Businesses can also take advantage of Memorial Day, one of the most popular sale holiday’s of the year! Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday of May, and kicks off the unofficial start to Summer. Credit card bills from the holiday season are finally paid off and consumers are ready to spend all summer. You just need to make sure they know you’re there.

Take Advantage of the Warmer Weather

Shorts and T-Shirts aren’t the only benefit of warmer weather. With the temperature rising in May, you can shift some of your marketing efforts outdoors because more people are likely to be outside. With more foot traffic passing by, business banner printing is an extremely cost efficient way to refresh your storefront and provide summer specific offers to potential customers.

Don’t have passerby traffic? Print the same information that you would have on a banner on business flyers and canvas the neighborhood. You may have already done some research on the legality of canvassing, but if always check your local laws prior to any type of marketing outreach program.

Boosting Summer Sales This Year

Still looking for May marketing ideas? Perhaps neither banners or flyers will work for your area. That’s Ok too. You can take advantage of our bulk poster printing prices and plaster the town with your business info. If you pick the right locations to hang your business posters, they are likely to last all summer – boosting sales for months to come.

There has been a shift in the political climate across the United States ever since Donald Trump launched his campaign for the 2016 Presidential Election. Citizens on both sides of the aisle are more interested in politics and are following the news closer than ever before. The new administration has certainly captured the attention of the American people like never before – be it with support or opposition.

This increase in political consciousness has driven more individuals and businesses to speak out about their political views, taking a clear stance on their values. From printing custom political lawn signs to creating vinyl banners to support their preferred candidate, we’ve seen an influx of politically related print jobs come through our queue than ever before.

We know it’s only a matter of time before someone orders custom trading cards featuring Donald Trump. Presidential trading cards are nothing new – there are custom and official cards associated with many previous presidents, but we expect to see the Trump administration featured in more unique ways than ever before.

Including Bannon, Tillerson, Conway & Putin

It’s time to get creative. Previous administrations have had custom trading cards made that include other members of their staff as well. When you make your own Donald Trump trading cards, be sure to include the other players in the White House. Steve Bannon, Rex Tillerson, Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump and Vladimir Putin – just to name a few.

We wouldn’t suggest spending time creating a card for Melania Trump since she isn’t expected to play a significant role in Washington. There are many different angles that you could take with a project of creating your own Donald Trump Trading Cards, but one approach would be to include his love of golf in your design.

Alternative Trading Card Facts

Trading cards are just 3.5 x 2.5” but can have a big impact, no matter how you customize them. Not surprisingly, many of our trading card customers print custom baseball cards for kids, but we see a wide variety of uses for these small products that pack a big punch. Check out all of our trading card printing products and options to find a style that works best for your custom creation

There are very few businesses that can thrive without a web present in this day and age. Companies of every size have their own dedicated website, social profiles, email lists – and many are focused on growing their business through leads online driven by SEO.

Search Engine Optimization for your company website can cover a whole host of different strategies and tactics online, with the goal of increasing organic website traffic quantity and quality. But that’s not your only option. We’ve figured out how to increase organic traffic without SEO.

Ok, not just us. Many marketers and business owners have figured out how to increase organic traffic without SEO – some without even knowing it! Companies have been using direct mail to boost sales online for years, but that’s not the only option available.

Make them Search for Your Brand

Businesses with storefronts often underutilize their most valuable real estate – the front of their store! Your company sign might generate some interest when you first open, but after a while regular local traffic will become somewhat blind to your business name & logo. Bring them back in by printing a custom vinyl banner to advertise upcoming sales, new promotions & offers, etc.

Of course not everyone who reads your banner is going to immediately grab their iphone and search for the name of your company – but some will. This approach is simple, and can re-engage your local customer base by encouraging them to search for your brand – effectively increasing organic traffic without SEO.

Many businesses don’t have a location with much visibility – or any storefront at all. Since banners won’t work to increase organic traffic without SEO for these types of companies, we suggest printing custom door hangers instead. Whether introducing your services to a neighborhood for the first time or trying to reconnect with previous customers, hangers encourage recipients to search for the brand to learn more about what they offer.

Optimizing for Conversions Everywhere

Simply increasing organic traffic without SEO isn’t the goal though. Of course you want those visitors to convert into leads & sales. Make sure to optimize your website for conversions, but don’t forget about your offline leads as well. Referrals from customers become much easier when they can share your custom business cards with friends and family. Don’t let your box run out!

Private security guard companies that patrol and protect businesses and communities continue to see increases in demand. Of course, this means that there is also an increase in competition within the private security industry as well. Simply providing security services isn’t enough to attract new customers in your area any longer. You need to market your private security guard company to the public.

Marketing your private security guard company means more than just putting your logo on the side of patrol vehicles and staff uniforms. If you want to attract new clients, you’re going to need to identify specific communities and areas that will benefit from regular security services and can afford your rates. City centers and suburbs often provide the right combination of commercial & private businesses and residences that both need security and can afford services.

Once you have defined your target area, creating your security guard company marketing plan will be defined by the demographics, interests and other aspects specific to the area. While some elements will vary, your general approach to marketing should be the same. Marketing your security guard company starts with attracting new customers, and never stops with keeping your current clients happy.

Serving the Community

New private security companies often target community based clients – businesses & communities, rather than private residences because of the larger scope and higher rates. Online marketing works great for companies that provide services online – but for security guard companies, physical mail works better than email.

Build your list, and get ready to send.

Make sure to include your company name / logo / phone number & tagline printed in color on the outside of your envelope, so that recipients can see exactly what you offer before even opening your mail. Inside, be sure to include a couple of custom plastic business cards in the envelope.

Protecting Your Customers

Focusing on marketing your security guard company to new leads will only take you so far. You need to protect your customers – from competitors. Once you’ve spent the time, and marketing dollars to turn a lead into a client, make sure that they continue to use your private security services for years to come.

Something as simple as mailing a custom greeting card to all your current clients for their birthday, or during the holiday season to show appreciation will go a long way. Need promo products printed? Contact us today!

Most growing businesses are extremely careful with how they utilize their marketing budget – and rightfully so. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on marketing. And those dollars out don’t always produce dollars back in. This has lead many businesses to push the majority of their marketing spend online, where they can best track spend & ROI.

Unfortunately, putting too much – or even ALL of your focus into your online marketing leads to a slow decline in growth and revenue over time.

Yes, people are spending more time than ever online using their desktop computers during work hours and smartphones / tablets at night – but they still make their most important decisions offline. By getting in front of new customers and staying in touch with existing ones offline, you can actually boost your sales online.

Using direct mail to boost sales online can work in a variety of ways, depending on your industry and customers – but there are a few rules that ring true for every business out there that is already spending time and money in an online marketing program. Your SEO efforts, PPC accounts and email campaigns can go a lot further when given a boost by a direct mail marketing program.

Making a Bold Statement

Direct mail is an excellent way for local businesses to get ahead of the competition by introducing their products / services before a user searches for your type of company online. For example, local dentists will use direct mail to introduce their services to all new homebuyers in their area.

A bold headline, bullet pointed benefits & contact information on a direct mail postcard might not make the office phone ring off the hook, but you are likely to see an increase in website traffic. Further, your name becomes familiar – so when that person who is new to the area does go online to search for a local dentist, your organic or paid search results are likely to stand out to them.

Combining direct mail and online marketing efforts benefits both channels, and most importantly, your bottom line. New customers means new revenue, but that’s not the only way that direct mail can help increase sales online.

You Will Not Be Ignored

Do you stay in touch with your existing customers via email? Keep them up to date with new products, services & company news? If not, you should – but make sure that you use direct mail to make the most out of your email efforts.

Having a holiday sale? Send large postcards or mail brochures to the same list you are sending emails to if you want to increase open and click-through rates – and increase sales online. PrintFirm offers complete printing and direct mail services for savvy marketing clients looking to grow.