PrintFirm's Blog

The computer system at work is down. It could be a simple database error, or you business could be the victim of a DDoS attack. The tech team is estimating that it will take anywhere between three minutes and three days to resolve the situation and get the system back up and running. Meanwhile, customers still are calling or at the front door. Far too many businesses rely solely on tech to run their company and end up being rendered powerless by a computer outage – effectively having to close shop until the system is back up.

Immediate effects are obvious; loss of business and customers looking to buy or order while your system was inoperable. Long term effects may be less apparent. Companies that aren’t prepared for a computer outage often watch their customers turn to competitors, giving them an opportunity to earn their business moving forward. By preparing for the inevitable tech glitch, your business can stay productive and avoid substantial losses down the line.

One of the most common examples of this can be seen in restaurants. Have you ever been out for lunch or dinner when a restaurant computer system has gone down? Most are unable to function – neither the servers or kitchen staff are sure how to organize, expedite food effectively or add up order totals. This is common for many businesses, but there are two things that you can do to prepare for a computer outage at work.

Planning and Supplies

Each business will require a different plan to be put in place for their particular needs – but training staff for a computer outage before one happens is the most important step to avoiding loss of business during this period. We suggest putting plans in writing and reviewing on an annual basis or as needed with new hires to make sure everyone is prepared. Of course, employees will need the right supplies to compensate for the computer outage as well.

Your business should have custom printed carbonless forms on hand to take down customer information, provide receipts and issue invoices as needed. Depending on how you interact with customers, you may want to order loose carbonless forms with your business logo or go with NCR forms in a book to keep them all in one place. These forms will contain the same information that would have been input into the computer system and will provide both customer and business with a record of the transaction.

Turning a Negative into a Positive

By being prepared for a computer outage at work, you can turn a potentially negative situation into a positive one for your customers. Instead of turning away business because orders can’t be processed, you’re able to show your clients that you prepared for the worst – making you more reliable and trustworthy. We hope your computer system never goes down again, and hope that this article has helped you prepare for the worst in case it happens.

There was a period of time when PrintFirm printed lots of custom CD Booklets that would fit in jewel cases for artists and musicians from all over the world. That time has come and gone with the shift from compact discs to mp3s and streaming music services dominating the music industry. While we do still get some orders for CD booklet printing from independent musicians and bands, this number has continued to decrease over the years. Surprisingly though, many people are still using this booklet size for their business or other non-musical personal projects.

These 4.724 inch square booklets are the perfect size for many businesses that don’t need to print a full size booklet. We’ve seen dozens of different uses for CD case sized booklets, and have recently seen more companies turning to this format for marketing materials. Our customers that use us for trade show printing are utilizing these booklets as an additional giveaway item with more information to top prospects at events.

We’re finding out that there are plenty of different uses for CD booklet sized printing, and have learned to let our customers lead the way. Looking for a little creative inspiration? Here are two of the best uses that we’ve seen from our clients recently…

Other Uses for CD Case Sized Booklets

Need to print instruction manuals that still fit inside smaller product packaging? We’re not surprised because this is one of the most common “other” uses for the CD Booklet printing services we offer. This square booklet manual can include all of the product instructions that your customer needs, while helping brand your business with high quality image printing and custom design.

Another common application our clients have brought to our attention, is that this size is great for recipe books. Whether you’re providing recipes to customers who purchased your food in a major grocery store, or just looking to share the family cook book, these booklets are perfect! The glossy pages are durable and built to last in kitchens for years!

But Rock and Roll isn’t Dead

Despite the shift to digital, many bands still want to release their music on CD, but not just because of better sound quality. Being able to give fans a physical disc, and packaging to hold onto can be great for marketing. Custom CD sleeves are the most popular product that our musician customers order now – but we can’t wait to see the other uses our clients come up for them too!

It’s possible that your company has grown, and thrived for years without using printed business letterhead. With the marketing shift to digital complete for most businesses, letterhead printing has become a thing of the past. In many cases, we find that our clients even have old dusty boxes of printed letterhead laying around that they’re no longer using because they’re old, outdated, and the company no longer sends physical mail like they used to. Understandable, but there are many reasons that businesses should still use printed letterhead on a regular basis.

Don’t get us wrong. Email is great, efficient & cost effective for much of the promotion that used to be done via direct mail – we use it to promote sales and new products too. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped using letterhead as well. Sure, we’ll talk about the downside of business mailings too, but first let’s touch on the benefit of marketing with email and direct mail on letterhead combined.

The cost to send emails may be less than direct mail, but the response rate is lower too. This Harvard Business Study shows that when businesses combine emails with direct mail, response rates raise to 25%. In business, every percentage point counts, and by strategically using “old school” direct mail printed on company letterhead to compliment your email campaigns you can see more benefit than using just one of the two.

Consumers Consume Like Me and You

In this digital marketing age, where less businesses are reaching out to customers via mail there is an opportunity to stand out above the competition. A custom printed letterhead, delivered to someone’s mailbox is far more likely to get acknowledged, opened and responded to than it’s email counterpart. But let’s look past the immediate benefits and look at the long term effects too.

Mail is likely to end up on the kitchen table or hung on a fridge, whereas that never happens with email. At best a message will get forwarded, but when is the last time you sent along a promotional email to friends and family? Not only does direct mail last longer, but it also builds authority and trust since not every business does it anymore. We’re not saying you should send thousands of direct mail pieces as often as you send emails, but highlighting key annual sales and promotions will help your business drive higher revenue spikes when consumers are ready to consume.

The “Bad” Thing About Custom Business Letterhead

Printing custom business letterhead can have downsides for some businesses too. If you don’t use the letterhead, so it’s important to have a plan of how to use it in advance. That said, this is also the GOOD thing about letterhead – it doesn’t go bad. As long as you have a great design and use high quality full color letterhead printing, you can use these for years to come. Don’t forget to get some custom envelopes printed to send complete your marketing package as well!

That isn’t a typo – we aren’t behind the wheel of the car while writing this blog post. We’re talking about FLYERS per hour. How many flyers can be distributed per hour? Just like driving, faster isn’t always better, but keeping up pace is important too. But first, let’s explain why it’s important to measure your flyer distribution speed.

Flyers are cheap. Labor is not. Just because you printed 20,000 flyers to advertise an upcoming event at a great price doesn’t mean that getting the word out will still be a cost effective venture. You need to find out where your target audience is, and how you can reach them as quickly as possible to keep the actual cost of your flyer advertising low. If you are only distributing 250 flyers per hour, it would still take you two full work weeks to complete the job. So let’s look at some other options.

There are two key factors when it comes to measuring flyers per hour; distance between Distribution Drop Points and Speed of your Distributor. Assuming that you can hire someone who is diligent and efficient on the clock, you have several options to increase your flyer per hour distribution rate.

No Speed Limit

Depending on where you are distributing flyers, there is no real limit to how fast you can go. Big cities with larger populations provide more opportunities to reach people faster, but all four options below can work in any region.

Residential Homes & Apartments: This method is almost always slowest, and varies depending on how far apart houses or apartment buildings are in any given neighborhood. Slower flyer distribution pacing can still work for higher priced products and services, such as real estate – but is not the right approach for many industries.

Businesses & Community Centers: Shopping areas, schools and public areas often speed up the flyer per hour pace, and are often used for B2B advertising. These are great for advertising local businesses such as commercial landscaping or insurance brokers.

Cars in Parking Lots: If possible, parking lots can be one of the most speedy flyer per hour zones you can distribute in. Perfect for B2C businesses like car wash & detailing or local restaurants. Including a coupon can help increase effectiveness as well! Be sure to check with your local laws prior to putting flyers on cars in parking lots, and/or check with the business owner first.

Hand Outs in Person: Handing out flyers in person is often the fastest, and most sure way to get your product or service in front of the most people in the least amount of time. Find a high traffic area, hire a friendly distributor (or dress them up in a costume!), and watch the flyers disappear. This method targets people already out and about in the area, and is perfect for printed club flyers.

Design, Print & Distribute

Fast, effective flyer distribution has proven to be profitable for many businesses, which is why so many still advertise this way. Whether you’re printing flyers for your business or your band’s upcoming concert, PrintFirm is able to take you from 0 to 60 with full design services and fast delivery.

Church events are a great way to thank your congregation for continued support and open your doors to the community. It’s common for churches to have indoor events during religious holidays and outdoors during summer months when the weather is nice. Based on our experience printing products for church events, we have event planning tips that will help you from start to finish. We break down all events into three main parts – getting attendees to the event, making sure that they have a great time, and getting them to tell all their friends how much fun they had afterwards.

Unlike most events and parties that we help clients plan for, church events don’t often need to print invitations to mail. Using weekly church programs and by spreading the word during service, you can be sure that some members of the congregation will attend your event. One way to make it easier to remember, is by printing a custom banner for your church with details – date, time & location, to hang outside leading up to the event.

Most members of your church are likely to live close by, and probably drive by a few times per week. Using a custom banner will help to remind them when the event is coming up, and make sure that they have it on their weekly calendar. For smaller or indoor events, roll up banners can accomplish the same goal without broadcasting to the entire community. Congratulations – we got them to attend, but we want to make sure have a great time too!

Design Inspiration

It’s important for all events to have a schedule or list of activities that attendees can participate in. Many churches design event brochures for all attendees with information, location map, and congregation details. This single product can help the event run smoother and more efficiently because those in attendance know what to expect and where to go. Designing and creating a brochure for an event can be a lot of work, but our designers can help you with every step. Need something special? Request a custom design!

Brochures or event booklets can help make sure that your attendees have a great time and that the night goes smoothly, but they also serve another purpose. Attendees will take these and leave them in the car, or on the kitchen table – reminding them of your event or introducing your church to others who pick it up. These are decent takeaway items, but there are other products that will last longer.

The Most Important Part

Our last church event planning tip is actually for after the event is over. If those in attendance had a good time, they will want to tell their friends and family about it. Why not make it easy for them by giving away custom printed stickers that say the name of your church, the event, and date(s) of the event? It’s a great way grow awareness for your church and remind your current followers of the great time they had at your event.

A good take out menu does more than just tell customers what food your restaurant offers.  Using take out menus to market your restaurant goes beyond your most popular dishes.  Printing take out menus not only brings returning patrons back into your establishment, but introduces new potential customers to your restaurant as well.  Many people will bring take out menus into their office job, where co-workers and others will be introduced to your restaurant through the take out menu itself.

Because of this, it’s important to consider your take out menu design, layout, color and presentation.  It’s important to have a cover that tells your customers what type of restaurant you are – for example, using a grill for BBQ or chopsticks for Chinese food is a great way to help others quickly identify what type of food you serve.  The front of your take out menu is also a great place to include the address and phone number – making it easy for people to pick up the phone to place an order.

There are many different take out menu templates for the inside of your booklet.  Most restaurant owners will group food by appetizer / entrée (by type) / and dessert.  Some also choose to include high resolution images of their food to show the customers what they can expect when they order.  Highlighting your most popular dishes is also a great way to influence what your customer orders from the menu.

Smaller Portions

Full size take out menus printed with full color covers are a great way to grab attention, and get people to look further at ordering from your restaurant, but some take out places are going smaller.  Mini menus are small enough to fit in your customer’s pocket while still including all the information they need to order another meal.  These are perfect for restaurants that cater to college students and in cities with traffic from sports teams.

Marketing your restaurant with take out menus is both effective and cost efficient when you have the right design and print firm behind you.  Whether you are only open at lunch for sandwiches or are open 24 hours a day, our designers can create a take out menu template custom for your restaurant that will help bring customers back over and over again.

Cooking Up New Business

We know that it takes a lot of hard work to run a restaurant, but we try to make it a little easier by providing all your printing needs.  Beyond take out menus, we also offer custom gift certificate printing which is perfect for holidays and birthdays – as well as tent card printing for the tabletops in your restaurant.  We offer the best prices for all of your restaurant paper printing needs, so contact us today to start your need project with PrintFirm

It takes a lot of work to plan, organize and successfully throw an event in Los Angeles. Because we’re based in Southern California, we understand that concerts, plays, fundraisers, dinners and parties for all occasions are always on the schedule – and how hectic planning one can be. Many of our rush orders are from amateur, upcoming and professional event planners in Los Angeles in need of last minute printing services. For some reason, print products tend to be at the end of the event planning checklist.

That’s OK though – our print service professionals in Los Angeles have plenty of experience getting products designed and shipped overnight for clients up against an event deadline. Whether you are planning an event in Los Angeles for this upcoming weekend or haven’t even booked the venue yet, we can help you with your printing service needs.  We’ve been providing print services for events in Los Angeles for over 20 years!

We know that there are a lot of different printers to choose from in Los Angeles, but we’ve always stood out by having the best pricing and best service service around. Our experience allows us to help guide you along the way – which for many customers, means reminding them of other things that they need for their event.

The Most Commonly Forgotten Event Checklist Item

It’s not likely that you forgot to book the hall or notify your guests of the event – but did you remember all of the details? The most commonly forgotten event checklist item among our event clients is vinyl banner printing.  Funny enough, one of the largest items is often missed, even when many of the smaller details are taken care of.  Having a custom banner printed for your event is essential, and our Los Angeles print firm can help you from from design to delivery!

Many of our clients printing items for an event in Los Angeles contact us when they are trying to figure out how to design a custom ticket. This can lead to our printing experts suggesting other products that other event based customers have ordered from us in the past. There is nothing worse than realizing you forgot an important item on event day.

More Event Printing Products

Depending on the type of event you need printing services for, we may recommend a few different products that you will want to consider as well. In the entertainment capital of the world, it’s not uncommon for customers to order custom posters in bulk for a concert or to print short run booklets for a play. Call us today to speak with an expert who can help you cross all of your print based event checklist needs off today!

Taking care of all of the details for an event can be stressful – from invitations to clean up and everything in between.  Some details are more important than others, and it’s important to give those elements a bit more attention.  The value of a getting well designed tickets printed for your event often extends long beyond the few hours your guests are in attendance.  The design of a ticket for an event needs to be both functional and stylish to make them a success.

Determining how to design a ticket for an event starts with the type of gathering you will be planning.  Be sure to leave room for consecutive numbering to be printed if your event has assigned seating locations for guests. This detail is particularly important for theatrical plays or concert tickets.  For these types of events, you may also want to consider whether or not there will be a perforation on the ticket before starting the design process.

Not all events require you to include seating location information, but you should be sure to include the other basic information into the ticket design.  This includes the event name location, time & date – and any other key information that is relevant to all ticket holders.  Once you have these basics considered, you can get into the fun aspects of how to design a ticket for an event.

Custom Events Require Custom Tickets

There is no limit when it comes to how you design your custom event ticket.  Add custom images or pictures to your event tickets to make them stand out.  A well designed event ticket can also be a souvenir that people will hold onto for years to come.  For those of you with annual or recurring events, this can be a powerful marketing tool in getting your event to grow over time.

Our customers have the option to choose from glossy or matte cardstock for their custom event ticket printing, which can help personalize your design even further.  If you don’t already have a design for your event ticket, our team can create a custom design for you!  Ordering online is easy, but we’re available over the phone, or via chat for help if you need us too.

The Big Day

Event tickets will get your guests in the door, but there are other custom items you may need to print before as well.  Short run booklet printing with all the event art and information can help give attendees the full experience that you want to deliver.  Many of our customers who design custom tickets also print vinyl banners for their event as well.  Be sure to check our full inventory of promotional print products to see what types of ideas you come up with for your event today!

The reason you receive so many business greeting cards during the holiday season is because they work.  Companies still see enormous value from sending business greeting cards to customers – and not just during the holiday season.  There are few other marketing mediums where you can be almost sure to get in front of your customers, and stay in front of them for weeks at a time.

Everybody opens greeting cards, and most put them on display for other customers, friends or family to browse throughout the holiday season – and often much longer after that. You can keep your company in front of your top customers, clients and everyone they know from Thanksgiving to New Years by ordering your holiday greeting cards now.  The earlier you order, the longer your cards will be up in offices or homes during the happiest time of year.

So, when is the best time to send business greeting cards?  Most companies agree that the best time to send business greeting cards is at the end of November.  This way, you can be sure that your simple holiday message, business logo and business name will be on display for the entire month of December.  Some time after the New Year holiday cards will go in the trash, but the value lasts all year long.

Emails vs. Greeting Cards

Many businesses have been tempted to stop sending physical greeting cards to customers in exchange for emails in recent years.  Nobody is going to print out an email from a business and hang it on a string for all to see.  That isn’t to say that holiday emails won’t work for promotions and quick campaigns, but sending business greeting cards is more likely to provide long lasting value for your company all year round.

There is an added value for B2B companies that send business greeting cards early in the holiday season.  By reaching your clients before they send greeting cards, they are likely to add your company info to their business rolodex.  Whether you choose to send flat greeting cards or  prefer the more traditional folded greeting cards, you will see the benefit for the year to come.

It’s Never Too Early to Get Started

Printing custom greeting cards for your business this holiday season is easier than ever.  Printfirm will help you select the right greeting card template, create the card from scratch, or you can upload your own design for printing today.  Get started with your card online or call us today and tell us what you want!