Using a custom calendar to promote your company is a great way to keep customers reminded of your business. Although the digital age has embraced almost every part of our lives – being able to see limitless things on your smartphone – you might ask yourself if the paper calendar still has a place in today’s society? The team at Minuteman Press Calgary Shepard can emphatically say yes. A custom calendar still has a huge place in our daily lives, which makes it an extremely effective promotional item for your business. According to a New York Times study, a staggering 70% of those who receive a custom calendar plan to do business with the giver. As a business, you need to learn how to fit calendars into your marketing strategy. Let’s see how this essential item with creative custom calendar designs can help you increase your conversion rates.
365 Days of Advertising
The advertising dream is to create something that will be noticed and remembered and held onto. Branded custom calendars are a fantastic way to do this and more. How many days or weeks do people hold onto a brochure? A flyer or pamphlet may seem interesting at first, but it will often end up in the trash or drawers where they’ll spend the rest of their lives. With custom calendars, you don’t have to worry about it never seeing the light of day again. People will almost certainly put it in a prominent location where they and other people can look at it constantly. Every time they look at a calendar, which is possibly more than a couple of times a day, they see your brand. If you do a good job on the calendar design, it will generate even more positive feelings.
If that wasn’t enough, after the calendar expires in 12 months, people are also more likely to come back to your business to get another custom calendar. Humans are creatures of habit and we like things that are familiar to us, so your consumers will likely prefer your company’s calendar over others. You want to design original calendars for your customers each year, giving people an incentive to stop by the store. Organizations may also alter their orders to include monthly coupons at the bottom of their calendars. Offering exclusive deals will give consumers another reason to return to the business. With that in mind, make sure you properly plan in advance when you’ll start handing out those freebies. You don’t want your competitors to get to your consumer’s desk or wall first, especially if the design is better than yours.
[Minuteman Press Calgary Shepard team strongly advise you start the custom calendar process now. August and September are perfect months to start your design and ordering of custom calendars. Contact us to get started today. Although it is never too late as they can be gifted all year long, the best time to give them away is November and December so start now.]
Customer Loyalty
Are you looking for a way to say thank you to the clients who support your company? Creating custom calendars can be a great method to reward those who have helped your company grow. From large purchases to frequent visits or even referrals, expressing your gratitude can be affordable even on a larger scale when you choose custom printed calendars. Or how about giving them out to people new to your business as a show of appreciation that will help them remember who they visited even later in the year when they might otherwise forget. Whatever the reason, creating a custom yet practical item like calendars for your business can be an awesome way to say thank you and increase customer loyalty at the same time.
A Gift That Keeps on Giving
Investing your advertising budget on a custom calendar in addition to flyers or social media will get you the trust of your consumers. Your customers perceive the free calendar as a gift, creating a positive feeling toward your brand. In fact, the NY Times study above also shows 82% of the recipients say that they enjoy getting it and even look forward to getting the gift again next year. Conversely, they won’t feel the same level of appreciation seeing you on television or interrupting the Facebook video they’re watching. Furthermore, its ingrained habit that people have to display a calendar somewhere conspicuous. This opens up the possibility of other people seeing your brand and has a physical virality to it. The branded custom calendar proudly hung allows you to reach a demographic that may or may not have heard or considered your brand before seeing it on a friend or family’s property.
Everyone Needs a Calendar
Whether a physical calendar or on their smartphones, calendars are a daily necessity. Sometimes, all we need is a quick look at the wall or at our desk to look at a date without having to get our phones and go through the motions of opening the app. Although buying calendars has waned since the advent of the new technology, it’s still popular among consumers. That’s why it’s an effective promotional item. It caters to the needs of the people supporting your business. Professionals at their office still have one at their desk, and every home could use one hanging on their kitchen wall. It’s a tool that helps people to better manage their time, and it helps greatly if it’s available physically. Some people even deem it to be more effective than to-do lists that people also like to have a physical representation, whether on a notepad or on a physical planner.
Advertising In Their Space
As fun as it would be, you can’t go into people’s work spaces and hang your advertising banner. You can’t log into their website and include your digital ad. A fantastic solution to this is to choose something with a good sized surface area that will have a practical use in the office or home. Almost stealth-like, you can provide a custom calendar as a gift and they will happily hang it (your banner) up in their work space themselves. Branded calendars are a handy solution when looking to create easy to notice advertising that doesn’t come across as unsightly or unwelcome. People might not want a poster of your company where they work and eat, but a custom printed calendar is likely to remain for the entire year.
Calendar Design Up To Your Imagination
As mentioned a handful of times above, calendars are customizable. So, you can design it however you want. You may want to use high-quality glossy materials to make your colourful product photos pop off the page. Or perhaps you would like your customers to be able to write on your calendar to get extra functionality out of it.. Calendars also come in many sizes and types – pocket, desk, wall, jumbo, and more!
As with all promotional materials, consider your customer base and add any special dates that will be valuable to your customer to ensure that yours is the custom calendar they cannot live without. It’s best if you choose a design that best represents your brand. In the automotive industry? Put attractive cars on every page. Maybe you want to highlight previous work you have done. Or showcase key staff volunteering their time in the community. Lifestyle shots can be used to show your green initiatives. Do you support environmentalism? Put pictures of nature and its inhabitants, or if you really want to drive the point home, put photos of balding forests or endangered species.
However, don’t think that you can only put pictures that represent your brand. No one’s stopping you from putting adorable baby animals or the best sights in the world. You can also showcase local destinations, which opens up the avenue for you to hold a photography contest wherein the winners’ photos will go to your calendar.
Endless Possibilities
Aside from the design, you can pretty much put anything you want on a custom calendar. With a calendar, you have the opportunity to add seasonal specials to promote your business throughout the year that only calendar recipients can access. Want to add coupons or promote a specific product/service monthly? Attach one to every month (you can even have them only valid for that specific month if you wanted). You can also personalize the calendars with special marks on certain events. If their particular industry has trade shows a couple times a year, you can include those in the daily markings. Want to highlight cause days such as Bell Lets Talk Day, you can do that too.
Don’t Forget About Me (You)
Needless to say, your branding and contact information need to be inserted in numerous places throughout the custom calendar. From your perspective, over and above the act of gifting them to your client base, they are an incredibly impactful means of keeping clients updated on important information regarding you and your brand. Details such as the organization’s telephone number, location, and email address need to be included on the calendar to make sure customers have no difficulties with contacting the business.
Post-Press: Ready to Get Started?
Understanding the benefits of branded custom calendars is essential to getting the best results from the promotional item. Whenever a customer thinks of contacting or visiting your business, make sure the information they need is easily accessible to them. Interested yet on getting calendars for your advertising campaign? Great! Any time is the best time to start planning for the next calendar year. We offer fast quote times and friendly, professional staff who are ready to get those items off the wish list and into reality. Contact us and let’s help you with creative calendar designs. We’ll work together to make the best calendar to make your customers happy.
We Design. We Print. You Profit!