Category Archives: Marketing Products

Brush Pass Giveaway: Bags

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Undercover Printer's Bag Ladies

In the spy world, a “brush pass” is when two agents meet for a very short period of time and something of value is passed between the two.  In the trade show world, you will be making a large number of brush passes as you hand out promotional items to potential clients.  How can you be sure the items you are passing out are staying with your prospects?  Our agents have been on the case, and we’ve discovered evidence that a good quality bag could be the answer to all of your promotional item worries!  Why?

They’re helpful:  With all the loot people will be picking up at trade shows, their hands can get full pretty quickly.  A good bag will be sought out by people laden with other promotional goodies from all around the show.

They disguise your competition:  When you give away a good quality bag to your potential clients, all of your competition’s merchandise will end up making their way in there.  For the entirety of the show, your brand will be the only one seen as all the others stay hidden in your bag!

They stay with clients:  Even after the rest of the show materials from inside your bag are cleared out, people can always use an extra bag.  People use nonwoven bags for grocery shopping, storage, and transportation all the time and are always looking for more quality ones, especially if they are free!

They’re easy to customize:  There are many options for you to truly customize your bag to represent your company in the best way possible.  Nonwoven bags are always a customer favorite and are the most likely to be used after the show as opposed to plastic or paper.  Bags can be printed in full color to perfectly match your brand’s logo and things like additional pockets can help keep your prospects organized.  With bags priced as low as $1, you can find the perfect bag for any budget!

Whatever you choose, don’t be afraid to spend a little bit more to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth.  More expensive products will generally be better made and will stay in the hands of your potential customers longer. You can also offer to sponsor the bag that the show is giving out!  These bags, handed out to everyone at the start of the show, will ensure that your brand gets into the hands of every single person attending the show.

Hand out a quality bag and watch your brand walk around the show!

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

Mission: Trade Show

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So you’ve bought your booth space for the next trade show?  How much is it really costing you though? With the cost of displays, salaries for employees manning the booth, and promotional items, you are probably spending too much to risk an unsuccessful show, but how can you be certain your booth will draw in the contacts necessary to make your time and money worthwhile?

Think ahead.  Every good spy knows the importance of useful contacts.  You wouldn’t go into an important top secret mission without knowing who to meet, so why would you go to a trade show without knowing potential clients? Reach out through social media and try to find, and get to know, other people who will be there so you have leads before you even walk in the door.

Creativity.  Draw a crowd with a game or video.  Find a clever way to draw people into your booth that pertains to your particular business.  Anything that will help you establish a more personal relationship with potential clients is fair game, so be creative!

Effective Displays.  Small booths can be spectacular! Get creative with graphics and eye catching displays that will stand out from the rest.

This unique display fits perfectly in a 10-ft box space, but stands a crowd-attracting 11 feet tall!  While personalized booths like this may cost a bit more, they will pull their weight by attracting floods of impressed passersby.

Effective Staff.  Just as super sleuths are trained well before going out into the field, it’s important to train your staff beforehand if you want a truly successful show. It could be helpful to come up with a list of conversation openers to break the ice with potential clients without getting straight to business.  Dress your staff in black pants and branded, brightly colored shirts to complete the professional look.

A little planning plus a little more investment might just catch the eye of your dream revenue client!  How much are you willing to put into your next show?

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

A 5-Year Marketing Investment for just $5 ?

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Did you know that people hold onto t-shirts for an average of five years?  I heard this statistic and was frankly a little skeptical until I took a look in my own t-shirt drawer.  My absolute favorite t-shirt is bright orange with the logo of the leadership camp where I purchased it from. It’s going on four years old and I have no intention of giving it up anytime soon!  Our CEO confessed to her favorite tee being seventeen years old! Looking around outside, you see people who pull on their favorites to run errands or meet friends on a relaxed day off.  How many times have you been cleaning out your closet, but refuse to get rid of an old faithful because you’ve developed an almost sentimental attachment to its easy charm?

How can you use our culture’s love of t-shirts to your company’s advantage?

Large Events:  Are you going to be helping out at a large event soon, such as a charity walk, sporting event or festival?  Pairing your shirts with a big event would provide an easy way for potential clients to associate your brand with nostalgia of the good time they had at a music festival or the sense of accomplishment after finishing a particularly difficult marathon.  T-shirts often give the best deal when bought in bulk, some priced lower than five dollars for a quality shirt, so you can get your brand out to a large number of potential new clients for little sting to your marketing budget.

Sponsorships: Instead of selling your own t-shirts at an event, you could offer to cover the cost of the t-shirts for the people hosting the event.  In return, you could ask to place your company logo on the back.This would be another easy way to help prospective clients associate your brand with the memories they made.

Client Gifts and Giveaways: People love feeling appreciated! When clients receive gifts, no matter how simple they may be, it creates a more personal relationship and clients are often more than happy to show their support for a company that cares about them.

A comfortable t-shirt can go a long way!  By giving, selling, or sponsoring t-shirts, you are essentially creating a walking advertisement for your company for the next five years,  for as low as five dollars!  What about you?  Look in your own closets!  Is there a t-shirt you own and continue to wear despite its advancing age?  Whose logo is on it?

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

The Business Card Investigation

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Undercover Printer is out networking in the business community — a lot! We see all types of companies getting the word out and building relationships. We also see a lot of businesses making one huge mistake – they are seriously damaging their first impressions by handing out common, boring, flat business cards.

Did you know that the business card is the #1 marketing piece that people hang onto? It is small, fits into a wallet or suit pocket, and carries all of the necessary contact information a person needs. It is the one piece that never goes out of style – and will continue to be used when all the other electronic media completely takes over.Custom-business-cards-undercover-printerUndercover Printer sells more business cards than we do any other marketing piece. We print all sorts of cards, including the aforementioned high demand common boring cards – the cards that are so affordable everybody thinks they are getting a huge deal – but is it a great deal is it if your card gets tossed after cocktails?

A business card is like the front of your store in the networking world. If created properly, it tells people who you are, what you do, and what kind of company you are. Take a look through the stack of cards I am sure you have somewhere on your desk. Which ones stand out? Which are memorable?

die-cut-silk-business-cards-undercover-printerThere are a ton of options out there for affordable, creative, stand-out cards. Of course, we offer these options to our clients, but whomever you use for design and printing – if your cards are not a showpiece, isn’t it time to invest some of your marketing dollars into the front of your “store”.

Click here for some more ideas on Customizing Your Business Cards.

 

Let’s Get it Together, People!

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Garanimals. Remember these? Without them, I can’t imagine how my mom would have dressed me – or how I would have dressed myself. It was so easy to coordinate outfits – even I as a young child could figure it out. Bottoms and tops are paired by matching the tags: lions with lions, elephants with elephants – simply genius!

If only coordinating your marketing was that simple! Where are the instructions for how to match up the right marketing pieces with your message and your designated target? How do you know what to do first… or next? It helps to get the advice of a marketing strategist to help plan out the strategy and execution of that strategy. But then you actually have to implement the plan – a part where many businesses fall short. Other things get in the way of that email blast that coordinated with the special of the month and consequently the incentive item that follows up the email….phew! I think my head is spinning!

A couple ideas to get it together:
- Coordinate your team’s efforts with the marketing strategy
- Coordinate your marketing to have a consistent, clear message
- Coordinate all aspects of the strategy to drill that message into your prospects memory with 5-7 touches over time

Result: Successful Marketing Mission! Oh, and parents…garanimals have made a comeback. There is hope for the children of the fashionably-challenged!

Time Matters

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Everyone wants a great deal, especially in this economy. With the ease of searching on the internet, many companies feel that they are saving a bundle on marketing products by having an employee search around for the best price.

Unfortunately, dollar for dollar, the company spends almost 30% more using this method because of the cost of the employees wages to do the searching, along with the costly mistakes of using unknown vendors and relying on that voice on the phone.

What to do? Find vendors that are local, reliable, and reasonably priced-ones that you can count on to get the job done right the first time! You may find out quickly how little that employee has to do all day – for the $20K/year that he adds to your bottom line!