Marketing Materials: Why Quality Matters

Hi everyone. Long time no post. Hope everyone is well. Casa de Nitty made it through Florence unscathed, thankfully. I appreciate the emails from a few of you who checked in. Classy gesture.

I had lunch with a prospective client today - a referral from an existing client - and although he’s not in the PW business, marketing is marketing. I brought along some numbers he’d asked for on some potential projects, and all he wanted to talk about was lowering the price.

Now I’m fairly confident that my pricing is already competitive, because I keep a pretty close eye on the printing market. I also don’t mind pointing a client towards a different vendor it isn’t not something I can do efficiently. And along with being competitive, those of you who’ve worked with me know that I’m pretty flexible,. I seem to remember FatDaddy driving a hard bargain.

But this guy was all about ‘can we put it on thinner paper?’ or ‘can we make it smaller?’ or ‘can we do just 1 color?’ or ‘is it cheaper if it’s not glossy?’ I’ve seem similarly aligned questions on this forum, so here’s my opinion:

Buy the best that you can afford.

The end. That’s it. Simple. And it’s not about printing. It’s about risk vs reward.

If you put a flyer on a house and they’re not interested will they call and book a job just because the flyer is kickass and thick and glossy and looks professional? I doubt it,.

If you put a flyer on a house and they ARE interested will they not call because the flyer is cheap and on flimsy crap paper and looks like a cheap black and white Chinese takeout menu? I don’t know. But I’d say the likelihood of a crappy flyer deterring an interested client is greater than the likelihood of a great client attracting an uninterested client. So why risk it?

Here’s a little industry fact: thick, glossy paper doesn’t cost much more than thin copy paper. Not in the quantities you guys are ordering. If you were doing a print run that required 10 skids of stock then sure, let’s examine paper costs. But for 1000 flyers? It’s a paper cost difference of about 7 bucks.

You are all in the business of appearance. You make things look better. It’s going to be tough to close a client if your image doesn’t match your promise.

I’ve heard the rebuttal about ‘Isn’t 1000 cheap flyers better than 500 good ones because more people see it?’ Maybe. I honestly don’t know. But if it were my checkbook I’d do 500 good ones. I’d rather be certain 500 people saw a professional image than take the chance that 10 of those 1000 thought it was amateur hour.

I have a client who bought into a cupcake franchise. No, Idea, Why. But he wanted some shirts to sell with their logo and some catchy phrases, and he asked that I deal with his store manager. I told her I had the perfect shirt. $11 each. She said at her old job she got shirts for $7 each. I knew what kind of shirts she got for $7. I know the brand and the item number and I told her no. What she wanted was a thick, cotton, scratchy, commodity tee. The kind they shoot out of cannons at sporting events. The kind that quickly find their way into the car washing rotation because they’re hot and uncomfortable. So I brought a sample of each shirt to the store and asked which she’d rather wear.

Of course, she chose the $11 option. It’s a blend that feels like that shirt from college you’ve had forever and washed a hundred times. She said they were ‘a lot more expensive’ It was an order for about 50 shirts, We’re talking $200 difference total. The point is, all she was looking at was the cost and she was failing to see the benefit. They’re not in business to sell shirts .They’re in business to sell cupcakes. So if they sell a shirt no one wants to wear, it’s worthless. But if they sell a comfortable shirt that someone would wear to the grocery store or to Home Depot or whatever, then that’s a free, walking, talking, and moving advertisement, And they’ll sell more cupcakes.

Always consider the benefit.

Your flyers or door hangers or yard signs won’t sell many jobs for you. I’ve yet to hear of a call where they heard ‘I got your door hanger can you be here Thursday at 2?’ Instead they call you to come out, look at the job, and give an estimate. Don’t let unprofessional marketing material give them a reason not to call. Because if they get a flyer and realize they have a need for your services but your stuff looks like hell, they’re getting online and finding the first guy with a professional website and he’s getting your call.

And not trying to offend anyone, but don’t get me started on the whole ‘1-sided yard sign’ thing. If it works for you, fantastic. I won’t do it because it’s waste of available captive client space. And personally I think it looks cheap. Same reason I won’t shine just 1 shoe.

The. End. We now take you back to our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

Now let’s just hope the Braves can beat Kershaw tonight to even the series.

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