CLE Group

CLE's Top Tips - Trade Show Artwork

2010-05-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

We've been a little quiet on the blogging front over the past couple of weeks due to our preparations for next week's Business Startup show (at London's ExCel). While our in-house design team are putting the finishing touches to our stand artwork and brochures, I have a question for you. Have you considered the following when preparing your company's exhibition artwork and literature for a trade show?

Firstly, what's your message? Potential passers-by will probably spend around six seconds evaluating your stand and in that short window of time you need to communicate essentially 'who you are' and 'what you do'. Clear, concise, bright and eye-catching graphics will help attain this, but what will they learn about you in that precious few seconds. You don't want those six seconds to be wasted trying to muddle through a whole web of text – or too little. I was amazed at the TFM&A show earlier this year to pass by a huge number of stands without having much of an idea what they were about. In fact, accidentally catching the eye of the suited man standing before an indecipherable logo and the slogan ‘Excellence through quality solutions’ caused me point to an imaginary friend and start running (not true, but you get the idea). Prospects can’t possibly understand the whole of what you’re offering in a snapshot. You need multiple access points which your skilled stand team can weave together into your solution once you get the prospect talking. Consider also where people will be looking - only Mr Smith's pet giraffe is going to see your graphics if they are placed at the top of your stand. The eye-line is the best place to begin your core communication. Consider also that your stand may be approached from several directions – does your message make sense from each?

Are you creating hand-out material to be taken away from the stand after an initial dialogue? Make sure that the design of this literature is consistent with your stand artwork. Think carefully about what you want each prospect to take away. Having your best take-away drop into the prospect’s bulging bag of stuff may not be a good return for the twenty-minutes you spent talking to them (I have three such bags at the side of my desk which I haven’t looked in since returning from those shows). Worse still, don’t let that beautiful product info pack leave your stand unsupervised. Instead, consider qualifying your leads in your dialogue and then follow-up after the show using your multi-touch framework for pursuing leads. If you must have something that prospects can grab as they run by, make sure it drives them to your website to ask for more (in return for their details, of course).

Business Startup in 1 month's time!

2010-04-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

Are you a startup entrepreneur or have you been running a business for up to 3 years? If yes, then put a date in your diary for the Business Startup show - it's a must-visit event with powerhouse seminar speakers including ex-Dragons Richard Farleigh, Rachel Elnaugh and Doug Richard.

Save precious time trawling the web searching for key contacts by spending a day (or two) meeting industry experts face-to-face who will be more than happy to offer insight and advice. Grab this unique opportunity to make invaluable contact with companies and indivduals who can contribute towards the success of your business.

Get your free tickets here and come and say 'hello' to CLE at the Business Startup show, stand 712 at London's ExCel 20th-21st May.

Top 5 Advantages of using Personalisation

2010-04-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

Have you already made the step and started using personalisation in your marketing campaigns? If not, read on to find out why you could be missing out...

1. Get personal - Including at least the recipient's name increases the chances of your mailing getting a second look. Avoid the mass mailing generation and gain more credibility from your campaign by including your recipient's name in the message and engage them in a personal conversation with your mailing piece.

2. Better use of your data - Make use of the other fields within your contact list, mail-merging the address is often the obvious choice, why not put to use other information you have on your contacts, for example their name, initials, gender, dates etc you will notice your response rates significantly increase!

3. There's more to personalise than you think - It's not only image and text personalisation that can benefit your campaigns, you can also tailor each mailing piece to it's recipient based upon their product choices, the car they drive, their pet's breed for example. Relevant graphics and text can be generated, all driven by your database making it unique to each contact. Similar to sites such as Amazon and Tesco with their recommendation engine, the data is used in a similar manner.

4. Take your personalisation online too - PURLs (personalised urls) are becoming more and more popular with integrated campaigns as well as email shots, consider whether a personal greeting is going to be read over a generic one - I know which one I'd rather receive!

5. You snooze, you lose - Personalised media is already widespread and there's the danger of being left at the starting line for those who don't embrace these new services for their marketing campaigns in the near future.

To find out more click here

QR Codes - Easy Tagging!

2010-04-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

QR codes are increasingly being used as a quick and easy way to direct users to URLs, initially used in vehicle manufacture, these 2d square barcodes can be scanned from various media such as magazines, product labels, printed and online adverts and also business stationery. Using a smartphone with a suitable barcode reader app (already built into some phones but easily downloadable) the code is scanned using the device's camera which then automatically directs the user to the predefined URL.

License free and with a number of free QR code generating sites, there really is no excuse when it comes to incorporating this new technology into your web and print media - integrating various parts of your campaign and driving traffic to your chosen landing page. Try out the QR code above.

Patrick Rau at TFM&A show...

2010-04-01T07:09:00.001-07:00

Patrick Rau, CLE Group Sales Director speaking at the TFM+A Exhibition Earls Court London from CLE Group on Vimeo.

Happy Easter

2010-04-01T06:44:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter everyone!

Spotlight on web2print

2010-04-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

What benefits do you associate with online print ordering? Time and cost efficiencies through shortened approval cycles for regular print items? Easy personalisation of marketing pieces and stationery? Reduced waste and obsolescence in your inventory? These are all important benefits – focused on catalogues, inventory and consistent workflows – but a particularly powerful benefit of web2print is often overlooked.

Unique job submission – the ability to submit a totally unique print item, from your computer, into our production centre, with the same speed and efficiency as ordering from an online catalogue. CLE Printflow’s wizard-based engine allows you to produce a large range of unique print items (leaflets, books, manuals, stationery, etc) and pass them for production in one online session – in fact around the same time it would take to type an email requesting a quote.

Hello from CLE Group!

2010-04-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hello from CLE Group - welcome to our blog!