Welcome to THRIVE!, ARCHETYPE's free e-bulletin. We hope that you enjoy reading the marketing tips presented here and find them helpful as you promote your business or nonprofit. ARCHETYPE provides graphic design and copy writing to help you effectively market your products, services, and ideas to your target audience. We can help you produce any kind of printed piece or a Web site. If you're already working with us, thank you again for giving us the opportunity to help you achieve your goals. We welcome inquiries from potential clients; please feel free to contact us to receive more information and a free estimate on an upcoming project.

We'd like to extend a special thank you to our newest clients: Coldwell Banker, Family Visitation Center, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Health Action Council of North Carolina, Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County, Integra Mortgage Company, In Your Backyard, Keller Williams Realty, Kelly's Cleaning Service, Kilpatrick-Gudeman Law Firm, Monson Oil Company, Moon Dance Soaps and More, Pace Realty Group, Regional Transportation Alliance, Planned Parenthood Health Systems, Ranstad, St. Augustine's College, Strategic HR Solutions, and Wood Wise Design and Remodeling. Thank you for choosing ARCHETYPE!

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Take care and happy marketing!
Tom and Elizabeth Forsythe, Owners

ARCHETYPE GRAPHIC DESIGN & WRITING SERVICES
"A great place to start when you want to make a lasting impression"

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Getting the Most out of Trade Shows

Trade shows can be great places to reach a large number of prospects in a short time. They help you establish long-term relationships that can pay off for years to come. Unlike most settings, the purpose of the trade show is to sell. The attendees expect you to offer them products and services—the newer and more exciting the better. You can capitalize on the trade show atmosphere of buyer curiosity and seller enthusiasm.

Your first task is choosing the right shows to participate in. You might have hundreds of options depending on your field. Your local Chamber of Commerce is one of the best sources of information about trade shows, and you can call them to find out when certain shows that come into your area normally take place and who runs them. Consider who attends each show, the cost, travel expenses, lost time out of the office, the quality of the show, and who the other exhibitors are.

You'll also want to request information on the show and review it carefully. How many exhibitors come back year after year? Can you talk to any of them to get their opinion of the show? How many people attend? What demographics are available on these folks? Where will your booth be in the exhibit hall? Who will your neighbors be? A sales rep should be able to answer these questions thoroughly. If he can't, you might want to consider another show. Try to attend a show as a visitor before investing in your own booth. Visit other booths selling products and services that are not in direct competition with yours, tell the person staffing the booth that you'll be exhibiting at the next show, and ask her what works. You can also call your trade association and ask for their insights.

More tips for success
Your work begins way before the show starts. Send invitations to your current clients and prospects and tell them to pick up a free product at your booth or enter a raffle when they attend the show. Send out show schedules, a map of the exhibit hall, and your booth number so that they can find you easily. Send a news release about the show and your plans to exhibit. If you are a local business attending a national show, this can be particularly effective. Work with show management to be included in special seminars and parties that are part of the show. Ask what mailing lists they have available.

* Ask the show management what media work they are doing. If they are providing a press room that is open to exhibitors, by all means, go! Bring media kits with you. Media kids contain information about your business or nonprofit to make it easy for members of the media to write stories about you. Press kits typically include a news release about the event, company brochures, a business card, and a fact sheet. Some people include product samples and a promotional item such as a pen, bumper sticker, or magnet. Trade shows allow the media to efficiently cover trends that affect an industry. Attend press conferences held in conjunction with the show, get a list of media for follow-up, and keep out an eagle eye for any member of the media who wanders by your booth.

* Put on your best face. It should go without saying that everything about your booth should be professional and look fantastic. If skirting and carpet are not included, rent them or bring your own. Plants go a long way to make a booth look great. Lighting can be very important, depending on your product. Your booth should be consistent with your overall marketing strategy and reinforce your brand and image. Design it with an open feel; you'll get less traffic if your booth makes people feel trapped.

* Go to the show with a definite goal in mind. Do you plan to increase sales in your existing market or expand into a new market? Are you going for sales or leads? You need a goal so that the show doesn't seem overwhelming. Multi-day shows especially can be exhausting, and it really helps to focus your energy.

* Purchase high quality name tags for your staff that display your company name and logo. These lend an aura of professionalism and can make even a very small company appear large. Dress for success and remember to wear shoes that not only look nice but are comfortable enough to stand in for hours. You should stand in your booth as much as possible.

* Draw 'em to you like flies to honey. Include a hands-on demonstration or something that people can touch and handle. Research indicates that many people like to be able to touch products, and the media may be attracted to a demonstration as well. Most demonstrations should be kept to 10 minutes or less because many people want to visit a lot of booths and won't invest too much time at any one booth. At the very least, give away something people can use, such as a refrigerator magnet, a chip clip, a pen, or wrapped candy.

* Make sure you have the right people staffing your booth. Staff should be friendly and available without swarming all over visitors. People don't like to be pestered. Experts say that the quality of your people and how they work the booth determine the profitability of a show. Staff must be personable and knowledgeable about your company and your product, service, or cause (in the case of a nonprofit). They must also be empowered to make sales and deal directly with customers. When someone is ready to buy, each person working your booth should have all the tools she needs to close the sale.

* Twenty percent of visitors usually account for 80% of sales. It is critical that you qualify your leads. Immediately upon meeting someone in your booth, introduce yourself and ask him a question or two about what he does, what he's looking for, and how much he plans to spend. You'll find out quickly who's in the market and who's just browsing. Unqualified visitors should be treated graciously, given a brochure, and invited to look around. You never know when they will get a new position that changes them into a qualified prospect. Give first class treatment to your best prospects. Invite them to meet executives. Ask them to sit down (a welcome relief at most trade shows). Set up an appointment for them to return when the environment isn't so crazy.

* Create a special box for business cards of qualified prospects. Send every person a mail-merged letter along with another brochure immediately after the show is over and follow up with a phone call a few days later. You'll be one of the few people who does follow-up at all, much less promptly. And, speaking of business cards, bring twice as many as you think you need and give them to everyone you meet.

TECHNICAL stuff

It helps to know the lingo when dealing with graphic design, copy editing, and printing. Below are some commonly used terms:


1. Portfolio/Book: the collection of samples that a writer, designer, illustrator, or other creative type provides for your review.

2. Varnish: a thin, protective coating applied to a printed sheet for protection or appearance.

3. Stock: paper or other material to be printed.

4. Camera-Ready: describes artwork, type, and illustrations in hard copy paper format that the printer can use to produce film with a process camera. Paste-ups were camera-ready art, and now that everything has gone digital, they is not used much anymore. The term "camera-ready" is sometimes also used to mean digital files that are suitable to output to an image setter, which produces the film usually needed for offset printing.

5. Overrun/Underrun: when a printer prints more or fewer of a piece than your ordered. You may be charged for extras, so ask about the printer's policy.

6. Hickies: flaws and scratches on proofs and final printed pieces. Always ask about them when they appear on the proof so that you can be sure they do not appear on the final product.

7. Screen: a designer can decrease the percentage of spot ink colors by varying amounts to produce lighter shades of that color; screens are referred to in percentages; for example, "10% screen."

8. Bleeds: when the ink runs off the edge of the paper. Full bleeds occur when the ink goes to all edges of the paper. The printer must use a sheet of paper that is larger than your finished piece will be and then trim the edges so that the ink covers the sheet. Bleeds often add to the final cost of a printed piece.

9. Opacity: refers to the density of the paper. Paper must be dense enough so that ink on one side does not show through on the other side. Large solid blocks of color require a denser sheet so that color does not show through.

10. Flat Size: the unfolded printer sheet; the "finished size" is the size of the folded final product

Conducting Affordable Customer Research

Believe it or not, multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are sometimes planned and executed by large companies who do not take the time to research what their customers want and what they respond to. No matter how clever or memorable, a marketing campaign is not a success if it does not make a positive impact on your target market and motivate them to do business with you. Smaller businesses and nonprofits often cannot afford extensive market research to find out what their customers want. That's okay! There are some very inexpensive ways to find out what your customers want, how you can serve them better, and how you can get more customers like them--simply ask them!

Before you send out a survey, determine:

* Your primary purpose. Do you want to find out how your customers perceive you, the best ways for you to market your products and services to them, or something else?

* If the information you want is already in your own records. (You may already know how your customers find out about you or the average amount they spend with you per year.)

* If the information you want is available from government statistics such as the Census Bureau. Information such as the number of children the average American family has, the average income in your area, etc. may already be available.

* What you're going to do with the results. Are you willing to make changes to the way you do business?

* The timeline for sending out the surveys, having them returned to you, and tabulating your results.

* How much money, time, and staff you have to support the project. The more resources you have, the larger sample you can draw from. This reduces error and gives you a more complete picture of the population you want to serve.

* What computer system (if any) you will use to store, sort, and analyze the data.

* The best time of year to do the survey for your target market.

Try a simple survey. Questionnaires need to be customer-friendly. They won't do you any good if nobody fills them out or returns them. Avoid demographic questions about income or marital status. The easier and more fun you make the questions, the better your response rate. Keep it short-- one page, if possible.

Try offering a coupon or prize to anyone who returns the questionnaire. Donate a small amount to a local nonprofit for each response. Let your customers know that you value their opinions. Let them know that their feedback helps you provide them with better service.

How to write the questions

* You have a choice of open-ended questions with no answers to choose from or close-ended ones, which force your respondents to select an answer. Depending on the resources you have available, you may want to keep open-ended questions to a minimum because they're more difficult to evaluate. People are also more reluctant to answer them because it takes more effort. Close-ended questions are widely used in market research because they are easy to tabulate. Some of the most effective questions allow "Yes" or "No" answers along with space for an optional explanation.

Also be sure to:

Eliminate redundant and overlapping questions.

Avoid leading questions (people will often tell you what they think you want to hear).

Use simple language familiar to all respondents and avoid jargon.

Make questions concise.

Design questions to provide you with the exact information you desire.

Pretest questions on a small group similar to the one to be surveyed.

If you interview the respondent to obtain the answers to your questionnaire, remember to:

Be neutral. Avoid influencing the answers.

Dress appropriately.

Become familiar with the questionnaire in advance but don't memorize it.

Read the questions verbatim and in the order in which they appear.

Record answers to open-ended questions exactly as given.

Be friendly and show a genuine interest in the respondent without appearing to be meddling.

Types of info to gather on a questionnaire

* Determine if there's a need for your product. Do the people you are trying to reach already have your product or a good substitute?

* Find out more about your prospects' needs.

* Find out the best way to reach your prospects. What media do they watch/read/listen to?

* Find out who your competition is.

* Ask what you do well and what you can do better.

Suggestion boxes

If you have a storefront, another great way to gather customer input is to have a suggestion box. It may seem quaint, but it's a great way to stem a little problem before it becomes a big one. Try to respond to every suggestion whether there is a name on it or not. You can post your responses in your store or office. Randomly pick some of the suggestion cards with contact information and send them a coupon or thank you note.

Design your suggestion form for maximum response--keep it short. Have a few multiple choice questions to get respondents started, and leave plenty of room for their comments. Whole Foods Market is an example of a Triangle business that has put a suggestion box to good use.

Use focus groups

Another way to test public opinion is with focus groups. Assemble a group of 6–10 people who mirror the audience you're trying to reach. Ask them questions about your publications, PR, services, products, special events, survey results, advertising campaign, logo, and copy. The information gathered in focus groups cannot be extrapolated onto the population at large, but these sessions can provide a lot of valuable information. Videotape the session so that you can study verbal and nonverbal messages. You may want to contact the marketing department at a local college or university to ask for help in conducing a focus group.

About the Owners of ARCHETYPE
Tom Forsythe is a graphic designer, and Elizabeth Forsythe is a writer and project manager. Since 1998, we have worked with over 90 businesses and nonprofits of all sizes, and we'd like to add you to our list of happy clients. For more information about our credentials, see the "About Us" page of our Web site.

The information contained in THRIVE may be reprinted in your newsletter or other publication. Please e-mail Elizabeth to obtain permission.

Contact information:

Click here to go to our web site
www.archetype-usa.com

ph. 919.835.0450
fax 919.835.9760

Elizabeth's e-mail: ewfx@mindspring.com
Tom's e-mail: tjfx@mindspring.com

1615 Sunrise Ave.
Raleigh, NC 27608