Check out the Gate Fold Brochure PFL printed for Watkins to help spread the word. This piece featured an enticing coupon offer, while also solidifying Watkins’ existing 30 year brand recognition as an industry leader in their community.

 Following the campaign, Watkins noticed a significant increase in both service calls and web traffic – and the company plans to take advantage of Direct Mail’s excellent ROI again soon.

 If you’d like to hear about what Direct Mail can do for your business, call PFL today!

Know Your Audience. You can’t be everything to everyone, so stop trying. Take what you are good at, passionate about and what your business is built on, and use that to guide you to those who you can help the most. When customers find out how useful and helpful your product or service is, they have no need to go anywhere else.
Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone. Every hear of a dentist/gun repair/yoga studio? Me neither.

Be Interesting. No one can accuse GaGa of being boring or overly mainstream. Take a tip from the Lady, and create your own flavor, stance and commit to it. Just because you wrote something about your industry that YOU like in a whitepaper or on your website, don’t confuse that with compelling, pertinent content that has mass appeal. Customers, or more importantly, potential customers don’t tolerate dull content or lame topics. Use what you know, and what you know well, and teach someone something. Be daring. Be useful.

Be Recognizable. No matter how many times you hear her name, GaGa is instantly recognizable, no matter where.
Within your industry or market, do people know you? Is your brand strong enough or known well enough to be the go-to business?
To be the known commodity is a rare, useful and difficult position to attain, but all businesses should strive to be known. Be known for a stellar product, service or culture. Maybe even be known as the best. Because when your customers view you as a commodity, or the same as “that other company”, you have no leverage, and they will decide if you are the right solution, and usually do it by not using you enough, or at all. 

What this boils down to is believing in your brand, and your strength as a company. I doubt Lady GaGa is unsure of who she is, what her ‘brand’ represents when she steps on stage, or dons another wacky outfit, to sold out crowds and millions of paying fans everywhere. Now go figure out what your own meat dress is.

Additionally, Montana Meadows are members of the Western Sustainability Exchange. As their website states:
“WSE advances sound stewardship practices which create a healthy environment, culture and economy for the rural West.  Through education, the creation of economic incentives and by fostering partnerships we accomplish this mission. The shared philosophies below unite our organization. They ground us, inspire us, focus our programs and mission and guide our organizational practices.”

 Do you or your company need labels like this, that meet USDA standards? If so, give us a ring at 800-930-6040, or feel free to get a quote. We can definitely help you out. Now, I wonder if they would send us some beef samples…might make for a tasty, conscious-friendly BBQ.

These days, marketing your business involves an effective online strategy in conjunction with your printed advertising.  Most businesses wouldn’t intentionally send out confusing print marketing campaigns, or pieces that play music when you open it (we’ve all seen those children’s birthday cards).  In line with this – we should keep some basic concepts in mind when designing and delivering online marketing efforts, primarily the layout of a company website.  After all, your website is your corporate identity through which a vast portion of users are introduced to your business.

SIGN UP FOR WEBINAR – How to Build a Profitable Website

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is really THE primary element of a successful website design.  The rest is just fluff.   Unnecessary complexity should be avoided as it turns out consumers don’t care much for opening up a musically animated page that fades into a puzzle that must be solved to find what they’re looking for.  If this sounds like your site, rest assured that you are turning off potential customers and the revenue they could be sending your way.

Actually, your clients care far more about your location, phone number and services than an artsy experience that a designer wants to charge $5,000 to create.  Most web visitors prefer a site that makes it easy to find what they’re looking for, like a restaurant’s hours of business, accurate contact information, and valuable features like the ability to purchase online gift certificates, book appointments, or gather contact information from prospects.

Unfortunately, many businesses are far too focused on flashy visual aesthetics of their web design and spend an inordinate amount of time waffling on the music, background and images on a splash page, the whole time allowing the critical importance of usability to take a back seat.

I know what you are going to say; “My business requires a visually competitive edge!” or “Our appearance is everything to our customers.”  Have no fear!  Your website can deliver the complete package; functional navigation and excellent modern designs that catch the visitor’s eye and draw them in for a closer look.

 SIGN UP FOR WEBINAR – How to Build a Profitable Website

Your business website needs intuitive navigation, proper image placement and careful use of white space to help establish your brand identity – all while allowing visitors to rapidly find what they are looking for.

Ask about PFL’s new online services, which are now providing dynamic websites to our customers. And be sure to sign up for the webinar, which is scheduled for August 24th, at 12:00pm Mountain Time. Don’t miss it!

DePuy Spring Creek’s brochure design appeals to the fly fisherman in all of us. Showcasing pictures of breathtaking scenery and epic fly fishing, the DePuy’s brochure was designed to stand out in a display rack at hotels, visitor centers, restaurants and other travel destinations around Yellowstone National Park. The designers expertly used natural colors to immediately put you at ease as you open the brochure and plan your next fishing adventure.

Visit our Featured Brochure page to see a more comprehensive review of the brochure printing we did for DePuy Spring Creek.

The professional photography on the cover of this brochure is outstanding.

Sweetwater’s catalog is targeted at high-end fly-fishing enthusiasts who travel the globe in search of incredible fish. Some of the featured travel packages in the catalog include Mongolia, British Columbia, Alaska, Brazil and more. The catalog design, paper and printing all speak to this high-end target as well. From the reverse text on a black background, to the heavy-weight paper, this catalog printing looks and feels top-notch.

A special note should be made on the fantastic images and photos they used. The catalog was printed in standard 4-color process (CMYK) and everything just pops off the page. We applaud Sweetwater and their designer for creating such a stunning catalog. We have been printing catalogs and other materials (brochures, postcards and more) for Sweetwater Travel for the past several years. We feel privileged that they continue to choose us to do their catalog printing!

Vist our Featured Catalog Printing page to see what we did for Sweetwater Travel Company.

The interesting thing about it is it has gotten people across many departments thinking about what they can do, whether it is a quick fix or a more involved project, that will impact how we do business and how we impact our customers–in a “remarkable” way.
Maybe it is a better way to organize meetings or improve processes for sales calls, project work, etc. Many times, that “thing” we have been doing the same way has a better way. The trick isn’t just finding out how to fix it, but make it remarkable–look at it from the eyes of your customer, not just how it makes your life easier. That can be definitely tougher, but in the end, it can create a more lasting improvement.

At Extraordinary Envelope we are dedicated to furnishing you, our client, with custom designed, eco-friendly wedding invitation suites for those who wish to couple individual style with an environmental awareness. Our designs are the result of personal collaborations between our graphic designer and you and reflect the uniqueness of your celebration with artful and sophisticated results. A personalized wedding website is included with your order, allowing you to easily share with friends and family the details of your special day. Delivered with an excellent level of customer service, your invitations are sure to be extraordinary.
-Sandra Berube

Be sure to check out their gallery for interesting ideas, and to see what they are up to.