All About Promotional Materials
When the summer slowdown comes, it is a great time to consider your promo tools.
Happy Sunday.
I’m glad you are choosing to spend a few minutes with me today.
In this Sunday's edition of In the Frame, we are going to discuss creating promo materials. This summer heat makes it a great time to be inside creating promotional pieces you can begin to circulate in the Fall.
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Now on with this edition!
Choosing the correct promo for you
THE MEDIUM OCCASIONALLY IS THE MESSAGE
Deciding what kind of promotion to do takes a bit of thinking and planning. It also takes some research. And it takes a coherent system so that your promo can be seen far and wide—wider and farther than it was actually intended to be seen.
Think of a set of postcards. There are some client types that would be interested in them and a few that would not. So it would behoove you to make sure your client type is someone who would be responsive to your promo. (Or, you can go crazy and send them something outside of what they may expect; just make sure it is so good they can’t ignore it. Or you.)
Some clients LOVE the postcard promo. Some hate it. You will be sending stuff to both initially. It is just on the curve of it all.
As you go along, you will learn which clients love which sort of promotion by gauging their engagement with the work. We can do this the same way traditional marketers have used metric points to gauge their ad dollar’s reach.
More on that in a moment.
We are going to look at three different promo pieces; a postcard, a multi-page magazine (zines), and a small poster.
The templates you create will be usable for more than one promo and may be the catalyst for more materials along the way.
THE PROMO MATERIALS:
POSTCARDS:
5X7, 5.5X8.5, 6X9 are the three most common sizes. And they are common because you can order them that size without paying special size or cut fees.
(NOTE: 4X6 are nice sizes, but usually they are sent as a set of cards.) I have seen as few as 8 and as many as 50.
You can choose to print them single-sided or double-sided. Just make sure you have a reason for that choice. ‘Random images’ is NOT a reason.
You also must decide if they are to be sent as a set or individually.
There are instances where you may want to send a set of cards. This would get considered a premium promo piece and is probably best left for special clients, or those clients you REALLY want to work for. I suggest only one premium promotion per year, although some photographers will do two.
Design should be kept simple and smart for a postcard promo. Once you start to become clever with the cards (folding, die-cut, foil, etc…), it can become more of a premium promo.
MULTIPAGE PROMO:
These days, that means either a newsprint newspaper style or a “magazine”. Brochures are not really the bailiwick of photographers, although there is no reason (other than aesthetic) why they couldn’t be. Just know that if it looks like a brochure, it will not be taken as seriously as a “magazine” would.
Inspiration:
Zine examples.
C4 Journal
Deposit Photos
There are also only a few usual configurations:
5×7 trade book (Blurb)
6×9 trade book (Blurb)
8×10 trade book (Blurb)
5.5×8.5 magazine (Blurb/Magcloud)
8.5×11 magazine (Blurb/Magcloud)
11×8.5 magazine (Magcloud)
You can find other configurations out there if you look for them, but these are the most popular.
HOW MANY PAGES?
On a trade book, I would look at a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 52.
On a magazine, I would look at a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 24.
Keep the usage in mind.
Is this a drop-off?
Is this a premium?
Who on your list will get this?
What do you want it to say?
I can do this stuff.
I can make stuff look good.
I can make killer shots from bad stuff.
I am creative enough to make these images for you.
I have something to say, and I want to say it my way.
Each of these approaches may be good for your client list, but it will take research and planning to figure out which you should be concentrating on.
For instance, I would send a far different set of images to a magazine publisher than I would to an in-house corporate graphics department.
Wouldn’t you?
At least at first.
And remember – no one gets this perfect the first time out. You must be in it for the long haul and commit to keeping the promo work going.
POSTERS
No, not the huge Farrah Fawcett (1970s) type of poster.
Small posters like 13×19 and 11×17 are very cool and can be well received by clients.
You just have to make sure that the imagery is well presented, and that the poster is something they would want to put on their wall.
There are many ways to make posters that get used. If you are wanting to get your poster on the wall, consider a calendar approach or a simply designed to-do list. Perhaps you could list three dozen great design URLs at the bottom, or the best design podcasts.
Or just go with good typography and an interesting photograph.
There is no right way, and there are simply a lot of wrong ways.
For posters, and all promo materials, bad typography can kill them.
Inappropriate imagery can sink them as well.
Printing must be top-notch, and the image must be something you think they would want to look at for a reasonable time.
Posters can be printed at Overnight Prints, Magcloud, and Vistaprint.
Photographer Mark Manne created this poster for bagel lovers and bagel restaurants as a marketing piece.
The Conundrum of what to choose; the struggle is real.
“Do I choose a photograph that “they” will like”?
“Do I show them something totally awesome that they have never seen before?”
“Do I play it safe?”
“Do I get overly creative?”
“What if they don’t like the image I choose?”
“What if the image doesn’t look exactly like what they are looking for?”
Nothing.
Nothing happens. And that’s OK.
First of all, there is no “they”. There is no cabal of art directors, a gaggle of art buyers, or a flock of picture editors out there with the exact same taste, the exact same temperament, the exact same aesthetic.
There are people with wildly divergent tastes.
The best thing to do is to choose something that shows what YOU can bring to the table. What are YOUR aesthetics?
By tipping your creative hand, they can make a determination about whether they may want to co-produce something with you.
We think we are auditioning for a job when we are really auditioning for permission to keep auditioning.
We are trying to have them be interested in us, engaged with the idea of using us, and aware of what we are doing.
The job thing comes later.
When they get a gig and remember our promo from a year ago.
When they bring a new client on and think that we are the best fit for that client.
When the job they are working on reminds them of that set of postcards we sent and in fact, those cards were the impetus for the creative they are working on.
And all of that happens.
Every day. Somewhere.
Here’s how we start.
DEVELOP THE THEME OR PROJECT WE WANT TO FOCUS ON FOR THE PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS
In this instance, we are looking at a set of postcards. If we are going to do double-sided, we need at least 8 images for the 4 cards. So we have to figure out:
What do we want to say with this promotion?
What do we want to show?
How do we want to use the promotion?
What do we expect from the promotion?
How best to follow up on the promotion?
This cannot be a random set of eight postcard images. That won’t do. They need to relate to something we want to impart to the client.
Perhaps we want to show off some expertise
Perhaps we want to show off a particular style.
Possibly show work that will get them excited enough to call us.
Just an awareness card to let them know we are out there and more will be coming.
And a lot more reasons that may be as different as all of you are reading this.
Evaluate your possible images.
Do they meet technical and aesthetic goals that you are happy with?
Do they have a bit of a “wow” factor to them?
(Postcards must have more “wow” than a mini-magazine because they don’t have a context to give them more meaning.)Save the possibilities in a folder so you can pick and choose later.
Design a mini-postcard or do four-up on a single piece of paper to see what they look like together.
By doing this, you can see how the postcards may be seen in totality. Do they get along well with each other? Are there anomalies that prevent the images from working together as a group?
To make a contact sheet in Photoshop:
To make a contact sheet, put all the images you want to use in a single folder.
Open Photoshop and go to File > Automate > Contact Sheet II
Set the columns and rows (in the above, there are 2 columns and 2 rows)
Choose the folder in the dropdown
Photoshop will run the contact sheet onto a single flattened layer
Cut the mini-postcards out and arrange them in units; 1, 2, 3, and 4 in a group.
I like to lay them all out on a big table—or the floor—and look for patterns. It is imperative that you can see all the images in one view. That is why doing it on the computer is so much harder. Going from image to image is not the same thing as seeing them all as a unit.
What do you see happening with the imagery? Does one jump out at you? Does one start looking out of place the more we view them as a unit?
You can do this with a lot of images. I have made as many as five contact sheets (20 images per) to design a postcard set.
You may have to do this several times until you get the right set of images.
We can then move on to the typeface and font that will work well with our imagery and logo.
Next week I will show you how to layout postcards, how to work with good typography, and ways to put good flow into your zines.
$100M Offers: I have been raving about this book. I have adjusted some of my marketing to fit into the frameworks he discusses in the book, and I am reporting to you that it works. I will share more on that later, but it got me three inquiries and two engagements. Simple changes, big results.
Hormozi is bringing out his new book in a flashy and social media viral way. The way he is doing it is incredibly interesting and a class in marketing all its own.
Sign up for the release of his new book, $100M Leads, with this link. There is absolutely no obligation at all, but I guarantee you will learn a ton. Even if you don’t buy the book, you are going to be inspired by the marketing of the thing.
Getting leads is the number one thing we have to do as photographers. And if this book is even half as good as the previous one, every one of you can benefit.
We will continue on the promo ideas with some layout ideas next Sunday. If you have your images ready, you can jump right to preparing your postcards, zines, or posters by August.
The heat persists in the valley, but we are hoping for the monsoon to break into our area sometime this week. Maybe some rain would be nice.
See you next time.