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Collateral: Printed vs Digital

So printed or digital what should you d'oh there's a lot of schools of thought on this. Okay there's no wrong answer okay? Whatever really works for you is good I'm going to kind of tell you how each method appeals to the consumer and then you can kind of decide where you want to go from there sometimes both has a stronger impact than just doing one or the other okay printed collateral sends a message of tactile handmade organic high end um and of course that all depends on how you design it too if you use lots of texture you know I used these I use things like twine and stuff like that in my marketing materials to give that sense of organic touch to my work this stuff's cheap you by rules of this at home depot but I love the way it has that ristic feel to it and organic quality which so space spokes my work too. Ok, so I feel like having a printed material on something to hold in your hand has that feeling of handmade a tactile quality to it it has a emotional appeal to a client. And ...

the other thing is you're trying to encourage your client to print right? So you should be printing too you know monkey see monkey dio kind of thing if you are encouraging your clients to print and everything you provide it's digital does that subconsciously say about your studio? Tina? I mean digital has some positives to it sends a message of high tech forward thinking efficient hip you're on it, you're forward, you're the future to you I'm saying so like if you're all printed that can be really high end in luxurious and beautiful but sometimes technical and being digital is very appealing to the consumer because they feel like yeah, they're with it they keep up with the times they know what's new and happening their current with technology that fellow okay, so in my opinion doing both can be extremely effective in the studio and when I say printed, that means not only handing your client products but also snail mailing snail mailing implies that feeling of caring surprise that feeling of your important you're so important that I took the time to put a stamp on this and go down to the mailbox I know that's corny but it's so true when you get a letter when I get a card I mean it's kind of ostroff track all of it, but when I get a birthday card or something like that that is a cute little message in it. To me the card is way more important than the gift because it tells me that somebody took the time to stand in the card I'll and read all the cards and pick the one that was perfect for me that to me says that they spent time and energy to make me feel good and granted the market which feels we're producing are generic and we just pop them in an envelope and send them off they're not specific to each client and I know you can do that if you want but that's really really high end but just the fact that you went down to the post office or whatever and threw it in the mail and planned for that sends a very big message of you're important to us yeah carmen didn't tell you so when you said that last time that we were talking yeah my house I told my husband that and he said hey I just want you to know that you is right she's like just if you go into the guinness book of world record big guy the number one sells guide to this stay send a thank you note and he was the number one sales guy through like the whole us he send a note to each and every one of his clients with just a postage that said I like you oh how here so every time a customer bought a car every time a customer just came in he would send them a note and he would just write I like you and then it was a factor where it was just ugh they were hearing yeah here's a snowball so they asked him how have you been so successful? He's like I just sent a thank you and I just said I like you so just going back to that, you know feel that receiving something that person was thinking of you that's it and what else is key to that less is more exactly three words he wrote I like you made a huge impact on the people he was sending it to you so I that's awesome I'm going to totally use that that's amazing I want to find out more about that when we're when we're done here but what a great concept I mean hello a thank you card I like you but it's unique and it's different and it's just three words and it's not much and you get that in on you like I like that feeling of wow you really like me it's not cool everybody wants to be like it's true, it is true well when you're designed for digital collateral is very important to think of a few things and designed for pixels not bridge okay pixels are different than print. You want to make sure that you remember the fold so when you have a computer screen like on the internet or on a web page or whatever the fold is like when the when the home page pops up the fold is the bottom in a newspaper we use teo newspaper journalism you know how the newspaper used to open like that so you would the headline would be across the top here and then the rest the paper would open like that and then it would open like that okay still does this is the fold the most important information and the top story of the day is always above the fold. Okay it's a very common term that we use in journalism in television news it's the lead in the a block so the lead is the first story a block is all the news that comes before the first commercial because people tune out on the commercials people turn out below the fold so the fold on a computer screen is the bottom of the computer screen. If I have to scroll up I've unfolded the newspaper okay, so all your important information that stuff you really want to get the point home has to be above the fold. So if you go to my website my jul images website jeweled russian witches dot com there is just a video that drives the point home of r y on the fold above the fold I should say and my menus everything is above the fold okay it's critical that you do that because that's you have like less than seven seconds to get clients a potential clients attention and your website is your storefront window that's the macy's storefront window. You want people to come inside your shop? You better put your best stuff in that storefront window. Okay, right away. And have a system for that content management. It's one thing you know, like whitney english said you can do everything you want. Teo, have a startup system, but it's a it's a system that runs everything that will make you successful. Okay, so have a system for replacing and managing content. How are you going to do that? Every week? Every month, every time you get a new a client in there, you're going to add images, your block content and trust me, I'm just as guilty as the rest of you on this. I actually had to hire it out in order to get it done. Updating my block is like my worst thing ever, and I really have a new year's resolution to try to fix it. And I know it's halfway through the year yet and I haven't done it, but I will get there way all have our vices, right? And I know you're out there in la la land internet land. I feel the same way I do. I know I'm not alone, and that gives me some small sense of comfort but designed for digital ok, make it interactive you want your client to be able to go places and interact with it because it keeps them engaged in the site? Why do you think when when I'm teaching? I asked so many questions of you guys, I want you to stay engaged, so I'm making it interactive with you so you'll keep your attention to me now you don't want it so interactive that the client doesn't know where to go, but you want it enough that you can grab their attention and hook him through, okay, test and retest. You don't want any challenges and trust me, this has been hard for me, too, because you contest things up to the hill. No, still maybe problems, ok, but do your best to test digital stuff as much as possible, like if you're going to make a flip snack, pia for a page, make sure it opens, make sure the pages load, go through it yourself tests and retest make sure your client doesn't have any problems or doesn't stick on any snafu, because trust me, the minute it sticks, they're gone, you'll lose him and chances are they won't come back. I mean, like in television news, dead air was like the sin of all sins if we lost content on the air and there was a black hole, we call it oh, my god. The entire station went up into a frenzy. People were running and panicking everywhere. Especially if that dead air lasted longer than ten seconds, ten seconds and they were freaking out. They would do anything to keep content on the okay. So that tells you that the attention span of a potential consumer is nothing. Okay, so keep it simple. Make it easy. Lessons. Mohr and grab quickly with engaging content. Okay. All right. Let's, keep going. So re sources for digital collateral. Okay. Flip, snack. Dot com. I love this. They will take any pdf and turn it into a elektronik magazine that you can flip the pages on and it makes the sound effect of the pages flipping and everything. It's kind of cool. Wordpress is what I use for all my website I use elegant seems for the most part, on some of my stuff. The dv theme is actually quite, uh, quite nice. I like it a lot because it's so flexible. I also used pro photo and I was a strong advocate for proper for pro photo for a long, long time pro photo has beautiful themes for photographers. The one thing that I will say that I hope they improve is their mobile features. The web sites when you make, you know, website using profile thing and it works great on a death top and it works okay on mobile, but you don't have that interactivity, it's not a strong as some other themes out there for really doing mobile interaction on the site. And let me tell you so many of your clients are using their ipads and iphones to find you so so many like don't discount that it all probably more so now the desktop your mobile site has got to be spot on creative market creative market is a really interesting place. There are tons of digital themes. They're digital collateral, you know you're asking where to get ten plates. Creative mark is a great place it's, a bunch of graphic designers who have accounts who sell stuff, dirt cheap and some of it's really cool and like careful because you'll be addicted, and I could spend hours on creative market between fonts and cool logos and pretty backgrounds and all kinds of fun stuff on there that you can use your business. So and it's, fairly inexpensive male chimp is my email marketing service. It integrates with so many other things that's one of the reasons I love it animo dot com incredible, I love an emoto. I am just I used to I was with him about five years ago and have just recently started getting back in with him again is starting to produce some videos and they have improved a lot. You could do some really neat things with an emoto these days that are simple video production and I'm going to talk about video here in a second and it's important and show you some very impactful things that photographers were doing out there that I hope will encourage you to start doing video in your own studio sticky albums the apse over for a client um for client galleries huge they're super great referral system everybody's got pictures on their phone now? Well, what sort of thing of the past and sticky albums has filled that nation beautifully with dea dot com is a place for hosting video, a beautiful site that allows you to integrate video and all kinds of ways to your other digital collateral which I really like tell a stream dot net has screen flow which allows you to record your your desktop but it's also an amazing anything software you can actually edit cool videos and it's surprisingly for pretty cheap so it has some neat editing capabilities and of course things like I movie are great for that too and then come o dot com co mo dot com I actually just found and I think it's freaking awesome my we have made an act for the studio and especially for our julia education site it's actually has been submitted to the apple store and is currently being approved by apple. You have to sign up is in iowa's developer, but you can use co mo to make an app for your client your clients to download. Ok, let's, talk about how freaking cool this is just think about it for a second. You make an app a client, information at that they have to download in order to get all the preparation info for their session of their baby plan, they have to go download this free up from the app store what's cool about this is once they do that, you've got him hooked because you can push, notify about everything. So instead of mass emailing them stuff to market to them, you can now push notification to tell them about stuff going on at the studio. People are always on their phones and that little push notification goes to go let's, let's, go ng on everybody wants to know the push up were a spam email comes through delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, I mean it's, just a phenomenon email messaging mass marketing has become so inundated in the people's inbox that they're just immune to it now. Or his people are not immune to the hole you haven't you notification the little one that goes on you're out just like what's going on okay, so making an app for your studio could be incredibly powerful and then all of a sudden your image is your gallery everything is automatically on their phone and if they want to show a friend all they gotta do is look at her out there it is beautiful so co mo dot com is a wonderful place to do that you have to pay one hundred dollars a year to the apple store teo be a developer, you know toe have you're up in the store but I think it's well worth it because that marketing effort alone I'm pretty convinced it's going to get me some pretty serious referrals so I strongly encourage you to consider doing that and making an app through studio because again it's going to give you that I'm tech hip savvy kind of feeling and for you signor photographers out there if you're not doing this, you're nuts if you're nuts if you're not doing this like this is cool stuff right here okay video is hot right now and I am just getting into this aspect of marketing I'm very excited about it actually I'm going to show you a few videos here that are done by a photographer and ohio his name is ben hartley and this this guy has got some wicked talent. Um he is making marketing videos for other business is okay. And as we have a wedding photographer in ohio and he's also commercial videographer okay, I would venture to say he's more like a brand manager because he's creating these brands for these companies that are incredible. So I'm going to show you a video that he did for a company and bend called a native bloom and this woman which surprisingly, the reason I'm alive show is because it happens to be his sister. So I asked permission and he allowed me to to show these videos to you but she is a florist in bent. Okay, I want you to look at this video and really ask yourself what the core value marketing message is. Okay? And I want you to think about what you hear and what you see and the interplay of images from scene to scene how the, how the video goes back and forth from outside to inside, outside to inside and I want you to tell me at the end of it how you feel about this brand and what kind of message it sent to you on a deep core level as a woman and as a mother okay, are you ready? Pretty cool, beautiful stuff here, wait that's okay, I think this has incredible power for this artist she's an artist and I know that just from watching that what corps marketing messages there what do you feel when you see that? How does it touch you talk to me talk to me talk to me come on spit it out doesn't matter let it go it's a yeah to me it's just she brought everything together from all around her like it's just she brought the outside in and made everything one yes what else keep going yeah, she did the feeling for you like the text michael she's like had the textures of the flowers that she is like doing that for you even though you want to feel it she like she you're trusting her to make the selection yes miss this beautiful arrangement for you anything else? Beautiful thought yeah extreme care and gentleness like soft touch yes, what else? Unique unique result yeah. Anything else? A lot of trust. Yes ton truck what I felt from it outsides brown and dead and muddy and she so organic and just natural and like she's like a little girl outside marveling at mother nature and in her hands it blossoms to life you know I'm saying so like that trust factor like I she will go out into the world and create from nothing beauty any of the flowers you just see her pick what weeds or dead there's and then when she's putting it together it's all of a sudden bam alive I am alive and gorgeous and she's an artist and she's the one her hands did it yeah and she's a brilliant artist like even the look of her in that last image where she kind of takes one flower and just walks it over and pops it in like I see an artist with a paintbrush making that last stroke on the canvas you know and that and that power of going in and outside and all we did was have music and a logo at the end that was it simple clean beautiful emotional message about flowers to me that's incredibly powerful yes it's when people are charming in as well oh line in the chat room and d j said the video made me feel calm and comfortable yes and beats for thirty five talked about nature curious selective appreciative treasure things passing on to the next generation yeah you know it's really interesting it's fun to see isn't now what's her target market brian bride guess whose wedding she's doing lawrence my assistant she was in love with her because she appeals toe lauren sense of organic natural rustic beauty I mean lauren has that exact same ascetic at her wedding her wedding is like this beautiful old barn and it's a country style wedding I mean and this girl madison appeal's toe all of that within. Lauren and our market is like that ben is a northwest mountain town it's all about rustic outdoor beauty that was shot in ohio that fascinating that you can create these kinds of messages with simple music, visuals and a story that's it I want to show you one more for the same thing from ben. This is the promotional video for his studio. I want it again feel the progression of the music feel the edits look at the content, what visuals you are being presented with and when the order of things and how it makes you feel. Okay, wait, wait. Did you see a camera in that at once? Is there anything about photograph? No mention the photographs, no looking at photographs, nothing about being a photographer. It was all about selling the experience. It was all about culminating your life in these moments that are fleeting, they're going to disappear. It was fast, it was clean. It was simple. And it was to the point and it sent a message so loudly that you're like, oh my god that's me that's my life baby running airplane wings holding her fiance's hand. I mean weddings and he just basically took my whole life and put it in under a minute it's incredible, isn't it? But that's all it wass was visuals, music and a couple of phrases at the end written there was no voice, there was no voice over there was no need for it, right? So what I'm saying is the power of digital marketing and creating this kind of collateral for your studio has incredible impact your clients because no one else is doing it. Okay, which surprises me even though video is hot right now all over social media, sarah daily, my social media marketer says to me that because she keeps bugging you, you gotta think about a thing because video gets so much more organic engagement and viral viral spread than any other thing on social media right now, it's like you've got to get this video thing, we gotta do it anything little snippets behind the scenes, whatever, I don't care, do it and some kind of that's, my next goal is to kind of launch that and do that forward, but I think that what ben is doing is hitting the nail on the head when it comes to those more quality video marketing pieces, but they got it going on over there, and I'm I'm excited about what the opportunities are for my suit in particular and doing this kind of work, but I think you can see how impactful it is not in trouble can you imagine if that was above the fold on your website and it started playing the minute you logged in you be hooked to be like oh my god that's the way to draw somebody and get them to stay on your website and then really start engaging okay okay so what about the brand? How do you keep it consistent if you're going to brand your baby baby for your baby plan collateral with your studio how do you do that to keep it consistent with what you already have if you do have marketing materials or first of all keep a common threat the font should be similar the colors the name style, the weight of the thoughts and the colors the weight of the graphic elements the orientation of things you know you might you might not wanna have murky materials that looks so wildly different from the rest of your studio that it's confusing if you'll notice this is my marketing materials for order employment prep kit and this is because you baby they're very similar that have a certain feel to them that makes oh it's from the same place okay, so my biggest take home message for branding something that branding a baby plan that's close to the rest of your marketing materials is just don't make it so wildly different that it looks odd but make it like it's not from the same business but make it different enough that it stands out from the rest of your materials okay, I know that's hard to do, but I just I could do a whole class on how to do that but the biggest take home point I want you to really remember is think about it consider that when you're making your marketing materials all right. Okay, so how will you print if you're gonna print? We've talked about digital presentation and how to digitize things from video to the fold to designing for pixels instead of print, etcetera, etcetera. What about print? How are you going to deliver that out to the world? Well, consider sizing costs and what will contain it all. You don't want something that's so expensive that it's going to cost a fortune to send out to every single client, especially just a potential client. You want to make an impression, but you don't want to waste a lot of money on printed materials that may not be fruitful. Okay, where is I tend to save the more expensive products and marketing materials for folks who have already booked baby plan? I do have a beautiful brochure for baby plan, but that's just that's cheap for me to produce, but it still looks good. I don't mind giving that away. That makes sense. So, uh I use envelopment dot com paper presentation dot com those air great for those fun like folder envelopes there's all kinds of she's off on those sites clear bags dot com is great for packaging materials as well as you line I use you line for a lot of my boxes and things like that like our digital presentation kid here I'll show you guys all that here. I'm sure people want to see it. This is how we digitally present digital files to our clients. Okay? So it's tied up with a ribbon or going on tire for you also you can see it and inside is our you know, and I'm sorry it's been travelling so it's a little skewed here but inside is our information on on the files and all that and re orders and stuff like that the usp goes inside the box, okay? And then for bees, you baby plan we have digital file print released stuff like that. They get a little thing of jelly beans that says the first steps of baby takes our into your heart and it's a little hand stamped like just a scrapbook stamp in my twine and stuff like that. And then I have a little lip gloss that has a heart on it has to be zhao baby logo on it and this goes on a key chain so mom can keep her lip gloss on her key chain and it's just a reminder that she's part of our bijou baby club and then we usually give a little past fire. This says meet button. I have one that says, what does that what does the other one say? Lauren, do you remember? The other one says shoot once as me, but and then one says, pull to sound alarm. It's really get my client, my client. But you can get these on amazon for, like, two bucks a piece, you know, if you buy my book, so my clients love this kind of stuff. And then on the inside is just digital care instructions and how to care for their art kind of kind of information. So that just tells him about the kind of transitory nature of digital files on the importance of printing and things like that. So coming up with good packaging and my clients always air marked me oh, it so pretty and love a you do things it's so fun to open. And the sibling, of course, goes straight for the jelly beans, which is always parents kind of roll their eyes and hear it sugar at my candlelight. Yeah, and then you get to take home a little of that.