Customize Your Marketing Material With Vista Print

Transcription

CUSTOMIZE YOUR MARKETING MATERIAL WITH VISTA PRINT
I’m sure we’ve all seen – and probably bought – the
free business cards from Vista print by now. What
most people don’t realize is that you can customize
those cards. You are not stuck with the design, or
the art, or the information that Vista Print suggests.
DESIGN YOUR OWN
BUSINESS CARDS
USING VISTA
PRINT FREE CARDS
I've been able to customize both the basic and the
premium cards with no increased charge (i.e., the
cards are free, I only paid $450 for postage)
However, in this example, we’re going to be looking
at the premium cards. If you are patient, you’ll soon
receive an offer to “upgrade to premium business
cards for free.” So if the customizing seems too
complicated on the free basic cards – don’t worry.
Free premium cards are just around the corner.
You’ve probably gotten an email like this from Vista
Print. Usually there are 6 or so offers for free stuff –
business cards, magnets, postcards, brochures, etc.
The customizing works more or less the same way
for all of them. Once you understand how to
customize the business cards, you'll be able to
customize magnets or postcards or whatever you
want.
If you haven’t gotten on Vista Print’s mailing list –
which you can do by ordering from them – you can
still get some free offers by following an affiliate link.
Cindy’s site, CloverCitySells –
www.clovercitysells.com/resources.htm –
has a link that looks like this. Just click on it and
you’re on your way.
Once you order something, you’ll get regular emails.
So don’t worry about taking advantage of every
offer. If they aren’t selling something you want, let it
go until you see something you can really use.
1
http://www.dbyrneassociates.com
If you clicked on the “Free Premium Business Cards”
link in the email we just saw, it would have taken you
here – to Vista print’s Business Card Template
page.
By default, this is all pretty simple. Click click click
and you have a business card – but your card looks
like every other Vista print card and it may not tell
anyone the things you think are important about your
business.
Remember – it’s YOUR business. Vista Print’s
template is only a suggestion. You don’t have to add
a line of text that they suggest to this card. You don’t
need to use their fields or fonts or color schemes.
Also – don’t be too linear. Most business cards, it’s
true, are longer than they are tall (that’s called
landscape orientation)
DON’T ALWAYS DO THE
EXPECTED
• Maybe VERTICAL is better
But that doesn’t mean all business cards need to
look that way.
Depending on the information you are trying to get
across to your customers, a card that is taller than it
is wide – i.e., one in portrait orientation – may be
more effective.
For instance - you may want to say you are selling
the hottest new items, or that you’re selling at Fire
Sale prices.
2
Begin by changing the layout style from Horizontal
(which is the default) to VERTICAL
The cards will be oriented automatically, and all the
print fields will be resized and lined up on the fly to
take advantage of that orientation.
This is a very nice feature, because it can be a real
pain trying to move everything around if you just
want to see what one type of card looks like vs.
another type of card.
By switching between these two choices –
Horizontal and Vertical – you can visually double
check your idea before you get too far into the
design
Here’s a card that works well as a vertical card. By
making the card tall, the flames seem to leap higher.
It’s not necessary to have this sort of graphic for
vertical cards to work. But if you do have a picture
that looks best when it is tall and thin, try making a
vertical card. You might find that – in certain
circumstances – it works very well.
But in this demo, we’re going to use a traditional
horizontal business card.
There are two was to find graphics for you card on
Vista print. The most obvious way – and the one
most people use – is the “Browse Designs By
Categories” link box on the left hand side of the
page.
This will give you lots of graphics, and they will be
arranged in a sensible way.
3
If you have an idea of what sort of graphic you’d like
– and if it is tied to a particular field or industry – go
ahead and click on the link and browse through the
choices.
The “Styles” tab isn’t really very useful. There aren’t
that many styles, and when you browse, you get a
lot of overlap. I’d recommend ignoring that option
unless you really like to just browse aimlessly.
FIND MORE DESIGNS
• Search by KEYWORDS
Instead
A better way to find things on Vista Print is to do the
same thing you do on eBay or Google or most
internet sites – SEARCH BY KEYWORDS.
At the top of the page is a “Search Designs” box –
right above the Horizontal / Vertical radio buttons.
Type your keyword in there and click “Go”
The keywords don’t have to be very specific or
clever. You are searching through photos and clip
art – not actual text – so you want to use simple,
concrete names of things, like “computer” or
“keyboard” or “mouse” A search for something like
“eBay” isn’t likely to turn up a graphic on Vista Print.
Even “auction” is pretty nebulous. But “Gavel” might
work.
So try to think of every day words or activities to get
the best selection of art to choose from. You’ll find
many, many graphics that don’t come up when you
search using the “Browse Designs” links
4
Joni has agreed to let me use her eBay store, Joni’s
Red Onion, for our sample business card.
My first search was for “patterns” which didn’t turn
up anything usable – it actually just turned up
geometric patterns. “Needles” got a very creepy
bunch of acupuncture pictures – which I guess
means naturopaths use Vista print a lot.
So I ended up using “Sewing” as my search term
There were 5 or 6 pages of possible cards.
If you can’t see the design very well because the
pictures are too small, double click on the picture of
the card
Then you’ll see a larger image. That’s also how you
begin customizing the card. When you see the
design you want, double click on it. If you double
click and don’t like the design, just use your
browser’s back button to go back to the big selection
of designs and keep looking through them until you
find one you do like
IT’S YOUR BUSINESS
• CUSTOMIZE
So let’s begin to really customize a card
5
Under all the information fields on the left hand side
of the screen, you’ll see a link that says “I want to
customize”
Click on it
Occasionally, you’ll see a different style link–
because Vista Print has so many options and
designs. You may, instead, see the “Customize
Now” button in the lower right hand side of the
screen.
6
Click on it
AN OLD FRIEND
• The Formatting Toolbar
7
And above the graphic you’ve chosen for your
business card, you’ll now see the formatting toolbar.
Even if you’ve never customized a card on Vista
Print before, this toolbar will be familiar to you.
It is set up with the same icons and commands as
most web formatting toolbars. It’s pretty much the
exact same toolbar as you see on the eBay Sell You
Item Form or on any web email editor (AOL or
Yahoo or Google or Hotmail)
You can change fonts with the drop down font box
(which will also let you preview a font before you
choose it) You can add bold and italics. You can
center or right or left justify text, or change the size
of the text.
Next to the font drop down list – to the left – you can
see the familiar undo/redo arrows (Grayed out here,
since we haven’t done anything yet) So don’t be
afraid to try different things, or to just click on
buttons to see what they do. You can always undo
anything
As you type, the words will start appearing on the
business card.
Remember – this is your business card, not Vista
Print’s. You do not have to fill in the information they
ask for. If you don’t want your company name on the
first line, don’t put it there.
In this example, I actually did use Joni’s store name
as the company name and I added her name and a
message in the boxes where Vista Print suggested.
But when I got to “Job Title” I entered her eBay ID
(or what we’ll pretend is her eBay ID – I mistyped it.
If you are searching for Joni on eBay, her ID is
“chalupa348”)
“Job Title” is a meaningless line for an eBayer. But
they’ve already added a text box to the template –
so use it however you like.
8
Now look at the card itself.
It’s an awful jumble
Here’s a close up.
The slogan is too big and it runs over the name. In
fact, even if it didn’t wrap to a second line, it would
be too big.
The slogan is taking over the card – it has taken on
more importance than it actually has
Let’s start by making the font smaller.
Double click on the words that you want to change.
A text box – indicated bylines drawn with slash
marks and drag handles at the corners – will appear.
When that happens, the formatting toolbar will
change from this…
9
…to this.
Notice how all the information about the text is now
visible. You can see that the font is “Arial.”
You have the option to change the font size and
color. When you start making changes – the text box
frame changes from the gray hash marks to a
broken red line.
Click on the drop down arrow next to the font size.
You’ll get a long list of possible font sizes. Click on
the one you want
If you want to make other changes to the text, go
right ahead while the box is still active. You can use
the bold and italic, or the paragraph alignment
You might even want to use the character map to
add symbols that aren’t normally found on your
keyboard, like a Trademark symbol or a copyright
symbol.
The character map looks like dice with some runes
on it. Click on it.
10
The available high ASCII characters – which you
usually get to through some super secret keystroke
combinations – are displayed. Click on the one you
want and click insert. The character will be added to
your text.
We’ve made the slogan smaller.
Let’s also change the color and style of the font used
for the store name. First I made it bold and italic by
clicking on the “B” and the “I”
Then, to change color, I clicked on the “A” with the
colored underline. That pops up a palette with
suggested colors, already keyed to match well with
the other colors in your template. Usually, one of
these colors will work.
But if you’re really going wild, or if you have a
special shade of blue or red or whatever associated
with your business, click on the “More colors” link at
the bottom.
The full 16 million color Windows palette is available.
If you know the colors RGB values (i.e., black is
0,0,0 – white is 255, 255, 255 – everything else is
somewhere in between), you can even enter them,
to get an exact color match.
11
COLOR OUTSIDE THE
LINES!
• YOU decide what information
is important
• Add anything you want
• Make the text meaningful for
YOUR business
So we’ve got the name of the store, which we’ve
changed to an italic, red font.
We’ve made the “Message” line smaller so it doesn’t
overwhelm the card.
Where Vista Print suggested job title, we typed in
“eBay ID: chalupa348”
Now comes the address. You certainly could add
your address – but your store’s address is not that
important. No need to add it right away. How about,
instead, adding a small message for your customers,
like “Thank you for your business”?
Again – we customized the font by changing the size
and color. The Vista Print palette suggested shades
that matched the graphic, so I picked one of them.
12
Don’t let the field labels determine what your card
looks like. Play with it. Go ahead and just try
anything that comes into your head.
BRAINSTORM!!
• Add ideas as you get them
• Place the text where it does
the most good
• Don’t be bound by text box
labels
Remember – Vista Print knows what looks good in
general. On Average.
They don’t know you and they don’t know your
business. They certainly don’t know your
customers. You don’t have to ignore their
suggestions completely – but you don’t have to be
bound by them, either.
Experiment.
Maybe you were planning to use the address lines
for your store’s URL.
But when you actually see it on the card, you realize
it would have looked better by your eBay ID. You
don’t have to delete text just to re-enter it
somewhere else.
Click on the text as though you were going to edit it.
Then hover your mouse cursor. See how the cursor
changes to the 4 headed arrow cursor? You can
now click and drag the text box to any location on
the card that you choose.
Let’s move it up immediately under the eBay ID line.
Drag it by single clicking with your left mouse button
and holding the button down while you drag. Then
drop it in the new location by releasing the mouse
button.
13
Vista Print supplies handy visual clues to let you
know if you are trying to place text in an area that
won’t print. Do you see how the cursor has changed
from the 4 headed arrow to the “No” sign (circle with
a slash through it)? That means you can’t drop it in
that area.
You can drop the text box anywhere when the
cursor looks like a normal arrow cursor.
We’ve quickly changed the placement of the URL
without having to go through the bother of retyping
the text.
14
The Vista Print cards appear to have a predetermined amount of information, with the fields on
the left side of the screen. That isn’t true.
KEEP GOING UNTIL
YOU’RE SATISFIED
You can add additional text boxes and place them
wherever you want.
• If you have something more
to say –
• Add Additional Text Boxes
This is especially useful if you want to mix a bold
type or a colored type with a normal type in a block
of information. On Vista print, you can’t mix type
faces inside a text box. If your paragraph is Arial 10
pt, Normal, then every word is Arial 10 pt Normal.
If you want to add a line in bold – just add a new text
box.
Under the font drop down box, you’ll see the “Add
Text Box” symbol. Click on it.
A new box, bounded by the gray hash marks,
appears - usually somewhere you don’t want it.
15
Don’t worry about placement yet.
I’ve found that if you drag the new text box to a clear
area, you frequently lose it. You can’t see it when
you want to use it. So just start typing wherever the
box appears, and place it when you are done
You can change the type style here just as you
would anywhere else.
When you are done, drag and drop the new box into
place.
16
Here’s the custom card so far.
Almost done!
ADD COLOR AND STYLE
• Use an additional font for
So far, we’ve only used the default font – which is
Arial.
sub headings
You can dress up your card by adding a second,
decorative font for the subheadings.
IT’S A BUSINESS CARD
NOT A RANSOM NOTE
• Don’t gO overboard
with fonts
17
But – please – limit the number and types of fonts
you use.
Remember – it’s a business card, not a ransom
note.
To change fonts, click into the text box and then just
choose a new font from the font drop down menu.
You don’t have to highlight or choose the text. The
font will automatically be applied to all the text in the
text box.
As you can see, the name of the font displayed
using the actual type face, so you can see the font
before choosing to use it.
Here’s the default business card.
This is what we would have ended up with if we’d
just followed Vista Print’s input suggestions
And here is a customized one.
When you give it to a customer, they are going to
have exactly the information they need to find your
store or your auctions the next time they log on to
eBay.
18
Here are the two cards, are side by side.
Let me say again – there is nothing wrong with the
default. But it doesn’t say anything special about you
or your business.
This one looks a little more personal.
But maybe, after getting this far, you decide that you
really hate the image and you should have used a
different one after all.
You do not need to go back and start over from the
beginning.
Double click on the image itself, and then click on
the third radio button, “Search and choose from a
gallery of thousands of photos and illustrations.”
Then click “Next.”
19
Fill in a keyword
You’ll see a gallery of images, much like the one you
saw when you first searched.
Double click on the picture you want to use instead
of the original one.
And it is inserted into the business card without
disturbing any of your customizations.
That’s better!
20
The same principles apply throughout Vista Print.
You can just as easily customize return address
labels.
ADDRESS LABELS LEAD
DOUBLE LIVES
• Labels can have any information
you want them to have
• Labels can be great advertising
And – just as you did with the business cards – use
the labels for whatever purpose suits your business.
They do not need to be return address labels.
They can have your store and user ID and email
address, and be used to close packages. They can
be affixed to whatever you are selling, if a label
wouldn’t diminish the value of the item. They can go
over store labels and price tags.
Use your imagination
Pick a graphic, exactly as you did with the business
cards.
Then click on the “Customize Now!” button
21
Fill in your information, using anything that is
relevant.
Don’t worry – yet – about line wrapping and font
size. Just figure out what you want to say.
Do you like the graphic but hate the color scheme?
Is that maroon background NOT a color you want for
your store?
Click on the “Change color scheme” link in the lower
left.
You’ll get a drop down box showing well over a
dozen different color schemes.
Click on a name to apply one, then change that by
clicking on a different one, until you find a
background that you like. You can always change
the color of the fonts independently of the
background by using the text tool. But you have to
change the background color by using the Color
Scheme tool.
22
The same, familiar formatting toolbar allows you to
change the text to any font face, size, and color.
Just as you did with the business card, double click
on the text box to choose it, then customize it.
Here’s a return address label that makes sense for
an eBay store.
It’s not for the convenience of the Post Office – it’s
for your eBay customers. The Post Office can find
you through the packaging that a customer will just
throw away. A sticker like this, somewhere on the
item or the inside wrapping might be kept. And the
customer can find you again.
Anything you can do to turn a customer into a repeat
customer is good – and 140 of these labels cost
under $2.00
23
WHAT DO YOU NEED?
• Don’t be trapped by canned ideas
• Don’t always do the expected
It’s your store, your eBay identity.
Market it – market yourself.
thing
• Use your imagination
• Keep your name in front of your
customers
24
Don’t just accept templates and defaults when they
can be easily changed to unique images and text
that will showcase your products and services.

Customize Your Marketing Material With Vista Print

Transcription

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