The Ultimate Secret to Small Business Success: Stickers
Running a small business can be rewarding and tough, especially in light of the current sluggish economy. As an entrepreneur you have to work hard to make sure your good or service stands out, to win loyal customers and to keep them coming through the door day after day and year after year.
You have to decide the right balance when it comes to promoting your business. How much will you rely on word of mouth, traditional and online ads, or print collateral like flyers and custom stickers? When your advertising budget is tight, this is a big decision.
New media allows you to reach a large audience at a low cost through your own website and sites like Twitter and Facebook, and traditional print ads and billboards allow you to reach a wide audience. However, you shouldn’t underestimate the impact of real, physical promotional collateral. An excellent, low-cost, low-risk but often overlooked marketing tool is the custom printed sticker.
Make it Real with Custom Stickers
Bumper stickers and smaller economy stickers have a distinct advantage over other forms of media in that they are tangible. Your patrons can’t grab hold of a Facebook “Like” and affix it to their car or bike. They can’t take your commercial and carry it around for others to see. With promotional stickers, you can give your patrons a physical reminder of your business or service, which they can take with them out into the world generating invaluable exposure for you
Vinyl stickers are cheap to print, so they won’t break even a meager marketing budget. They are also durable, which means once they are in place, they will stay. Weather resistant and easy to print on, vinyl stickers can handle your colorful company design, so choose a message that will stick with your fans as long as the stickers do!
While bumper stickers are a natural choice, stickers of other sizes or varieties are also excellent methods of promoting your business. You can have your product labels custom printed as economy stickers and hand out complementary vinyl stickers to match when individual purchase from you.
If you run an online business, you can make your message real by including custom stickers with your invoices. Your patrons will love the convenience of a sticker printed with your contact information. Affixed somewhere near or on their computers, they will always be able to find you when it’s time to reorder.
Get Creative
In today’s small business world, you have to be creative. Custom printed stickers allow you to inject a little whimsy into your marketing campaign. Whether you choose to share a pithy slogan or promote your new and improved website, stickers are the perfect vehicle for your message.
Your patrons will love having a colorful take-a-way from their favorite business, and your promotional stickers might just be the seed of their next word of mouth recommendation opening your business or service up to a whole new group of customers!
Want to Get Noticed? Get Stickers!
This past Saturday morning on the way into my local coffee shop, I observed a pair of boys in Little League uniforms approaching customers. With very meek voices, not meeting anyone’s eyes, they solicited donations while holding out baskets to anyone who passed by. Off to the side, Mom and Dad sat, reading their papers and drinking coffee, while their children tried hard to get noticed.
Maybe because it was early, or the patrons at the shop had not yet had their caffeine, I noticed no one stopped to learn more about the cause; no one dropped any money in the basket. And with each fresh rejection, the kids looked more and more frustrated.
I couldn’t help but thinking if these junior fundraisers had a more cohesive campaign that employed a number of strategies, from direct solicitation to social networking to paid advertising and print collateral like posters and promotional stickers, they would have been much more successful.
But, that kind of strategy can get expensive, something you definitely want to avoid when you’re trying to raise funds. So, then I thought, if I had money to invest in only one kind of physical collateral to complement my fundraising efforts, what would it be? The answer was simple: stickers.
You need to be seen!
An unfortunate truth of our times is that solicitors, no matter how worthy their cause, are often overlooked. With so many individuals looking for help or extra funds, even the most boisterous voices get lost in the chorus. If you want your cause to be seen, you’ll need to try something different.
Promotional stickers allow you to reach out to your audience without saying a word. Vinyl bumper stickers and economy stickers can be custom printed to meet your needs and can help you gain some much needed exposure.
Whether you’re raising funds for your Little League or working to end world hunger, word of your organization can flow freely and visibly, getting into the hands, hearts and heads of your audience and beyond.
When you print stickers with the logo of your organization or the address of your new website and you share them with your stakeholders and individuals within whom you would like to generate interest, you create a marketing tool with unlimited potential.
Generate conversation with bumper stickers that proclaim “Save Our Little League.” Call people to action by asking them to “End Hunger.” You can pass your custom stickers out in front of the coffee shop when asking for donations. You can include smaller sized economy stickers in your next direct mailing. You can even sell durable vinyl stickers at your next fundraiser to help generated much needed money for your cause.
The Word on the Street
Once your custom stickers are in the hands of your interested parties, they will be placed on cars and computers, backpacks and refrigerators. Your custom stickers may be found in some very public places, raising awareness about your cause.
Printing Custom Stickers for Youth Ministry
Running a youth ministry can be challenging. Luckily, it’s rewarding, too. When you’re dealing with kids, teens, and young people, you know how difficult it can be to keep your message relevant. You have to compete for their hearts, minds, and time. With school, family, peers, and all of the distractions of their fast-paced world, you need to find ways to keep it fresh and fun. When you have a youth ministry to run, promotional stickers can help!
Sure, kids respond to new media. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are popular outlets for young people. But, these types of media are ephemeral. Update your ministry’s status or send out an inspirational tweet, and before long, your words have already disappeared into the feed. Custom stickers are great because they are real. Young members of your flock can hold onto them, see them, touch them, and interact with them. Placed somewhere visible, custom stickers can provide a lasting message that won’t just disappear.
Say Something Profound
Bumper stickers have always provided the perfect format for a profound statement. Whether you choose something witty and cute or something deep and moving, the words printed onto an eye catching vinyl bumper sticker will literally stick with their audience for a long time to follow.
When you’re ready to inspire members of your youth group, print vinyl stickers with a significant bible verse or an important message you’ve been trying to convey. You might have them printed with the name of the church or the youth group’s name or its website. Choose a message for your custom printed stickers that you know will resonate with your young people.
What you don’t say
As important as what you say, is what you don’t say. Make sure to create a design that reflects the style and tastes of your group members. You want your young people to like the promotional stickers you have created. Choose vibrant colors or the logos of your youth group. You might consult with members of your ministry when creating the design. Get them in on the process and involved in the design.
Get them engaged in what you’re doing.
Share the Word
You can hand custom stickers out at bible study or at spiritual retreats. You can give them away at church services. Best of all, you can share them with folks who might not yet be involved with your group, whether they belong to your church or not.
Vinyl stickers and economy stickers can help you minister to individuals. When reaching out to youths who may need help or counseling, stickers of varying sizes can be of great use. Have the stickers printed with contact information for your organization, so that young people in need can quickly and easily find you.
Keep Costs Down
When managing your youth ministry, you really want to make sure the money you spend is going fuel your cause. Custom printed stickers are low cost, but effective.
Custom Stickers Go the Extra Mile
I run a small business, a coffee shop close to downtown. We’ve always been open twenty-four hours for those who just can’t sleep, and we just opened a breakfast joint upstairs for those who want to get a bite after a night up. Right now, we’re popular with the local college kids and neighborhood regulars, but I’d like to see a more diverse clientele. My advertising budget isn’t huge, but if I want people to know about us, I need to invest in something. That’s why I decided to have some promotional stickers printed up.
To be honest, I didn’t realize how popular the custom stickers would be at first. I chose to go with vinyl bumper stickers since that was what I was familiar with. One of my regulars, who happens to be a freelance graphic designer, offered to help create a logo for me—he uses my place as his office most days, so it’s in his best interest this place stays in business—and a couple of my other regulars helped choose which sticker design was the best.
It was pretty cheap to have the stickers printed. I gave a few to my regulars who, I’m proud to say, went right out to the parking lot and put them on their cars. The bumper stickers were pretty cool, and folks started asking about them.
One of the baristas suggested that I try and sell the stickers instead of just giving them away. So, I did that. And, much to my surprise, folks bought them! I had customers paying me so that they could advertise my business. That’s not a bad deal.
With the money I made back from selling the bumper stickers, I had a few more designs drawn up. I had vinyl stickers created in a couple of other sizes and shapes. A lot of my patrons are into the whole “green” thing, so they wanted stickers for their bikes and skateboards. Since I try to keep my shop popular with the environmentally friendly crowd, I didn’t mind accommodating them at all.
Now from time to time I see a bike locked up at the grocery store or in front of the library with a custom printed sticker from my collection.
I really feel like my business is getting great exposure with these custom stickers. While I can’t tell how many new folks have come in because of them, I can tell you, I’ve started to see a lot of new faces since they went into circulation.
Because the promotional stickers were so popular, I decided to have some smaller, economy stickers printed up with a mini-version of the logo. I use those as labels now on our bags of roasted coffee beans and ground coffee. Sometimes I give one back with change to a new customer, so she’ll remember to come back to the shop the next time she’s in the area.
I’m glad I chose to invest in custom stickers for my business.
Become a Favorite with Promotional Stickers
Have you ever had a song stuck in your head that you just can’t get out? Do you find yourself using taglines from your favorite programs to describe a situation? Maybe you keep encountering the same advertising image in different spaces and contexts. Catchiness and clever marketing stick with you. You can make your message stick with your patrons and fans, too, when you choose promotional stickers as part of your marketing strategy.
Guerrilla Marketing
According to Wikipedia, guerilla marketing is “an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.” Though the budget may be small, an effective guerilla marketing campaign can become as unforgettable as that catchy tune or tagline or logo or image you keep seeing everywhere.
Event and promotional stickers can be an integral part of your guerilla marketing campaign. A low cost and durable solution, vinyl bumper stickers and economy stickers can find their way any place more costly traditional marketing may go, and beyond.
Keep it Cheap and Simple
Cheap and simple aren’t negative words. You want to keep your costs down, and promotional stickers are cheap when compared to traditional forms of advertising.
You also want the design process to be as simple as possible. Custom stickers can be easily created using your own design or a template to fit your needs. In addition, you want a message or a brand that folks recognize easily, so consider choosing a simple design for your stickers when you print them.
Bumper stickers are great. You can choose whether you want to sell them or give them away to your patrons, and soon you’ll see them all over town as they adorn you patrons’ automobiles.
But, you might consider smaller, stealthier stickers. Vinyl stickers and economy stickers come in all shapes and sizes and fits for your budget. They make perfect labels, inserts for mailers and once released to you pubic, these stickers will find themselves in any number and variety of public spaces.
A stealthy sticker marketing campaign is perfect for your budget and easy to execute.
Put Promotional Stickers to Work for You
Promotional stickers are cheap and simple to create. They are also effective. You can maximize their effectiveness by carefully planning your sticker’s design to fit your purpose.
Take your audience into consideration. Are you trying to reach out to and strengthen relationships with already existing patrons? Do you have a target audience of individuals who you plan on focusing on? Perhaps you are looking for newer, more affluent clientele or you are trying to reach out to a younger set. What about groups you haven’t yet identified? How will you build curiosity about your brand?
When you design your custom printed stickers, keep these questions in mind. If your brand is well known and you just want to strengthen existing loyalties, you might choose a design with just your company name. If you plan on promoting your website, you’re stickers might include only this information.
Whatever you choose to include, put your custom sticker campaign to work for you.
Control Your Image with Stickers
You don’t just have a band: you have a brand. You don’t just sell a product; you also sell a lifestyle. Your cause or campaign isn’t only a cause or a campaign, it speaks to something morally fundamental within your constituents. If you’re ready to win over your audience, you’ll need to go above and beyond. You need to gain their loyalty before they open their pocket books. Promotional stickers are a great place to start.
Become a Favorite
You want your brand to be foremost in the minds of your attendees, patrons and fans, so that when they look for the same product or service in the future, they return to you again and again. Whether you run a restaurant famous among locals, and you’re looking to expand, or you have a band that has been playing shows at all the neighborhood clubs, and you’re searching for more exposure, event collateral, especially stickers, can help you on your way to being seen.
The first step is to provide a beloved product or service. Build a strong and solid reputation, so individuals want to recommend you to others. Think about your brand and how you want to be represented. What kinds of patrons do you have? What’s the best way to reach them? Are you looking for more diversity among those you serve? How might you reach out to other groups?
Once you’ve identified a promotional strategy for your brand, choose collateral that will be the most effective. For promotions that rely on patrons to “get the word out,” promotional stickers are an excellent choice.
Say it with Flair!
You need to choose a message that will connect with your audience and deliver it in a package that is attractive to them. Will you choose to brand yourself as quirky and fun, professional and hard working, artistic and classy? Will you promote a signature product or service, such as your restaurant’s world famous pancakes? Or, will you be more holistic, perhaps touting your restaurant as the best breakfast joint around?
When you design and print custom stickers, you’ll have space to include your logo and the message you want to convey. Whether you have bumper stickers or vinyl stickers of other sizes printed, make sure your audience will connect with your design. Remember, you’re building a brand, not just promoting a product or service.
Win-Win Situation
Because stickers are a low-cost marketing solution, with high returns, you shouldn’t be shy about sharing them with your patrons or attendees. Vinyl stickers are easy to design, inexpensive to print, make a great give-away, and they can end up in some highly visible places.
Bumper stickers can be found all over town gracing the back sides of your patron’s automobiles, and vinyl sticker of other sizes will find a home on your patrons backpacks, laptops, bikes, and more. Your patrons become the vehicle for your message, so make it a strong one that they’ll want to share.
Make a Statement with Stickers
Stickers, especially bumper stickers, are well known for their ability to encapsulate a big statement in a small space. From promoting political candidates with quirky campaign slogans to displaying the name of a beloved band to announcing to everyone on the freeway that your child is an honor student and you really do love cats, bumper stickers provide a powerful and effective outlet for expression for people and causes of all kinds.
Make it Political
If you’re a candidate with a grass roots campaign, low on funds but high on hope, vinyl stickers might be just the promotional material you’re looking for. Whether you choose larger format bumper stickers for constituents to sport on their cars or smaller ones for windows and bikes and public spaces, promotional stickers are the kind of collateral that will get you seen.
Printed with your name and slogan, stickers allow potential voters to proudly sport their choice for candidate and win you the kind of exposure that you might only get from more expensive media like billboards and print ads. And, while these forms of advertising can’t talk, your constituents can. They can use your bumper stickers as a starting point for conversations with friends, neighbors and colleagues about the values and ideals you share in common.
Vinyl stickers are inexpensive, waterproof and fade resistant. They’re durable! They’ll keep rolling down the road long after you’ve won your election, reminding folks of your success.
Make it about a Cause
Maybe you’re not running for office, but you do have a cause you care about. There’s a proposition on the ballot to raise more funds for school or police. You’ve thrown yourself behind plans for a municipal dog park planned for your neighborhood. You want to change legislation to make it easier for you and your neighbors to compost. Well get the word out!
Start with custom printed stickers to give some real visibility to your cause. You’re staff may be small and your advertising budget even smaller, but economy stickers provide a low cost opportunity to share word of your cause with the world.
Printed in a variety of sizes, these stickers can be customized with your logo, information and slogan. Send them out with physical mailer to folks interested in your cause. Hand them out at the local farmers market, sporting event or any place you know like minded folks will gather.
Well designed stickers are a nice take away for individuals who show interest in your cause. If it looks good and carries your “brand,” folks won’t soon forget what you’re campaigning for.
Long lasting vinyl stickers will carry your message for a long time, on bikes, notebooks, skateboard decks, laptops, car bumpers, and any other place they can be mobile and visible. Encourage your stakeholders to make it mobile and put the word out on the streets with your branded stickers.
Imagine launching a successful campaign for your beloved cause and seeing word of it all over town!
Make Promotional Stickers Work for You!
When you are planning a dynamic, low cost marketing campaign for your business or cause, consider printing custom stickers. For promotions, custom stickers meet an essential need. At their most basic, through images and text, they convey information about your event or service to your current patrons and potential ones.
But, that’s not the only purpose they serve. While they might seem very simple, stickers can embody the creative spirit of your cause containing images and text that define your organization. Once stuck, vinyl and economy stickers can either remain fixed or, as bumper stickers, might become part of a mobile marketing campaign, gaining exposure for your cause.
Custom stickers are a great gift, give-away or offering for your patrons. A well-designed sticker can be sought after by your loyal fans who serve as volunteer vehicles for your marketing campaign. Whether you choose to sell them to your patrons or give them away as a promotional item, stickers are a point of engagement for your patrons that allow them to feel as if they have an investment in your organization or cause.
Effective Custom Stickers
Effective stickers are well designed. Whether they are printed with your business name or band’s logo, custom stickers are promotional materials that convey information about your cause and they are also a product of your organization, which you can either give away as gifts to your patrons or sell to recoup the cost of printing.
Because they function both as a marketing material and a product, it’s important that your custom stickers are effectively designed. You want to your patrons and fans to want to sport them on their car or the back of their laptop, so you should make sure they’re cool.
Professionally printed stickers can come in a number of varieties and styles. Economy stickers are low cost solutions that allow you to create different sizes perfect for labels, product inserts and give-aways. Vinyl stickers are durable and waterproof and can be printed in different sizes or as bumper stickers. When you design your stickers, you can choose to use logos you have created or choose from predesigned images to provide a background for your message. Pay careful attention to your copy. Make sure it stands out and conveys your cause’s brand, whether it’s quirky, funny, artistic, or straightforward.
Ready, Set, Stick
Once your custom stickers have been designed and printed, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll sell them to your patrons or give them away. In either case, your newly minted stickers will become part of a unique mobile marketing campaign. You never know just where you’ll see your logo show up.
A “voluntary” sticker campaign garners you the same kind of exposure you might pay for when you rent billboard space or take out an ad in a paper. Your logo will constantly be on the move, finding its way around town and beyond.
Bump up your Marketing Strategy with Bumper Stickers
Imagine you’re in line at the bank drive through or you’re sitting in traffic across town, and you see your band or business logo decorating the back of the bumper of the car in front of you. Maybe you’re at the coffee shop, and you catch a glimpse of your logo stuck to the back of another customer’s notebook computer. While you didn’t buy a billboard or take out an expensive ad in a local paper, you’re getting great exposure because you designed and printed custom stickers for your cause.
Tiny Budget, Big Dreams?
Your band has been playing local bars for a while, and it’s got quite a following. You know your music is ready to take off, and you want to get word of your CD and tour out there. Since you and your band mates already spent most of your cash on gas and a little studio time, you decide on a guerilla marketing campaign: stickers!
Have vinyl bumper stickers and economy stickers printed with your band’s logo and website. They may be low cost, but stickers look professional. As an added bonus, fans love promotional stickers. Get ready to see them all over town and beyond.
Bigger Budget, Big Ideas!
Maybe you run a small business. You’ve done some traditional marketing, phone book entries, ads in the paper. You bought some billboard space in a highly visible public place. You even ran a few commercials on local television. You are starting to see your efforts pay off with more and more patrons visiting your shop or restaurant. Consider printing custom vinyl bumper stickers and sharing them with your loyal customers. Give your business even greater exposure when your business name and logo are rolling all over town.
Online Business? Reach out to the Customers You Never See!
When you run an online business, you may never see your customers. You have to work harder to win their loyalty by providing an easy to navigate, well designed website, excellent customer service, and fast shipping. When you don’t get a chance to see each of your patrons in person, consider providing them with custom stickers in your mailers and invoices. Whether you choose fun, eye catching bumper stickers, vinyl stickers or economy stickers, your customers won’t forget their experience. Make sure to print your stickers with your company’s contact information. Your patrons will stick them in a visible place and will be able to reach you at any time.
Just for Fun!
Not only are custom printed stickers excellent promotional products, they are also fun. Colorful and fashionable, fans and customers love stickers. Of course, you’ll print stickers with all the important information, but don’t forget, stickers can also be pieces of art that represent your cause.
Print your stickers with a variety attractive images and your patrons will have a wonderful time collecting them all.
by Lance on April 30, 2011
Make Your Message Stick with the Most Effective Marketing Tool!
Let me guess…You have a band that could use some exposure? You champion a charity you want the whole community to know about? You own a small business that you want to see grow? Your kids go to a school in need of extra funding? No matter your cause, your goal is to get your message out there and make it stick.
What’s the one of the best ways to get your cause into the public view? Stickers, of course! Custom printed stickers are fun, effective and versatile. An excellent addition to your marketing strategy, they allow you to advertise a professional message in small, non-traditional spaces that will get folks stuck on your service, cause or event.
Economy Stickers Help You Stand Out
Want to add a little flair to your next mailer or some color and fun to your publicity packet? Consider printing economy stickers. Inexpensive and functional, they make for excellent inserts, full-color product labels and complementary collateral.
Used on their own or as part of a bigger marketing plan, economy stickers can be printed with your images and information. Available in a number of sizes, you can mail them out with invoices to your business customers, so they’ll remember to order from you in the future. You can use them as labels for your handmade goods. Or have them printed up for a party and hand them out to guests as souvenirs. There are many uses for these unique stickers.
Put your Message on Wheels with Bumper Stickers
When you are ready to really get your message rolling, consider printing vinyl bumper stickers. The promotional stickers are an inexpensive way to gain exposure for your product, service or cause. Waterproof and fade resistant, they stand up to weather and wear, so don’t be afraid to print bumper stickers with your business or band’s name.
Be prepared to get mileage out of your message, when you put your brand on the road.
Vinyl Stickers Give you the Best of Both Worlds
If you are looking for stickers that retain the versatile size and shape of economy stickers but have the durability of bumper stickers, consider having vibrant vinyl stickers printed for your next event or promotion. Waterproof, fade resistant and made for full-color printing, vinyl stickers come in a variety of sizes. They are perfect for promoting your band, business or event.
Fans and patrons love the look and feel of these slick stickers, so don’t be surprised if you see them all over town, on the backs of laptops, cars, notebook computers and skateboard decks. Vinyl stickers are cool! And printed with your logo, they’ll be sought after souvenirs.
Make Sure it Sticks!
When you are ready to gain extra exposure for your cause and make sure that your message sticks with your audience, make sure you design and print custom stickers.
