Leaflet help

[boxst]

I want to print some leaflets for my wife's business and seem to have got myself confused!

We want to have a large print run (for us, so 1000+) but want to leave some space to print specific details (date / time / location). All the online print companies are 'gloss' paper, does that mean I can put it in our inkjet printed and print in the blank space or will it smudge?

Thanks for any advice.

Steve

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

Answer one: As someone with 20 years experience in the Printing Industry - you need to enquire / ensure that the paper the printers are using is 'inkjet compatible', and that they also don't do something like put a coating on the paper as part of the process.

Over the years I have run loads of 'transactional mail' type letters and leaflets where people have wanted to do what you are asking. And it is not a problem, as long as you advise the company of what you want to do beforehand.

Also, be careful if they are printing them on a digital machine. Some of them will render any type of paper useless for overprinting. But as I said, as long as you ensure that they know what you want to do, you should be fine. Basically needs to be run on a litho machine, on compatible paper, without a coating.



Answer two: as someone with 5 years of experience in running a small business - why are you considering leaflets? Sadly, despite it putting even more nails into the coffin of my old industry - through experience, I have found that the ROI on traditional print and leaflets is amongst the worst ever. People just don't receive / use / act on printed material in an effective way anymore. At best you might be lucky enough to get 1 or 2% response.

Through trial and error, when I ran my small businessess, I found that by a million miles, money invested in a decent website with decent SEO and attention to traffic, returned a far better rate of customers than any traditional print activities.

HTH.

[Junior Bianno]

Most of the leaflets you'll get from the online print companies will be on a gloss or silk coated stock, which are going to be very hit and miss when it comes to overprinting. The safest bet is to go for an uncoated stock, and leave a completely blank space. If you need to overprint I would go for something like 120gsm uncoated. Should go through most desktop printers without problems and overprinting shouldn't be an issue.

Regarding effectiveness of leaflets, it's completely down to usage. If you're promoting local events, something time-specific, or for a something like a specific geographic market then leaflets can work really well. We print many millions of leaflets every year so there's obviously a place for them.

[Frimley111R]

Junior Bianno said:

Regarding effectiveness of leaflets, it's completely down to usage. If you're promoting local events, something time-specific, or for a something like a specific geographic market then leaflets can work really well. We print many millions of leaflets every year so there's obviously a place for them.

The effectiveness of leaflets and any marketing activity is primarily down to execution. On numerous occasions I've had clients say this or that (online and offline) doesn't work and in most cases it doesn't because they have executed it poorly. Of course, promoting, for example, a B2B IT company via leaflets is unlikely to work but there are many examples where it does. Although websites are vital in today's market companies still need to drive people to it and leaflets are one way to do so.

[boxst]

Thank you all for the information. It seems that I will have to speak to someone. Most of the online (cheap I guess) printers don't offer any option.

As for the effectiveness of leaflets, this is for a local 'turn-up' type event so it is really the only way (along with adverts in what is left of the local paper).

Steve

[Spanna]

Maybe I'm missing something, but unless each leaflet needs it's own specific information on, why would the info not just go onto the leaflet on first print?

You'd save yourself a lot of time and effort.

[Junior Bianno]

PM me with details if you want and we can print them and send them out to you. As suggested above, if we print them digitally we can just print variations for you using variable data so you don't need to overprint them.

[technodup]

Frimley111R said:

The effectiveness of leaflets and any marketing activity is primarily down to execution. On numerous occasions I've had clients say this or that (online and offline) doesn't work and in most cases it doesn't because they have executed it poorly. Of course, promoting, for example, a B2B IT company via leaflets is unlikely to work but there are many examples where it does. Although websites are vital in today's market companies still need to drive people to it and leaflets are one way to do so.

This 100%.

Most people seemingly don't have a specific aim for their leaflet campaign other than 'more business' and as such are led by a designer/printer who has little knowledge of direct marketing, resulting in the same piss poor, all things to all men, hash of a job. Then they moan to anyone that will listen that "leaflets are ste". The same could be said for most advertising tbh.

[Broccers]

We do various posters for charidees where they print their own dates for meetings / help groups in an blank area.

We do them digital and they overprint with laser or inkjet printers.

By testing to make sure their printers would work it was an ideal solution - some lasers run so hot they lift digi ink and you end up with a dogs dinner.

So bear that in mind.