A calendar is a great way of promoting your business to new customers and to keep you in the minds of your current client base. We all have computers but the majority of people still prefer to glance up at a wall calendar than have to navigate to the calendar on their monitors / tablet / smartphone.

If your business is thinking about producing a corporate Calendar then Pixels Ink are here to help. With multiple options and sizes calendars can be produced to suit all budgets.

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I thought it might be good to remind everyone that the majority of flyer and leaflet printing is exempt from VAT*(see below for exemptions to this rule).

• If an area of your leaflet is designed to be written on by customers it is likely to be classed at the standard rate for VAT.
• Mentioning a discount promotion, such as “20% off when you show this leaflet”, means that the leaflet is classified as a voucher and VAT of 17.5% must be paid.
• Mentioning “free entry with this flyer” results in the flyer being classified as a ticket so VAT must be paid.
• Leaflets designed to be shown in shop windows are classified as posters and become eligible for VAT.
• Finally, the use of thick paper or card, or laminating the leaflet results in HM Revenue and Customs determining that the leaflet is designed to be retained by the recipient, resulting in it being classified at the standard rate of VAT.

Information taken from http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk

If you would like help designing your promotional leaflets, or are looking for someone to handle the print side of things then we can help.

Just give us a call on 01382 817904

For examples of our work please visit our portfolio

Celebrate success
We think success should be celebrated. And success is something we’ve been delivering to our clients for over 5 years.

So now whenever we launch a new website for one of our clients we’re going to be sending them a bottle of champagne so they can toast their future success straight away!

This is not a gimmicky promotion. It’s not a time limited offer neither. We realise no one will hire us to design and build their new website purely on the basis they will get a bottle of champagne. As stated above we do think it’s right to celebrate success and we’re confident that’s what a new website from us will bring you.

So if you want success with your online marketing then get in touch and you’ll be toasting new clients in no time at all.

Get a bottle for recomending us
In addition to the above if you are the one that recommends us to the client then we will also send you a bottle of champagne when the website launches.

So if you know a company that could do with our advice and expertise then just get them to get in touch with us and don’t forget to get them to tell us that you recommended us so you’ll get that bottle of champagne delivered to your door.

So here’s to your future success!

PS: Please do not tell anyone who doesn’t like free champagne
PPS: Don’t tell anyone who doesn’t like getting new clients

Often, taking part in exhibitions is a way of introducing a company to the industry, and sometimes is a great way to launch a new product. Display stands are used to attract visitors to the exhibition to that company and usually include, but not limited to, the company name and logo – basically it should be a good advert for the business.

Display stands available to use at a trade show are modular stands, banner stands or pop-up stands which can all be used to promote products. Through use of clever graphic design, vibrant colours and good use of words and images that are different to that of your competitors, a business can target customers by using eye catching stands.

Banner stands are rather popular because they are fairly light weight and can be transported easily, whilst setting them up at the venue and taking them down at the end of the day is purposefully easy.

Another advantage is that they can be stored easily or even used in an office or reception area when not being used at an exhibition. For a business that commits to buying a stand of their own, some things to consider will be the costs of storage it if it is not to be displayed in between shows; cost to update the graphics when needed; paying for transport to shows and setup and take down costs at each exhibition; price of a place at the show (usually charged per square metre).

Pixels Ink can design and supply banner stands for your next show or for display on your premises.

Examples of our work:

A couple of ideas are below:

Add articles and content on your website that promote your products without over selling them. An article not written to ‘you’, ‘yours’ or about ‘me’, ‘I’ or ‘we’ are general articles that can be anything regarding your product. Updates and adding content to any site keeps it live and fresh, so search engines will keep returning and keep offering up new visitors.

Remember to add links to the website from other directories and relevant websites. Valuable time is wasted by surfers clicking on site links that don’t work, so making sure every link is checked and working can make a big difference.

Any kind of award that allows you to place an award winning logo on a site is worth its own weight in gold. However the best way towards promoting a website is that the award site may offer a link back to a website, currently a good way to increase popularity of any website, provided that website shares a similar kind of content to the one being linked to.

Use pay—per-click, and for anyone that does not want to learn how to use it, ensure the current web designer can offer you this service. If not an SEO expert can offer assistance in this field. Usually a contract fee or paid monthly, a design company whether based in Dundee or Lands End can offer services that can help in this area. Always consider pay-per-click within a budget, however it can be set at a level that suits. This kind of marketing provides paid for advertising within a preferred expenditure, again should be helped by someone experienced.

In summary there are plenty of things that can be done when promoting a website. The next blog will cover some more points that will help when conducting your own marketing on a basic level.

There are tons of reasons that blogging is taken up by business owners, and there are just as many blogging subjects as there are reasons to do it. Traditionally, online communities were built to bring people together, so each community would usually feature a different subject, such examples might be talking small business strategies or coming together to discuss interests in finance. The first weblog was penned around 1994 and the shorter version of the word ‘blog’ was later used as the technology improved. Later, it was able to support basic images and now design firms build blogs into websites of owners that want to move on or expand the business from their basic shop or info site to something much bigger.

Blogs get people involved. Online discussion groups absolutely thrive nowadays; you could find a blog about any kind of subject or interest, so just how does blogging affect your business? We wrote this to bring you some info and to clear up some grey areas concerned with blogging.

So, not everyone likes the idea. Blogging is often seen as a fairly informal way to build online communities, to create an interest with like minded people. Its also a way to announce to people exactly what might be going on within the large or small business, how it is progressing and expanding perhaps.

With a static website, businesses can struggle to update them, often paying and outsourcing updates to companies that can maintain the site and update it as and when required. A blog uses a simple user interface so that anyone can easily update it, great for those that don’t know code and don’t have a similar interface (content management system) on the main website. Whats exciting about blogs is that they are open for comment which can keep a blog looking lively and up to date, with commenting being open for the owner to edit and delete as appropriate.

What to Blog About

Journal

In general everyday life of an individual or business, so not necessarily personal, blogs might be written in form of diaries or journals

News

Extremely popular are new blogs. Those which are kept fresh and concern daily news bulletins are fascinating to most people, blogging allows a business to launch news in real time

Topics

Perhaps an area of a business is of interest to some, specialised areas such as web design are common and allows designers to share information with readers, it can be more informal than a static website

Marketing

Business owners use blogging to their advantage, it’s a way of letting people see another side of a company, keep up with current events and a good way to stay in touch with customers and potential clients

There are so many ways to blog and any business or individual looking to start a blog will no doubt evolve and expend the amount of categories on the blog over time. Blogging has not only become an extension of a business website, but a staple of modern day vibrant business ‘online’ communities.

A whole array of marketing materials are available for design to individual businesses making each one unique. The company logo and the services that the company wants to promote can all be put on their, as can the company tag line or mission statement – getting across to clients exactly what the company is about. Spending in the wrong places though can have disastrous consequences,

So, promote the business using the following marketing materials, for smaller businesses with little budget should consider business cards and headed stationery at the very least:

• Flyers, Leaflets, Brochures, Catalogues
• Posters and Banners
• Annual Reports
• Website Banners and Advertisements
• Business Cards
• Stationery

Simply put, high quality small business marketing material needs to be consistent with the brand or the message. Alternative needs for each business in the UK means that any designed and printed products should be unique to that company. They also should be of a genuine quality; black and white is fine so long as it reflects a brand. Brightly coloured and well designed is good, as long as it’s not copied by hand on poor quality paper. We think you get the message here – so many small businesses and entrepreneurs choose to design their own material which is fine, however this doesn’t always give off the professional approach that a business needs to get them off the ground and running.

Successful business needs professionalism, whatever the industry, and promoting it using quality materials is first thing to be considered, should the budget suit. Some companies select the less expensive option to go with ready to use promotional products and off-the-shelf, though they cannot be expected to be unique and could cause some embarrassment where two companies meet and the same graphics have been used.

That said, sometimes cheaper alternatives are the only option for low budget new companies, or small business, but we don’t recommend scrimping on the essentials. Stationery should be printed on good quality paper, use both sides if you wish to promote products or services as well as showing customers your logo on the front, and for invoices and quotations a lesser expensive option should be to print some stationery yourself using a template you have set up on your computer, but try to always print in colour. Of course, larger budgets can have marketing material professionally designed and printed.

View some examples of our marketing design~: http://www.pixelsink.com/dundee-marketing-materials.php