Calendar printing can be one of the best ways to market your business all year long. Calendars are useful, so your customers not only have incentive to hang them on the wall, they actually want to use them. When you think about it, calendars actually require the lowest investment of all print marketing materials: their “price per impression” is next to nothing, given you can have thousands of people looking at your calendars 365 days per year. Not every calendar is created equal, so consider the following 10 calendar marketing tips that will help you plan and print a winning calendar for year-round sales.
1. Create desire
Just like marketing a product or service, it's important to create desire for your calendars. You do this by featuring images and information your target customer base wants to view. If your customers like kittens, print a kitten calendar.
2. Relevance
At the same time, you need to make your calendars relevant to your business. If you operate a pet store, kittens would be a good choice and will help customers identify kittens and things they like with your brand.
3. Branding
A lot of marketers seem to think calendars only have branding value, but they also have direct sales power. Still, you need to ensure your brand is prominently featured on every calendar page to ensure your customers make the association.
4. Uniqueness
If your target customers are already flooded with free calendars, it's important to make yours different and therefore more desirable. Everyone prints kittens playing with balls of yarn; yours could feature photos of kittens with funny captions or in funny situations, such as on a motorcycle. Photoshop could be your greatest ally here.
5. Attractive printing
The quality of your printing is important because calendars are as much décor as they are tools. Glossy images are more attractive, writable grids are useful, and quality binding helps keep your calendar hanging for the entire year.
6. Targeted distribution
Give your calendars only to those who fit your target customer demographics. Doing so will ensure your marketing efforts are being spent wisely and will help increase your overall return on investment.
7. Include specials
Add monthly, weekly, or even daily specials to your calendars to keep customers intrigued and buying more.
8. Interactive stickers
Print sticker sheets for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions so customers can quickly mark their most important days of the year. Doing so makes your calendar more desirable and more useful. Add a few brand logos to your sticker sheets to encourage off-calendar branding as well.
9. Social media reminders and contests
Plan ahead and include reminders for customers to like or follow your social media accounts. You can also use your calendar to introduce special Facebook contests that help encourage fan interactivity.
10. Big annual giveaway
Another cool device for ensuring your customers stay engaged with your calendar year-round is to promote a big annual giveaway. If you have the budget, you could give away a cruise for two or some other large item. To enter, customers will have to interact with your calendar in some way every month: via a special URL, for example.
When you incorporate these tips into your calendars, you'll be able to enjoy year-round sales generated by a single investment. One final tip: Print 18-month calendars early to get a head-start on your competitors!