Last week we shared some tips on how to create eye-catching advertising even when you don’t have a graphic design team at your disposal. This week, we have three more designer’s tricks for you to make the most of your advertising dollar!
Design 101: Creating Great Advertising Without a Graphic Designer – Part 2
May 16th, 2012 
Amy Evenson, Art Director Design 101: Creating Great Advertising Without a Graphic Designer
May 9th, 2012 Amy Evenson, Art Director For many companies, advertising is one of the single greatest expenditures that comes with running a business. Larger companies often have the advantage of working with a dedicated team of graphic designers who can focus their complete attention on how to best represent their company’s brand initiatives. However, if you don’t have the luxury of having a designer at your beck-and-call, you can still produce outstanding advertising using a few simple tricks.
Business Gift Buyers: Asking the 5 Ws
May 2nd, 2012 Molly Neises, Gift Specialist 
- Stopping to ask the 5 Ws regarding business gift buyers will help you address all of your customer’s needs and make the most of your relationship.
Gift-giving, whether it is business-to-business or company-to-employee is a large opportunity in the promotional products industry. In order to get the best return on your time, you need to know your buyers. Taking a moment to ask, “Who buys business gifts?” and “What type of gifts are they likely to buy?” is an important start. When do they start shopping? Why are they purchasing a gift? Where are they going to buy? Recognizing the buyer’s and industry’s thoughts on these five simple questions can help you provide your customers what they are looking for.
WHO?
Eight out of ten business organizations give business gifts. The buyers of these gifts understand that there are benefits to using promotional products. However, you need to ask yourself, “Who are the best prospects?” and “Whom in the company should I be talking to?”
Would Your Business Benefit From A Blog?
April 25th, 2012 Cathy Cain-Blank, Contributor 
As popular as blogs have become since introduced in the late 1990s, the question of whether to develop one remains unanswered by many small business owners. This post is designed to help you determine if a blog is right for your distributorship.
Blogs have value. Take the concern of effectiveness off the table. The B2B Content Marketing 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report indicates that B2B marketers increased their use of blogs last year by 27%, making blogs the third most common content marketing activity (articles and other types of social media placed first and second, respectively). HubSpot’s 2012 State of Inbound Marketing indicates that 81% of businesses surveyed rated their company blogs as useful, important, or critical.
9 Facts to Know Before Purchasing Food Gifts: Facts 5-9
April 18th, 2012 Shana Gardner, Gift Specialist 
Your client's time is valuable. Save them time spent shopping for food gifts by making them aware of your services!
In our previous blog post, we featured four facts to present to your clients about why they should order their food gifts through you, rather than through a retail store, mail-order company, or online merchant. We hope that you found them helpful! Here are the remaining five:
9 Facts to Know Before Purchasing Food Gifts: Facts 1 – 4
April 11th, 2012 Shana Gardner, Gift Specialist 
Shopping for food gifts can be a daunting task. Simplify it for your clients by making them aware of your services!
According to American Express Small Business Services, 50% of corporate gifts purchased during the holidays are food gifts, but many of those gifts are not purchased within the promotional products industry. Instead, they’re purchased from brick-and-mortar retail stores, direct sellers, and various online merchants. In fact, many clients do not realize that you as a distributor are able to provide them with food gifts, in addition to any other lines with which you service them!
Needless to say, you’ll want to let them know that food gifts are something with which you can assist them. We at Maple Ridge Farms have developed nine points to help you secure their business. Here are the first four:
1 – Convenience!
Making certain that your client is aware of your ability to provide food gifts doesn’t only add another layer to your relationship; it can also save them valuable time. When they purchase from a brick-and-mortar store, an employee has to physically visit the store to browse the merchandise, which can be an enormous timesink–especially when dealing with holiday crowds! Although shopping from a direct seller or online merchant saves the employee from having to leave the office, there’s still time spent searching through an overwhelming number of options and dealing with restrictions and policies that they may not fully understand.
2 – Gifts from Maple Ridge Farms promote their company and brand, not ours.
Many direct sellers and online retailers plaster gifts with their branding; the first message the recipient sees upon opening their gift is the company that manufactured it, not the sender’s company. Actually, the option for branding it with your client’s logo simply isn’t there in most cases, so that the manufacturer’s logo is all that the recipient sees!
3 – Value driven pricing.
Most retail stores, direct sellers, and online retailers have flat pricing–your client pays the same price whether they’re buying 10, 100, or even 1,000. At Maple Ridge Farms, volume purchasing allows your client to purchase gifts on a sliding price scale, adding up to an even greater value.
4 – Fresher gifts taste better (and say something nice about the sender)!
Many gifts from retail stores, direct sellers, and online retailers are made up far in advance and left sitting on the shelf until your client places their order. Not at Maple Ridge Farms! We pack everything fresh just before your client’s order is ready to ship. Even if the order is placed months in advance of its ship date, the order is produced to be fresh upon shipment, so your client can order well before the hectic holiday season and still be assured that they’re getting the freshest, finest-quality food, leaving quite literally the best taste in the recipient’s mouth.
Save your client the hassle and headache, and make certain they know you’re their first line for those food gifts!
Using LinkedIn to Market Your Services
April 4th, 2012 Cathy Cain-Blank, Contributor 
There are thousands of promotional products distributors with LinkedIn accounts. Most have built a network of connections which includes suppliers, clients, prospects and/or suspects, and longtime business associates outside of the industry. Many distributors also participate in industry Groups, which is useful for eavesdropping on the interests, ideas, and concerns of their peers and the industry as a whole.
If that describes your LinkedIn experience to date, you’re off to a solid start using this powerful marketing tool. But as Emeril Lagasse would say, it’s time to kick it up a notch.
Every day more and more people start using LinkedIn accounts. The longer you delay using LinkedIn’s tools — especially the free ones — the more challenging it will become to get your voice heard in this arena.
Here are a few ways to capitalize on LinkedIn you might not know about:
Promoting a Greener Enviroment
March 28th, 2012 Molly Neises, Gift Specialist
- Earth Day promotions are a great way to raise awareness and spread the message of your company’s green efforts.
Are you a green company, or one aspiring to become greener? This is the time to get your story and message out. Earth Day is the one event you cannot afford to miss out on. Doing so would be the equivalent of a jeweler passing on Valentine’s Day promotions! Choosing thoughtful Earth Day gifts or giveaways remind clients and employees that we are concerned about what happens to our planet, and doubles as a lasting reminder to remain vigilant with the judgment we use everyday.
Adam Rome, a leading environmental historian, has called Earth Day the “most famous unknown event in modern American history.” Prompted by then- Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, the first Earth Day was observed on April 22nd, 1970. After touring the oil spill devastation on the coast ofSanta Barbara, Nelson drew on the idea of the popular teach-ins held on school campuses and aimed to unite environmental events organized at three colleges and extend them beyond the local university grounds.
Worth a Thousand Words – What are Your Photographs Saying?
March 21st, 2012 Amy Evenson, Art Director In our industry, it is not unusual for customers to ask for photos of our product line. In fact, at Maple Ridge Farms it happens on a daily basis! Often, our customers present us with instructions like “I just need a quick shot of the item, nothing fancy.” But a saavy business person knows there is much more to it than that. We’ve all heard the old adage “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” so we have to ask ourselves, what are the images we provide to our customers really saying?
The good news is, you don’t need to be a professional photographer or have a top-of-the-line camera to provide your customers with great product images! Just keep in mind a few simple tricks and you can be sure your photos are saying just the right things.
In a Nutshell: The Maple Ridge Farms Website and You
March 14th, 2012 Shana Gardner, Gift Specialist 
Welcome to the digital age! In these fast-paced, high-tech times, it’s not always possible to be immediately on-hand with a catalog when your customer is looking for their gift options. Enter the website–your instant-access window into the world of food gifts.
At Maple Ridge Farms, we love to make all the information you could need readily available and easily accessible. Our website is a one-stop shopping option, chock-full of useful facts and exciting products, including those not featured in our print catalog.
Here are the highlights of what you can find at mapleridge.com:
