back to basics

I ended the day today with a quick visit to a local customer of my other business, (a gift wholesale company), to drop off an order.

These customers are great :-) Always knowledgable about new products in the industry, they run an efficient & well-stocked store & I love picking their brains. Today I have been planning the gift company marketing strategy for 2009, which includes a website upgrade to improve the online ordering, better e-newsletters, a return to a traditional paper brochure as well as an increased social media presence (must practice what I preach!).

Whilst dithering over color schemes, format, printing etc. I was given a golden bit of advice in-store.

Make sure your contact details are on the front cover!

I'm assured that this is the cardinal sin of brochure design (probably not according to graphic designers & other experts....) but in a busy shop, when you grab ten minutes to place an order, there is nothing more irritating than having to hunt down contact details. Seems obvious but after digging through the store's brochure collection I was amazed to see that they were right & contact details were surprisingly hard to find on a lot of (otherwise beautifully designed) brochures.

I left with a resolve that in 2009 our customers will have so many ways to contact us using old & new methods, all clearly displayed, that they will be spoilt for choice!

Sorry, no great insight into web 2.0 marketing this evening, but sometimes I think a firm grasp of the basics before zooming ahead into new ground is worth remembering (any fellow dressage riders reading this will know exactly what I mean!!).