Custom Rack Card Printing - Tips For Successful Hotel Marketing

Rack cards are among the most powerful marketing tools that you can use to promote your hotel business. These can be designed using eye-catching colors and graphics and contain interesting text to represent your business' marketing message. Designed to be consumed in a quick manner, people can easily understand the message that you want to convey. The tricky part, though, starts with choosing designs that suit your hotel marketing message and those that will stir up interest among your prospective clients.

Custom rack card printing is just perfect when you need to create unique and interesting promotional materials for your prospective hotel patrons. You can have custom designs that are tailored to fit your hotel's brand, mission and vision, etc. Custom options like tear-off portion to use as coupons, tickets, or as business card are also available.

Things to Consider for Successful Rack Card Marketing for Hotels

Always consider your target audience before you design your rack cards. The first thing that you should do is to identify the demographics that you want to target with your promotion. Do you want to promote your hotel as a luxurious, first class accommodation or one that is casual and homey? Your design should depend on what image you want your hotel to portray. It would be best to include photos of your hotel's room accommodations and facilities to give emphasis.

Don't forget to include the purpose of the prints when planning your design. Are you going to use your prints to attract a different kind of market other than the one you currently have? If, for example, your hotel is one that boasts of luxurious and first class accommodation but wants to dedicate a floor or two to those patrons who are looking for accommodation with a cozy feel to it, you need to have a separate promotion for this.

Highlight the benefits that your hotel can give prospective clients. People don't want to read a novel about the history of your hotel or even the awards that you've had in the past. These hotel patrons want to know why they should stay in your hotel. Tell them about the facilities and the amenities that you offer your clients. Also, don't forget to include value to your prints. You can include offers like 10% discounts on 3-night stays, free breakfast, etc. Your prints can also include travel tips for tourists like things that they should know about the town, great destinations to check out, where to enjoy great foods or hang out and party at night.

Study the competition by collecting their print materials and pooling data to know which designs and concepts work and which don't. Based on these data, you can create a concept for your rack cards - make sure to create even better prints.

Custom rack card printing can be the best promotional printing materials that you can use for your hotel marketing, but only if you know the right things to do. These tips can help you avoid the pitfalls and successfully use your prints to get more patrons for your hotel.

NFL Marketing Misfire?

As the latter end of the year approaches, the NFL season starts, and it's a good time to look at the niche marketing potential of football, and an opportunity missed by the NFL...?

I remember when I first started in affiliate marketing, one of the first big successes I had came with NFL gear. I found that people searched in big numbers for specific team merchandise, and it was possible to market to just those people, and provide them what they wanted.

For example, I found a site selling replica helmets that had an affiliate programme.
I joined it and set up links to specific products, maybe a Dallas Cowboy helmet.
Then I used pay per click advertising, so the ad was only shown to people who typed 'Dallas Cowboy helmet' into Google.

This is classic niche marketing, I didn't even have my own website, and the model can be followed today, just as it can in many other niches.

What I find a bit surprising though, is that in all the years I've been following football from over here in Britain, I don't see that many changes in the jersey or helmet designs.

If you look at soccer in Britain, the teams have 3 different new shirts every season, which is nothing other than getting the fans to buy over.
Of course they do, so as not to look out of date, the sales justify doing it and so it happens the next year and the next.

The basic traditions of the shirt stay the same, but there are noticeable differences.

Why don't the NFL do this?
With a soccer shirt costing around $100, it's big money for the clubs.

In the NFL the difference is that the teams are a franchise of the NFL, and it's the NFL that holds the rights.

That still doesn't explain why the NFL doesn't do it.

Then of course you have the helmets as well.
I reckon it's a glaring miss by the NFL, a drop in the end zone.

I'll still be making money from niches like NFL merchandise, but every time I see the jerseys I'd love to see something new.

Marketing Lessons from the Business of Football

People don't go to football games to watch football. Oh, a few people do, but not enough to come close to filling the stadium. To find out who the pure fans are, you'd have to do away with the video screens, the mascots, the cheerleaders, the halftime shows, any foods more exotic than hot dogs, soft drinks and peanuts, and then see who's left in the stands. Would you still buy a ticket?

Football is more than a game; it's also a business. The business of football has grown because the promise included with each ticket has grown to appeal to more than just the pure fans. Does your business cater solely to your pure fans? If so, you're sitting on a tremendous growth opportunity.

No One Wants Your Product

We forget that people don't really want our product; they want what they can do with our product. Take coffee as an example. If we focus on the coffee itself, it's easy to get caught up in the price per pound or per cup, and the qualities that make coffee taste good or bad. Yet when we think about what we can do with the coffee, those factors become almost insignificant.

The place where coffee is served (the coffee shop) becomes the backdrop for a social event with friends or business acquaintances; the price of the coffee becomes insignificant. Perhaps coffee is the warm, comforting friend that accompanies us on our journey into the new book we just picked up at a Barnes and Noble book store. Whenever we buy coffee or football tickets or your product or service, we are buying much more than what the label on the package indicates.

Get a Feel for the Game

Football organizations discovered long ago they can enjoy significant boosts in business by looking at all the ways to serve their customers during a football game. By expanding the core product -- the game on the field -- to appeal to a larger audience, their market grows beyond the pure fans to include their spouses, other family members and their friends. In the process, football organizations enjoy multiple up-sell opportunities while engendering customer loyalty that keeps fans coming back. You don't have to love football to love going to a football game.

While your product or service may not be as flashy and exciting as football, you can apply football's marketing lessons to improve your market share, revenues and profits. If you don't, you risk seeing your sales fall flat and watching business go to your competition. If companies can apply these marketing principles to a product as simple as coffee, you can win using these strategies, too.

Unfortunately, we may be too close to our product to successfully apply these principles. We likely know the features and benefits of our product inside and out, and understand all the things our customers can do with our product. What's more important is that we step back and work to understand how people feel while using our product. Find out the feelings your customers associate with using your product or service, and then think of ways to give them more of those feelings. Here are three ways you can do that.

1. Ain't I Social!

Many people use a product or service as an excuse to get together with other people. Football tickets, coffee shops, birthday cakes, bowling leagues - people may buy these products solely to enjoy the feelings they get when they're experiencing them with other people.

Think of ways to get people who share a common interest in your product or service to socialize around it. Consider:

*** Conferences

*** Online chat rooms

*** Reunions

*** Rallies

*** User groups

*** Advanced training sessions

*** Charitable work

Any event, really, can be the perfect excuse for your customers to gather and experience the great positive feelings that will generate customer loyalty and keep them coming back for more.

2. Make it Memorable

When customers have a good experience with your product, they'll want to repeat it so they can recreate those good feelings. Ideally our customers will talk about their experience with their friends and associates long after the experience is over. You can extend the power of this word of mouth effect. Help your customers remember their positive feelings long after the experience that created them is over.

Memories are heightened when emotions are involved. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the feelings, the longer and more powerfully we remember them. At football games we watch instant replays of key moments; the turning points and dazzling plays worth remembering. We buy programs that allow us to engage at a deeper level with the personal aspects of the players. Sometimes we're provided with heart-stopping opportunities to win prizes. Souvenirs allow us to take the football game home with us; we can relive the feelings we had at the game simply by looking at or holding our souvenir.

Get your customers emotionally involved so they'll long remember the positive experiences they have with your product or service.

*** Provide mementos.

*** Give them a chance to win something.

*** Deliver a nice surprise they don't expect.

*** Give them moments with industry celebrities.

*** Take pictures, especially of them, to give them vivid reminders of the great experience they had.

Do these things, and they'll do business with you over and over again.

3. Include the Fringe

Around your core customers -- the pure fans -- is a fringe of secondary customers you can easily access. These secondary customers may be spouses or friends of your core customers who are easily reached through viral marketing. Give thought as to how to provide for their social needs and create positive, memorable feelings that will encourage them to try you once and then come back again and again.

The football business has this figured out. The football lovers in a household have an easier time getting to games when their non-football-loving spouse is eager to go with them. That's why a football ticket provides so much more than the game these days. While marketing the game to pure fans is a simple endeavor, football becomes a much better business when the offer is expanded to include the social and emotional aspects that appeal to the secondary market. For example, the Super Bowl has become more of a party than a game. People plan for and look forward to the huge social event that engulfs this championship game. Millions watch the Super Bowl on TV, yet few watch it alone.

Get in touch with your market and work to understand who your secondary customers are. Coffee shops gladly sell tea and soft drinks so their "regulars" can easily bring along their non-coffee drinking friends. Expand your marketing to include these secondary customers and you can boost your sales revenues by 50% and more.

The Game of Change

Football as a game hasn't changed much over the decades. The proposal to permit challenge flags supported by video review was carefully debated by National Football League (NFL) officials before its adoption, all because the League knows this; never alienate your pure fans. They are the bedrock of your business. Keep delivering the solid, consistent product that keeps them coming back for more.

Don't focus on improving your product. Instead, focus on improving the product experience. Once you understand the positive feelings your customers experience by using your product or service, look for ways to extend that experience. Sure, cream and sugar go with coffee. But so does a soft chair and soothing music. So does a well-written book of fiction. So does a table surrounded by family or friends.

Football is a game and it is a business. Look at your business like a game. How does it feel to do business with you today? Make your business social. Make it memorable. Make your business the game your customers are eager to play.

Envelope Marketing

Any good business is always looking for a new way to advertise and catch the attention of their customers.

Well, have you ever put much thought into the envelopes you mail out everyday? How many hands touch an envelope before it reaches its final destination? 1, 10, 30? Does it even get opened when it gets there?

Make good use of your envelopes!

1. Make sure you have a complete return address label or pre-printed return address on every envelope. Using a great color label with an image will catch even more attention. You can get these cheap or even free at vistaprint.

2. Turn your attention to your stamp. Yes, that's right, your stamp. That valuable space in the upper right hand corner of your mail is now open for business. You are no longer limited to the flag design carried at your local post office. Photo.Stamps.com lets you create your own postage using photos and graphics. Put your logo, the company president, new product announcement, upcoming event or other eye catching image on your stamps for an even greater marketing impact.

3. Print or rubber stamp a short message on your envelopes. This is a very effective with material that is mailed to persons who inquire in response to an ad. For example, advertise a Free Report. When you receive inquiries about your offer, rubber stamp this message on all outgoing envelopes - 'Your requested FREE Report Inside!'. Or stamp your logo and website on each envelope.

4. You can buy paste-on dots, stars, smiley faces, and so forth, from an office supply store. Place these on your envelopes. But only if you can make it look professional.

5. Make your envelope lumpy. Everyone gets curious about a lump in an envelope and everyone loves free stuff, even if they do not need it. For example, inexpensive pencils, pens, plastic pocket calendars, etc. For best results, try to tie the object in to your offer and make it something people will use over and over.

6. Penny for a buck offer. Another very cheap way to make your envelope lumpy is to tape a penny to your sales letter. Then, in the sales letter, offer to give your prospective customer a discount - perhaps $1, $5 or $10 - in exchange for the penny.

7. If you are using window envelopes, print the address on a coupon that looks like a check.

8. Use larger than average envelopes. This is expensive, but the envelope will stand out from crowd.

Be creative and market with every envelope you mail!