Thursday, June 23, 2011

Brochure, the Design Process



Fliers are normally a quick document produced on a word processor with a splash of graphics and eye-catching fonts.  In the early 1990’s, the best color for fliers was neon green and yellow. It was the beginning of the desktop publishing and everyone was creating their own fliers and printing them on their new laser printers.  Times have changed. With the price of color printing, computer equipment and digital photography, people now create affordable full color fliers.  Not only has the color copies prices become competitive and inexpensive, so too has the publishing software.  Microsoft Word and Publisher provide many templates to help beginners develop a nice bi-fold or tri-fold brochure.  The Microsoft Publisher templates preset the printing area, provide address information and offers examples of text size, verbiage and overall appearance.  This brochure can be multi-purpose mailing material or as standalone literature.

If you do not have, the experience or time, go online and find a graphics designer or place an advertisement in craigslist.com and seek out professional help.  Not everyone has the creativity or skills to produce a brochure, so find a solution that works for you and your budget.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Brochures – A tool that sells your service

If you are serious about restaurant entertainment, then you need to develop a brochure/flier about your restaurant entertainment.  A brochure is a powerful marketing tool, which will highlight key points in your restaurant sales presentation.  By providing the restaurant with a brochure, management can discuss, save and pass on your information to other potential customers.  You can use the brochure as an introduction to your service by mailing or delivering it to a prospective restaurant. This will give management an opportunity to call you before you solicit them for business. If you do visit a restaurant and talk with management, you can present them with the brochure for future consideration.  The restaurant may not be considering having any entertainment, but when the need arises, they will know to call you.

Brochures are also great to mail out as follow up reminder.  Let’s say that you have just solicited a restaurant and they have shown little interest.  The holiday season is approaching and you send them a brochure for a follow up.  At this point, all you are trying to do is keep your name and service in front of the restaurant management.  The more you do this, the better chance you have at receiving work form them: be it performing at the restaurant, referral for a private event, hiring for a grand opening/store anniversary or management moves to a new restaurant and pitches the idea to the new owner, they will have a brochure explaining your service.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Know Your Elevator Speech – It will get you work.

Wikipedia defines an elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition.  The name "elevator pitch" reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

The key to any elevator speech is to have a short, defined, to the point speech that entices people to ask a follow-up question, thus starting a conversation. Consider it the ice-break before the sales pitch.

When asked what you do – do not say I am a clown; instead . . . I'm a specialist in fun, who helps parents control kids at birthday parties, while making it memorable for the guests.

Use words like specialist, fun, exciting, control, words that have action and are descriptive.  The more interesting you can make the elevator speech the better your response when presenting it to a customer.  How often are you asked while performing what is your day job?

Avoid using jargon, technical terms, or fancy acronyms that nobody but you understand.  Keep it fun, interesting and easy to remember.  You want this information to roll off your tongue smoothly and gracefully. So practice, redefine, and practice some more until you have a speech that defines what you do in a creative message.