
Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or marketing manager for a medium-sized business, hard-copy promotional tools such as flyers, brochures, posters and business cards can help you spread the word about the products or services you offer.
Sometimes a great idea - which could either be a start-up business or just the latest venture or campaign of an established company - deserves to make its mark but requires a combination of good timing and advertising.
While it helps to have a little bit of luck on your side as well, you are in control of most aspects of a public relations campaign's destiny - the more consideration you give to specific strategies the likelier you are to get positive results.
Australian entrepreneur Martin Halphen knows all about trying to take a business to the next level.
In 2000 he bought a fruit delivery enterprise with 280 home customers, but has since turned The Fruit Box into a dynamic business that services thousands of offices every week and enjoys multi-million-dollar turnovers each year.
While Halphen credits his risky decision to buy the business to "absolute blind courage", the nature of its meteoric rise can be largely attributed to hard work and some dedicated networking.
A conversation with a customer led him to ponder whether or not workplaces would be a better target market for his fruit boxes than homes. He decided that if one corporation was willing to jump onboard, others would soon follow as long as the word got around.
That's where marketing materials began to work their magic. Halphen told Fairfax Media on Wednesday (August 31) that after mailing out a "less than amateur brochure" to 1,500 companies in Melbourne's CBD, about 40 contacted him immediately and signed up.
While it is not advisable to use anything but the best quality flyers and brochures available to make the strongest possible impression, Halphen's story highlights the impact you can have with advertising tools that people are able to hold and keep - rather than just another email in somebody's crowded inbox.
With the assistance of a Sydney printing service, you can design and create a range of advertising weapons that assert your message in a clear, creative and professional manner.