Business to consumer or B2C refers to businesses that sell products or services directly to consumers. Good B2C promotional practices involve getting the word out there in a quick and effective way. Posters, marketing flyers, brochures, banners, and other forms of print advertising are a great way to do this.
Printed ads allow you to really hone in on your target audience, especially if it’s location-based. Posters and flyers in a particular area will only reach the people within that area. And if you’re strategic about where you place your ads, you’ll be able to market to your audience even more effectively.
Moreover, studies have shown that 82% of consumers prefer print advertising over digital. They feel less robotic and alienated from the people they are marketing to. There’s also less noise around a poster than there is around a social media ad. This ensures focus as your audience goes through your content.
In this article, we’re listing down a number of key strategies that will help you use your posters, flyers, and other print advertisements to promote your B2C business successfully.
Read on to find out more!
1. Brand your products and services
Remember that with any advertisement, you’re selling your brand more than anything. Sure, you can list down your products and services, and tell people why they should buy them, but that’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even needed.
If people can trust your brand, they’ll trust whatever is a part of it. So think about what your brand stands for before you make your poster or flyer. Here are some questions to consider:
- What do you want people to think when they see your brand?
- How do you want consumers to feel when they buy from you?
- Are you selling a lifestyle or a product?
Good branding increases the value of your company and helps build trust with consumers. It also makes you more memorable so that consumers are more likely to come back after buying from you once.
Make your brand instantly recognizable by adding your logo in clear, bold colors at the top of your poster or flyer.
Another important thing to keep in mind is consistency. Help your audience become familiar with your brand by repeating certain elements. For instance, always add your company colors to every poster. Always mention your company using the same font. Always place your logo in the same spot on your poster each time. And finally, always address your audience in the same way.
You can use a poster maker online to ensure that the process is easy and the end result is aesthetically pleasing.
Take inspiration from McDonald’s print advertisement campaigns over the years. Regardless of whatever new product they launch, their signature red and yellow logo is a part of everything. It’s so recognizable that every time this color combination is used on a poster, it’s likely that your mind will immediately think of McDonald’s.
2. Focus on providing quality information
Depending on the medium you’re using to promote, add only the most relevant details to your print ad. These details should be necessary, complete, and free of fluff content.
For instance, a brochure will have more detail than a flyer, however, both will have less information than say, a website. So, what do you do? You add a link to your website on both your flyer and brochure.
A poster, flyer, or banner will generally have these key bits of information:
- Company logo and name
- New product or service
- A tag line
- An address or location
- A website
Accompany this with an eye-catching image and some popping colors, and you’re good to go. Anything more would make your ad too overwhelming and take away your audience’s attention.
If you don’t have a graphic designer on board, you will need some help in creating your perfect print ad. Luckily, there are plenty of sites online that have templates that you can customize. For instance, PosterMyWall has a user-friendly flyer maker that makes the process very simple.
A brochure, on the other hand, will need to provide more information. Because of the luxury of space, you can use a brochure to talk about your products in more detail. Consider listing your various offerings and add pictures. Or, add testimonials from satisfied customers and talk about your future plans.
3. Know your objective
67% of Americans prefer printed ad materials over digital. This means that you already have an advantage over digital ads as far as customer interest is concerned. However, to keep this interest, you need to make your ad as focused as possible.
Most people don’t have time to think about what you’re trying to sell. At best, you will have a few seconds of their attention. So you need to make the purpose or objective of the ad as clear to your audience as possible.
You can do so by using the different elements of a poster – colors, images, text – to show your audience what you’re trying to sell.
Chupa Chups’ promotional strategy is an excellent demonstration of this point. When they wanted to sell their new sugar-free lollipops, they knew that they had to emphasize the “sugar-free” part of it more than anything.
As you can see in the poster below, both its imagery (the ants keeping away from the lollipop) and text (“it’s sugar free”) are geared solely towards that one objective, giving consumers a clear idea of what it is that they’re seeing.
4. Include a call to action
A call to action or CTA is a button at the bottom of your promotional medium that tells your audience what to do next. It essentially guides them through the buying journey, after you convince them that it’s worth it.
Most CTAs will directly boost your conversion rates because they save consumers the hassle of figuring out what to do themselves. According to one study, orange CTA buttons are the most effective, with a conversion rate of 32.5%.
Use an online poster maker to make the CTA-making process smoother, especially if you’re not good at graphic design.
5. Placement is key
Your promotional content needs to reach the right audience for it to be effective. Place your posters, flyers, brochures, or banners where they will be most visible.
For flyers and brochures
- Door to door distribution – this is considered to be 78% more effective than any other strategy
- Car windshields
- Outside movie theatres – especially after a movie is over when there’s a greater influx of people coming out of the theatre
- Inside newspapers
- At festivals and trade shows
- Outside grocery stores
- At bus stops
- At senior centers
For posters and banners
- On waiting area notice boards – studies have shown waiting rooms make for a comfortable and welcoming environment so it would be a good idea to associate your brand with that feeling
- On public bathroom stalls
- On bulletin boards
- Outside offices
If you have the budget, banners specifically can also go on billboards close to highways where drivers can see.
Final thoughts
Remember the key takeaways:
- Your brand should be loud and clear on your ad
- Give your audience quality, necessary information only
- Figure out what the main purpose of your campaign is
- Have a clear call to action
- Use a flyer maker to make your content creation process simpler
- Distribute your ad in the right places
As long as you keep these strategies in mind, you should be able to smoothly and effectively promote your B2C business.
