Posters are one of the many print materials used in a number of different fields. They are a popular choice for marketing campaigns, it is too a popular choice among other institutions.

Academic institutions and its student body are more than familiar with posters. They are significantly used for presentations where scientific papers, thesis, special problems and projects among others. Posters are the most ideal visual communications tool that addresses the needs of most scholarly presentations. There are prescribed ways on how you can effectively lay out your posters. Needless to say, however, there are a lot of do’s and don’ts to memorize that preparing and designing them can be quite exhausting.

To this, it is only sensible to recall and define what they are and what it can do to help you create functional presentations. Posters help you engage your viewers, it initiates the conversation by giving out information readily.

Nevertheless, to keep you on the right track before printing here then are some information you should take note of when you are drafting and creating your posters:

1. Keep it simple

They are aimed at reaching a wide number of people or audience. For you to do this, you must avoid placing distracting elements that may clutter your work or that might make your poster you look as though it is all over the place.

Simplicity is also apparent in the words you use. Avoid too much jargon. Explain using concise yet simple words.

2. Always use High Resolution Graphics

Your materials are of course, not just about texts. You need great images with high resolution so your piece of study to make them more interesting. This helps retain your audience’s attention and makes them focus more.

Graphics can also mean the use of organizational charts, maps and the like. This effectively demonstrates the flow of information and reduces ambiguities.

3. Remember all the necessary parts

Design them piece by piece. Know what each part like the title or introduction are supposed to do. Craft them until you are fully satisfied, making sure you don’t forget anything before moving on. Use short yet descriptive sentences that once again, give your message more impact.

4. Give Emphasis to your Message

Most posters are organized in a manner such that the introduction and conclusions are given enough emphasis. After all, the introduction gives your readers an overview while the conclusion proposes answers to all the questions posed in the introduction.

Organize the main points by using bullets or numbers that are arranged in columns and not rows. Observe proper sequencing so that everything is well structured.

5. There is no such thing as Proofing too much

Always observe before you have them printed. Analyze it from every imaginable angle and ask all possible questions. Are the text legible from a distance? Have you checked the text for misspellings, grammatical errors and proper punctuation? Is the file already converted to CMYK? Is everything centered.

While it seems that poster making is nerve-racking, you can reduce your apprehension or anxiety by giving yourself more time to prepare and study about it. All the more, you should provide enough time for printers to produce your material. Printing companies offer printing services on a variety of materials, from semi-gloss paper stock, high-gloss paper stock, artist canvas, and vinyl banners. These can even be done with a next-day turnaround time for short run orders.

Review your posters printing options. Create not just visually engaging and educational posters, but ones that are of high-quality as well.

Businesses have different ways of marketing their products and services in order to survive in this thriving but highly competitive arena of the online world. The Internet has forced some businesses to be very creative and resourceful. One such creative way is to make use of article marketing strategies in order to promote goods and services. This method is not without its breakthrough ways of course, so here are five of those ways that will help you to augment profits in article marketing:

1. You ought to constantly develop your writing skills in order to keep your audience enthralled with your written work. Always write your current article with the challenge of a making it better than the previous one. This way, your audience will always be interested in what you have to say and be convinced to try out your products and services.

2. Before you even write, try to list down the good points of your products and services. Extensive knowledge about the benefits that your products and services have for your customers will help you write better articles.

3. Come up with a good plan – to write your articles and market it. Planning is an essential process in this business, and you must invest a lot of time into this in order to come up with a winning strategy and beat all the other competitors in this field.

4. Be creative and execute an attractive presentation of the range of products and services that you offer to the public. Be innovative in ways of presentation. Be revolutionary in your choice of works and manner of presenting your work.

5. Make it a point to submit a lot of articles on different kinds of article submission sites. Your goal is to create as many successful transactions as you can, so in order to do this you need more people viewing your site and considering purchasing your goods.

A home-based business is a very great set-up for some people. It allows them to bridge the gap between home life and career. But the major concern for such a set-up is if it can really make enough money to sustain a family’s lifestyle. In this article, we present to you the six skill-based ways that can really speed up your home based business.

1. Make sure that your website is designed in such a way that people will find it attractive and easy to use. Customers will only come back if they enjoyed their visit and found many things that interest them. Also, make sure that your website is easy to navigate so customers will not spend a lot of time looking for the things they want. Keep the colors simple and avoid neon signage and crazy moving effects at all costs, as these are surefire ways to repel customers.

2. Consider writing newsletters or e-zine articles. Try to be an expert of the field that you are interested in so customers will rely on you for the information that they need. As such, it then becomes your duty to present them with well-written content about your products or any other topic that is related to it. These articles can also be submitted to several online publications and article directories so you can get more links for your site.

3. Leave voice messages, but take caution that you do not abuse this method. Just use this to inform people of the newest products and promotions you have to offer.

4. Use your research thesis-writing skills and create case studies. This is a great way to impress your customers with your professionalism as you present to them the great functions and abilities of your product in a thorough and direct manner.

5. Strive to increase your referrals. Provide excellent client services so people will continue to talk about you and make you the newest word of mouth.

6. Try to join affiliate-marketing programs. You not only earn commissions, but you also open yourself up to a wider range of customers.

Have you ever listened to one side of a phone conversation and known beyond any question what was being discussed on the telephone? You might even have been able to fill in the other side of the conversation.

Today, I listened to my boys talk on the other side of the room divider that is supposed to keep me concentrating on creating content. It wasn’t working. Their conversation had my full attention.

“Where are all the Video Cameras?” One asked.

“In China,” the answer came quickly.

“Where are all the Pod casters?” The questions kept coming.

“In China,” the answers were quick.

I know they are studying a new Home School Packet which doesn’t have anything to do with Video Cameras or Pod casters, but today’s topic is all about China. So, I keep listening. After the fourth or fifth question, I realize one of them is on the phone, the other is on the computer actually studying. “In China” is the obvious choice on the multiple choice questions for the first test on their new packet. No rocket science there, but the other one isn’t particularly interested in Video Cameras or Pod casting, so I had a few questions about that discussion. Until he explained in the next comment…

“So, if we put all the pod casters in video shots from various areas of the conference room, and then work each of them into the final video, we can eliminate the feel of it all being shot from one camera. Perhaps you should consider having an overview of the newscast with just silent shots of the people using different viewpoints.” He paused and I heard him sigh, “Okay, but when you start making all the shots with sound, you loose the ability to cover identical room echo with lighting and distance. I want them to appear as if they are in different conference rooms over the world!”

The discussion reveals several components:

1. Development of significant understanding of Perspective and Viewpoint.

2. Marketing Jargon presents and understands that many sources are more effective than one.

3. Appearances don’t have to be what they seem.

“Okay, if you want this Science Fair to Appear to be WORLDWIDE in your video, you’re going to have to use the concepts of marketing as if it is WORLDWIDE. Editing in various positions behind a single REPORTER gives the illusion of many locations. Once you implant that idea, the viewer will not be able to comprehend anything less than a Worldwide Strategic Power and you’ll have greater impact with Neo-plastic Domination, because the Worldwide Power is implied by your ability to view scientists worldwide in the first scenes.”

I smiled suddenly understanding the discussion. He’s really talking about how to market his video game on YouTube as a power strategy to overthrow world governments, and his marketing plan is to imply in the early scenes a condition, and then allow the players to vividly reproduce reality as he projected it. This plan for video taping the Science Fair definitely answered the question of why my non-scientific son spent so much time promoting a Fair he isn’t participating in.

How different is this from marketing?

Marketers present what they want the public to perceive in the early part of their copy, then by the end of the sales letter, the consumer has begun to perceive the marketer’s concept as the only logical answer to all their problems.

Lori started by telling us that her talk was aimed toward small businesses and gave us the feeling that the material she covered could be done by us without having to hire a company to do it.

Lori introduced herself as “The Database Diva” who helps customers squeeze profits from the customers they already have before they spend money going out and getting new prospects to come in.

Lori next presented two case studies. The first was a 2 day workshop on follow up marketing that she offered to her list of 3000 customers in the same geographic region. She started 10 weeks from the date of her event. Lori had 8 weeks of email to these 3000 people. The emails were mostly informational and mentioned her workshop as well.

For those 8 weeks, Lori monitored the open rates from her emails. She also monitored her clickthroughs. And by using her email marketing software, she could tell who was just interested and who was a “hot” prospect. Lori then showed us an impressive report of the open and clickthrough rates. The product she used is SwiftPage which integrates with the ACT! Database. SwiftPage created a report based on all the opens, clicks, and forwards to show Lori her “hot hot hot” prospects.

Her goal was to have 20 people attend her workshop. She got around 240 people who were the hottest. She then took those 240 names and sent them a physical mailing. Lori also used a telemarketing company to follow up via phone. The telemarketers would inform the people of her seminar, remind them that they got a letter from her, and ask if the seminar is something they would be interested in. Very low key. If they said yes, the info went back into the database.

Lori showed her final results. About 3000 names have a 28% open rate, produced 248 clickthroughs and therefore she did 248 mailings to those people and telemarketing follow-ups. This resulted in her getting her 20 attendees for about $1000 in marketing costs. And now that she’s done it once, she is going to repeat it in a few months. She now knows the formula to make it happen.

People asked some questions, and after recapping, Lori told us that these techniques work pretty much across all markets.

She then went on to present a second case study.

Walter Knoll Florist is a 118 year old company in the St. Louis area. They noticed that secretary’s week had been pretty flat over the last several years and so they were trying to just get some increase in sales.

The owner had 60,000 people in his database. So she first filtered out just the b2b customers (about 30,000). She then matched these remaining names with a universe database of 14 million other businesses to get SIC codes and other information. That then told her that this florist was very strong with healthcare companies who wanted to do buy flowers and gifts for their assistants. Lori was then able to filter down his list and she also bought new prospects that fit the right profile.

In the end, Lori reduced his mailing costs by only mailing to the right people and increased his sales by 22%.

Lori next gave her definition of database marketing as anything you can do to track and measure your results. She then pointed out that database marketing is pretty much direct marketing and using a database to do it. She summarized and said that you only want to spend your time and money on the people who are ready to buy now.

She then went on to tell us that database marketing gives us a plan with actual numbers to use when we market. It’s important to find out what is driving the customer to buy. What is his motivation?

She warned us that if we don’t understand how to market to our database, then we’re just building a commodity business that will allow our competitors to catch up to where we are. This is the secret weapon that, if you can master, you can beat all your competitors.

Lori then went on to share some “ah ha” principles:

1) All customers are not created equal. Some are more important than others.

2) Customers are more important than prospects.

3) Past buying behavior indicates future buying behavior.

4) Customers share demographics and psychographics.

5) The best prospects look like your best customers.

Lori next shared some reasons to build a marketing database.

1) Find our best customers

2) Strengthen our relationship with our customers

3) Find niche markets

4) Find ways to upsell and crosssell

5) Find out how much it costs to get a new customer

She then shared that about 1/3 of the people she talked with at the seminar had a list with only name and emails or no list at all. Lori stated that the perfect database has complete contact information. Not just first name and email. And the Holy Grail is the marriage of the online shopping cart, transaction information, and contact information.

Lori went on to say that the perfect database should also contain transaction information including purchase date, amount, and purchase history.

Lori then gave some great resources for us. She mentioned that to get demographics and psychographics, you can collect them yourself or get them appended. Lori shared a company called Acxiom that can add customer data to your list.

She also mentioned InfoUSA which has a free 500 name profile that they’ll do for you once. They return the SIC code, employee info, and more. She next pointed out that you can go to the library and use ReferenceUSA for even more info. Lori mentioned SRDS but showed us a free way to get very similar information. The URL is lists.nextmark.com, and you can put a keyword in and pull up every list that’s out there for sale and also see what your competition is.

Lori then asked for a volunteer and showed how to use the Nextmark site to do some competitive research. The audience was very impressed when Lori drilled down into an RC Car Magazine and retrieved that magazine’s subscriber information.

The next topic Lori discussed was database segmentation. She showed how to code Suspects, Inquirers, Prospects, Customers (active customers based on sales cycle), Advocates, and Referral Partners.

She then talked about how widely used the ACT! Database is and if you don’t have a solution for your database marketing, then ACT! is a great one to start with.

Next she told us that we’re ready for analysis. We start by acknowledging the 80/20 rule. You want to list and sort all of your customers by the percentage of revenue they’ve given you in the last X months.

The top 20% of those customers are labeled “A”. Then “B”, “C”, “D”, and “E”. You want to market to your “A”s. She gave some great advice that when you are writing copy; write it as though you are writing to one of your “A”s.

Lori went on to explain RFM in simple terms. When you don’t know who to spend money marketing to, you should use RFM. R is recency – who bought from me most recently? F is frequency – who bought from me the most often? Who are the loyal regulars? M is monetary. These are either the elephants who buy everything you have and you never hear from them again or they are a huge percentage of your sales last year.

What you do is take a spreadsheet and sort your customers by Recency and code the top 20% a “1″. Then the next 20% a “2″ and the remaining customers “3″, “4″, and “5″. You do the same for frequency and monetary breaking each into quintiles and assigning the best a “1″ and the worst a “5″.

Each customer will then have a value of 1-5 for all three categories. You then multiply those three numbers together and you will have an RFM number 1-125. The 1′s are the very best people. The lower the number, the more you can afford to spend marketing to them.

She then listed the action items – or the next steps:

1) Create a customer database that contains complete contact information.

2) Add missing contact information. You can send a customer survey to get the information.

3) Append lifestyle or firmographics data with a service like Acxiom.

4) Start tracking your source codes. Like keywords or whatever you can track about how customers came to you.

5) Start grouping or segmenting your contacts.

6) Perform RFM Analysis every 6 months.

7) Survey your customers to ask lifestyle questions, get referrals, and get testimonials.

Buy prospect lists. Remember to buy the people that look and act like your best customers.

9) Really investigate your advocates – create a focus group so that you can understand what motivates them and build future products for them.

10) Sell your list to non-competing Direct Marketers as a profit center.

11) Back up your database daily or weekly.

Lori then answered questions. The first question had to do with reports. Lori said that the canned reports that come with software are never good enough and you’ll have to create your own.

The next question had to do with what to do with the “C”s, “D”s, and “E”s. Lori recommended not spending any money on them, but that including them on your newsletter is fine. Also try to bump them into the “B” or “A” category without spending money on them.

The final question addressed using ACT! as the primary tool for database marketing. Lori reminded us that SwiftPage is a plug in for ACT! that makes up for the database marketing shortfalls in the ACT! Database program.