These flyers are designed just for your business, they are double sided, printed on glossy stock and you’ll get 500 printed, all for £159 ex VAT.

There is more information about the Flyers themselves and how you can get your hands on some for your business here.

This page on our website also gives you a complete how-to guide to putting together your leaflet materials before sending them to us.

Call 01962 737989 to order your A5 leaflets today.

Originally published in the Create Design Studio E-newsletter, to subscribe please click here and fill in the boxes on the left side of the page.

We completed a redesign and conversion of  the CanDoCanBe website to a WordPress blogsite for owner Karen Skidmore.

She kindly wrote the following and posted it on the Linkedin networking site, which has some 14,000,000+ users worldwide.

“David and Charlotte have just put the finishing touches to my new wordpress blogsite. For the past 3 years I have had a static website and a typepad blog working together fairly effectively. But this year I was determined to put everything under one roof and utilise the fantastic blog platform WordPress.org.

Charlotte, the creative director, has yet again, come up with a great new design. Simple, “shiny” and exactly what I wanted. And David has done a grand job of getting the site working, again exactly as I wanted it.

David’s knowledge of wordpress has grown significantly over the past couple of years and I would highly recommend you get in touch if you are looking for a flexible and creative website.”

As a result we have been contacted by a company in New Zealand looking for a logo design and help with a website.

If you don’t know where to begin and you want your own business blog call Create Design Studio because we can make the process easy. Get your business blog off to a flying start by calling David on 01962 737989 today.

Links:
If you are new to blogging here are some helpful hints
Why start a blog for your business?

In short we think that building customer confidence in your ability is made easier when you demonstrate your ability by writing about what you do and publishing it for free online using a blog.

What is a blog?
A blog is a collection of web pages that can easily be updated without the need to seek help from a web designer, programmer or use any special software.

Most blog software is free to download and easy to use and once you start writing, unlike on a normal web page, your readership can publish comments on the blog making it a truly interactive communication tool.

Why blogging will benefit your business
There are two answers, firstly it is a no cost option to keeping your website up to date. Secondly Google and the like love fresh content and a regularly updated blog, published as part of your website, will keep Google coming back for more and improve your rankings.

Your blog can also become a stream of links that you can promote using Twitter and a Facebook page for your organisation, spreading your words further than your website and blog can manage alone.

A blog will help show potential customers your abilities
Use the informative, relaxed style, of a blog to give your company a more personal and friendly online voice, than may be appropriate on your website. Build trust as you provide relevant news and views on issues that matter in your industry. You may also find your blog acts as a magnet to draw in new readers who then move on to your company website.

If you want to create an online information resource centre for your company a blog is the perfect tool
Some large companies also use blogs to encourage their employees to share information and expertise with one-another to build a shared knowledge resource. The software used for blogging also doubles as a content management system that allows you to give customers the most up-to-date information on your website.

A blog can help with the SEO of your website
Finally, using blog postings to update your website will cost you nothing (unlike using a web designer) and will boost your search engine rankings as websites that are updated regularly are ranked higher than those that aren’t.

Do you want a unique blog template that compliments your business branding?
We have installed blogs and designed bespoke templates for many of our customers. We can get your blog up and running in just a few days and we are happy to show you how to begin, as well as upload photographs, video clips and create links to other websites.

Do you want to know how to integrate your blog with your main web pages, your Twitter account, Facebook page and any other networking websites you use? We have the answers. Call Create Design Studio today on 01962 737989 to get started.

Westminster Dredging Co like to keep in touch with their workforce, who are based all over the UK, with a regular newsletter. It is a mix of company progress reports, contracts news and stories about staff activities. It’s job is helping to ensure everyone who works for the company knows how things are progressing.

Westminster World Newsletter

Their existing newsletter was produced in-house and they approached Create Design Studio to give the newsletter a new identity and to produce a template to make it easier to produce the final PDF that is emailed out to the whole company.

We styled their newsletter to highlight each section and to make it look more like a contemporary newspaper or magazine with colour boxes to bring out their stories and plenty of large photographs of their operational craft to illustrate news features.

Now their newsletter is also in a format where it can easily be turned into a promotional piece of literature by being digitally printed, enabling them to hand it out to their customers if the need arises.

If you would like a newsletter for your business, we can help you start one by designing a template and typesetting your news stories and photographs. Call David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 today to get started.

500 x A5 Flyers from Create Design Studio for £159 until August 6th, 2010. Call 01962 737989.

We have a special offer for all your blog-readers out there:

get in touch before Friday 6th August to get our fantastic offer on your own A5, double-sided, glossy flyer, 500 copies included in the price. All for £159.

That’s a great price and because we know print prices can’t stay the same forever we have had to place a deadline of 5pm on August 6th 2010 on all orders for these great value flyers.

Use them to:

• promote your summer offers for families
• to tell the locals about your services or products
• promote your business while networking

We will design both sides of the leaflet for you,  tell us what you would like to see on your leaflet, and supply us with the text and images (although we can supply these for an additional fee if you prefer.)

Don’t wait, get your hands on 500 promotional A5, double sided, glossy flyers for your business by calling David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 today!

Beechdown Health Club

Large outdoor banners can be a really effective way to advertise to plenty of potential customers as they travel past. This new banner sign for beechdown Health Club is to promote their summer activities aimed at the whole family.

They wanted an energetic and family-orientated photograph to inject some life into their message and Create Design Studio were able to help them source just the right picture for their needs.

Get started with a banner to promote your business, we can help. Call David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 today.

Marketing your business is easier when you can point to something that makes your offer unique. This is usually referred to as your USP or unique selling point but I find it easier to think about it as the personality of your business. After all, every personality is unique.

Passion
What is the passion that lies behind your business? Can you remember what it was that got you into your industry? Are you stuck in the day-to-day running of your business and have you lost sight of what it is that motivated you to begin with?

If you can remember what got you into your business, rediscover your motivation and put it into words you have in a nutshell described your passion for your business. Getting that across to your customers in your marketing makes a big difference in inspiring confidence in your ability and motivation.

Unique
What is it that your business does that is unique? It might not be what you do but rather the way you do it that is important to your customers. Think through some of the most recent or most successful projects you have completed for customers and try to identify what you did for them that they would have difficulty finding elsewhere.

Once you can see the unique service that you give to your customers you can use it to define your offer in your marketing materials. Don’t keep it a secret, tell your customers what is unique about your service offer to them.

Customers
What are your customers like? Can you spot any trends that are common between them all? Perhaps they are mostly local, or mostly small companies, or mostly freelancers, or perhaps they are all from the same industry sector.

Once you know what kind of customers you work for it is easier to work out why they choose to buy from you. You might be their nearest supplier and the most convenient, or you might specialise is products or services that are relevant to their industry. Once you know why customers come to you it’s possible to target your marketing materials to the right area or the right companies in an industry sector. You can also identify possible new customers to approach.

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What do your customers think of your business as it is at the moment? Ask them for their impressions of your business, your products or services and your staff. All feedback is valuable and can help to enlighten reasons that your business does well in some cases but not others.

Consider the feedback you get and work out if there are changes you can make to improve things. Your marketing can then highlight these changes and improvements to your customers.

Have a plan
Put all your discoveries so far into your marketing plan and use the plan to work out what your budgets are and how best to spend them. You should be able to plan what you are going to say and who you are trying to reach now you have thought about your passion, uniqueness and your customers. This knowledge makes planning easier.

Create Design Studio can help your business move forward by reviewing your marketing activities. For £249 we will evaluate your current activities and provide you with lots of new ideas for complementary marketing and promotional activities.

Call David Woodroofe for more information on the Create Design Studio Marketing Review Service on 01962 737989.

Originally published in the Create Design Studio Newsletter.

Developing your brand is about creating a relationship with your customers based on their perception of your organisation. Start not with what you sell but with those who buy and find the appealing values that your organisation shares with them to give it a personality they can relate to.

Successful branding helps to make sales easier because trust has been created between customer and organisation. Creating this kind of successful brand doesn’t happen overnight but it can be supported by making your organisation accessible to customers on the web.

Starting your own business blog
A blog is a type of online diary, often used by businesses to publish articles about issues and events relevant to their industry that will be of interest to their customers and their peers. It can be hosted separately from your main website or the free blogging software can be installed on your web-server to integrate your website and your blog. Some smaller companies or freelance workers only have a blog as the software is versatile and can be used in a similar way to a traditional website with pages for services, products and contact information. You can update your blog as often as you like and as soon as you hit the ‘Publish’ button your articles are live on the web and can be indexed by search engines.

Promoting your blog with Twitter
Blog-posts can be effectively promoted through the use of the social networking site Twitter where users write their current status in messages of 140 characters or less. These messages can contain hyperlinks that direct readers to your blog post, your website or to any other online resource you want to promote.

Your Twitter status can also be linked so it updates your Facebook status and your status on the Ecademy business networking site, meaning you only have to write updates once and all the people who ‘follow’ you will be informed. If you are trying to spread the word about a new product or service it is obvious that linking your updates this way could provide an effective and lowcost way to promote them online.

These websites can also prove useful in other ways. By posting questions to those in your network others can respond quickly with personal recommendations and links to information resources. Also, social networking can enable you to keep in touch with friends and business contacts you may not often be able to meet up with in-person due to geography or lack of time.

Social networking has received coverage in the mainstream media and on the BBC news website an article by Claire Prentice explains how small firms are harnessing social networking for their marketing. As many small firms cannot afford to spend large sums on advertising they have turned to the social networking websites to reach a global audience with a minimal cost. Promoting special offers, new services and even to fill cancelled appointments at the last minute, updates on Twitter or Facebook build trust between customers and your organisation because customers know the information comes from you.

Social networking sites invite your customers to enter into dialogue with your company and the feedback you receive can be used to improve your services. However, your organisation also becomes open to criticism. Approach criticism as a chance to improve your service and potentially win back customers and even this aspect of social networking for business use can have a positive outcome.

If you are a newcomer to social networking online, here are some tips on how to begin:

Online social networking site twitter.com, uses short messages to help you stay in touch with other twitter users and www.facebook.com is a full social networking site that allows you to upload photos, update your status and instant message other friends online at the same time as you.

Business networking sites include www.ecademy.com which is a large site with users from all over the world with clubs and regional networking groups you can join. You may also like to look at www.linkedin.com for opportunities to network with other professionals.

If you’d like to start your own blog visit: wordpress.com or www.blogger.com. Try reading a few blogs to see the breadth of writing that exists on the web. You can search Google for blogs or you can visit a blog search engines like technorati.com which has a list of 100 top blogs to browse. Also try mashable.com for blogs about the world of social media online and a series of articles on ‘How to’ that should help if you are having problems using the sites mentioned in this article.

Create Design Studio can help those of you who would like to start using social networking online but don’t know where to begin. We can set it all up with you, design your Twitter page, show you how to use the sites or even look after your account and update your pages on your behalf.

Call Create Design Studio’s Managing Director David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 to arrange a no-obligation meeting.

If you decide to take the plunge look up Create Design Studio on Twitter: @david_woodroofe and @charlotte_lamb.

EBS (Elvetham Business Solutions) provide services for Performance Improvement and Interim Assignments for businesses. Their specialities include: change management, working capital management and business analysis and improvement.

The website has a refreshed colour scheme and plenty of space for EBS to detail their services to their visitors. To visit the EBS website please click here.

After the last post on brochures it seemed appropriate to share a few of our most recent brochure designs from Create Design Studio.

Vivid Living sell complete furnishing solutions. Their brochure was designed to be a high quality glossy catalogue featuring professional photographs of their furniture as well as show home projects that they have designed.

GDS supply equipment and software solutions for geotechnical testing. Their brochure was designed to inform their customers about the full range of their software modules at a major exhibition.

First Chapter supply bespoke independent financial advice to their clients and wanted a brochure to explain their service ‘Your Plan for Life’.

Basingstoke Business Club needed a small brochure to explain how their breakfast networking club operates for potential new members and this A5 brochure gives them plenty of space for text and pictures from previous meetings.

If you would like to discuss your own brochure project please call Create Design Studio on 01962 737989.