Developing a successful postcard advertising campaign is a detailed process which begins from the moment you decide to utilize postcards as your next advertising tool. My Postcard Printing can help you develop your campaign and create the type of postcard that will best suit your needs.

Postcard preparation is simple with My Postcard Printing’s exclusive U-Design process. With the U-Design process, you can prepare a postcard design and then have that design modified and perfected by a member of our U-Design team. It’s like having a designer working next to you as you prepare your postcard.

To that end, this article will walk you through a sample postcard project using the U-Design process. For the purposes of this article, the customer is Jones Law Group, a law firm moving into an new area and wishing to increase its profile by letting the community know that they are setting up an office.

Step 1: Deciding the Marketing Goals

When beginning a marketing project, you need to have a specific goal in mind. Your goal can be as simple as announcing a new sale or a new location. However, you can use effective postcard marketing to completely re-brand your business. The idea here is to determine what the goals of the project are so that you can plan the design that will do the most to move you towards those goals.

For the purposes of our example, our customer wants to announce that it has just moved into the area and introduce itself to the community. So their goals are to let people know their name and their new location. They are a law firm, so they want their advertising to be serious and done in a manner which will hopefully engender trust in potential clients.

Step 2: The Image

My Postcard Printing offers two options as to images which can be used for postcard mailings, the customer can either upload their own images or can choose one from the dozens of images contained in My Postcard Printing’s U-Design tool. For the purposes of this project, our customer will be using the U-Design tool to choose an image.

The U-Design tool is accessed from the front page menu of mypostcardprinting.com. Once you access it, you can choose from dozens of potential background images for your postcard. These images are specially chosen and programmed so that they can be heavily customized.

After reviewing the backgrounds, we’re going to choose the following image for the customer:

This image fits our goals for the company. The clasped hands indicate trust and imply the formation of a partnership or two parties coming to an agreement. The image is also subtle and relatively mild. This choice is due to the customer’s desire not to be too flashy and abrasive as a new business in town. Plus, the customer does not want to conform to the stereotype of attorneys using hyperbole and flashy advertising.

As noted above, My Postcard Printing also offers the option of uploading your own images for the postcard. Before you upload your image, you need to look at the image and determine whether it will be able to be reproduced on your chosen printed medium, in this case a postcard. A large image with many small details is probably not going to be reproduced properly on a small postcard. So you need to be conscious of the size of the postcard and choose an image which will fit on the card and be displayed properly.

Step 3: Creating the Image and the Preview PDF

Once you’ve chosen the template you wish to use, its time to design the postcard. Each of the design templates is formatted to allow you to completely edit the text of the document. The U-Design system automatically marks the bleeds and live area for the finished product. What this does is allow you to see what areas of your chosen image will most likely be on the finished product.

In each area where you see text on the pre-made design, you can edit the text to say what you wish. By double clicking on a text area, you can open up a box where you can type in your own text, replacing the text which is on the document. In addition, these text boxes can be moved to allow you greater freedom in placing the text on the document. The design tool also allows you to place your own images on the background.

Once you’ve completed the front and back of the card, the system will automatically prepare a PDF preview image of the postcard. This PDF is watermarked, but does show what the image will look like when completed. This is an opportunity to get an idea of how the final image will look and where elements of your image will fall on the final product. By carefully reviewing the preview image, you can determine what needs to be changed on your image before you get too far into the process to make changes. For example, if an important piece of your advertising falls outside the live area, you can see this in the preview image. This would allow you to change the image on your own computer and then re-upload it until you have a preview image which is laid out properly and looks the way you want it to look.

Following along with our proposed project, I’ve prepared two sample PDFs.

Looking at this image, you can see how we varied the text of the original image, keeping the text sizes the same. We also went with a less specific text on the front choosing to only have our chosen slogan “Your New Legal Partner.” The back then has the specific information that the customer is opening a new location.

INSERT IMAGE 3: PREVIEW PDF 2

With this Image we varied the theme slightly, putting the information about the new downtown office on the front of the card. This also shows that you can vary the size of the text on the front of the card as we used a smaller text on the bottom. The back is similar to the first, but without the information as to the new office, allowing us to space things differently.
Step 4: The U-Design team takes over

Once you’ve reviewed that preview PDF and it conforms to what you want, the last step is for the PDF to be turned into a finished product. One way you can help the U-Design team is to take advantage of U-Design’s Design Notes feature. With this feature, you can essentially give the team any directions you want in regards to how you want your project to look when its done.

Once you’ve added your design notes, you can submit the project to the U-Design team, for them to complete the work. Our team of designers will perfect the image and notify you when it is ready to be printed.

Conclusion

With the U-Design and our free design help, making effective postcard advertising has never been easier. With a solid planning on your part and the help of our professional designers, you can create the perfect postcard advertisement for your business.