Business Start Up Musts, Tips & Advice

With new businesses starting up every day, getting it right is key. No matter the industry you’re going into, you need to be aware of your competition, target, spending and most importantly your advertising. Without advertising your business could finish before it’s even started. This means that you need to get your advertising, promoting and marketing done right in order to give your business a chance.

To help make this process less daunting and easier to understand, Crystal Print have broken down four important areas of your business’s advertising to help make it more manageable. From printing to clothing, copying to signage, being able to promote your business in the right way is extremely important in order to ensure your business becomes the next big thing in your area. Check out the sections below to discover what’s involved in advertising and how each strategy can be utilised within your business to make you better than the business before, and the one after you!

Printing

Being able to get your message across in a professional and controlled manner, printing offers the perfect solution to increase brand awareness and showcase the best areas of your business. Whether you are promoting or advertising a product, service, current sale or your entire business getting the right message across is key. You need to show that you are professional, hard working business who is keen to give all of it’s customers a top quality product / service whilst staying with a cost friendly margin. Your printing will show the best of your business but without it, you could quite easily fall under the radar and people could be missing out on what you offer. You can never have too much printing, hence why Crystal Print offers the whole lot! We have you covered in all areas of printing including:

• Business Cards
• Leaflets
• Invoice pads
• Brochures
• Compliment slips
• Letterheads
• Calendars
• Funeral announcement cards
• Order of service
• Portrait printing
• Canvas printing
• Memorial cards
• Invitations
• Place name cards
• Table menus
• Table plans
• Correspondence Cards
• Labels
• Christmas Cards

Clothing

Ordering printing, copying and signage for your business is great, but without the right clothing your business could be portraying the wrong message. Do you want to show customers’ that you are professional and dedicated? Then without printed uniforms you could be giving potential customers the wrong idea about your business and what you do. With our T Shirt Printing available from just £3, there is no reason as to why you can’t showcase a good representation of your business. We offer a wide range of clothing available for personalisation and embroidery including:

• Polo shirts
• T-shirts
• Sweatshirts
• Fleeces
• Hoodies
• Caps and beanies
• Body warmers
• Coats
• High visibility clothing
• You name it, we’ll do it!

Copying

For newly started businesses, you will find that you require a lot of copying and digital printing to help promote your business. Whether the copying is to be kept in the shop or office or to go out to customers, you need to keep a consistent quality in order to prove to customers you are doing your all, not cutting corners. Here at Crystal Print we offer a wide variety of copying, putting you in control of what you would like printed or copied in order for your business to not only suit the needs of the client, but is portrayed in a way you imagined it to be too. Whether you are copying a menu, price list or just the latest notes for a meeting, Crystal Print are here to provide fast, sufficient and expert quality copies. Our colour copying is available from just 9p too! We can copy a range of size documents which include:

• A5
• A4
• A3
• A2
• A1
• A0
• 1 sided
• 2 sided

Signage

Are you opening up a new business in a shop, office or property? Then you will most likely need signage to indicate to your customers who and where you are. Signage is a perfect representation of any business as you get to include information such as: name, logo, website, contact info and images. Your signage needs to be kept interesting, detailed and informative so it can not only show customers who you are, but leave potential or unexpected customers curious to what it is you do, so that they want to enter your business. Our signage will help your business to not only stand out from competitors but be highly beneficial to increase brand awareness. No matter your needs for shop signage or banner printing, Crystal Print are the expert printers to call on.

Whatever Your Needs, Choose Crystal Print!

Our team at Crystal Print and here to help you no matter what, from newly started businesses to businesses with decades of of experience. Whether you require 10 or 10,000 prints, look no further than Crystal Print for all of your printing needs. Our team of experts will be able to assist, advise and produce some of the best quality prints in all of Essex, giving you ample opportunities to present your business and show customer exactly what you’re made of. Feel free to browse through our Gallery and Testimonials today for ideas and inspiration on how you can make the most of your business through printing and signage.

We offer a diverse range of services to help ensure you completely make the most of your products, services and most of all your business. So for all your printing, clothing, copying and signage needs, you know who to call… Crystal Print! After all, we have became the first choice printers and sign makers for a large number of people living within Billericay, Basildon and surrounding Essex areas!

London Marathon 2016

With the London Marathon fast approaching, now is the time to get your outfit sorted. Yes, a marathon isn’t a cat walk or a red carpet event, but having your very own T Shirt printed for just £9.95 will help you on your way.

Set to take place on 24th April 2016, the gruelling 26.2 mile race helps raise thousands of pounds for charities around the world every year. With more than 120,000 applications for this year's marathon, it’s important that you arrive in style with your very own personalised top.

The London Marathon is an important event for everyone up and down the country, as most runners take part for charity to raise money for good causes. Whether you are completing the marathon for a popular or local charity, Crystal Print will be with you every step of the way (literally).

All for a great cause

This year’s charity of the year is the NSPCC. On the 30th year anniversary from ChildLine first starting up, this charity is a great cause and helps many children and families stay in a safe and protective environment. The London Marathon are attempting to raise £2.3 million to help every child in need and of course, Crystal Print are totally behind this. So for every step, mile and road you run down, you’re not just doing it for yourself, but many children, families, adults and organisations will benefit from all pennies raised too.

You may end up putting blood, sweat and tears into the marathon, so it’s important that you look good whilst doing so.

Running Top Printers Essex

Whether you are looking to have your name, charity or sponsor printed onto your top, Crystal Print will be more than happy to do this for you. For both marathon runners and family members, choosing us to print your top for the big run on 24th April is sure to give you a huge motivational kick.

If you are looking to get your hands on your very own printed top for the London Marathon, be sure to choose Crystal Print for top quality finishes and even better prices.

All tops are available in a large range of colours and sizes, right up to 6XL. Call us on 01277 650661 to order your top and to specify the requirements, colour and personalisation you require. A member of our team will be happy to help in any way possible and ensure you have an amazing outfit for the big day.

Before we go, we’d like to wish all runners the best of luck in the London Marathon and hope you thoroughly enjoy the day. Ciao for now.

5 Reasons Printing is More Valuable Than Digital

The main question that gets passed around is “What is more valuable, printing or digital?”. There are of course two sides to every story, but the team at Crystal Print believe the answer of this question to be printing. With printing offering a wide range of opportunities and chances of advertising that digital could never offer, we believe printing to be the most successful form of promoting a business. We have pulled together 5 main reasons as to why printing is more valuable than digital and hope that you seem the same too.

1. Judgement

The appearance of your advertising is key, although digital marketing may wow you at a first glance, printed materials can come to a HD print with a more familiar and friendly feel to the way you advertise. If the advertisement looks too good to be true, it most probably is so by sticking to what you know and choosing printing, you will receive a high quality finish you expect with no nasty surprises.

2. Reader Capability

Reader capability is one of the main reasons that we believe that printing is more valuable than digital. Studies have shown that people prefer to read something printed rather than something in a digital format, so it is of vital importance that you remember this when advertising your business, your services or your products. If your customers physically have something in front of them to read, it could potentially persuade them to invest in your services.

3. Engagement to Customer

Studies show that printing is far more user friendly that digital, meaning the amount of time people spent reader a printed advertisement is far longer than reading digitally. If you are looking to move forward with your business’s advertising, printed documents offer the perfect solution. Not only is your reader able to hold the printing for themselves, they can choose when they want to read the document, whereas digitally they may see it once and never again.

4. Emotional Stimulation

Are you aware that printed materials appear to stimulate people’s emotions more than material in a digital format? The study that found this used biometric analysis of various different people’s emotional responses to both printed and digital material, and found that every signal of emotional engagement, such as sweat production, heart rate and the amount of body movement, were all higher with print than with digital. This just further proves that printing is more valuable than digital, because if you can generate emotional engagement with your products, the customers are a lot more likely to contact you and use your services.

5. Trustworthiness

Paper advertising feels much more trustworthy than what you see online, as you never know who or what you can believe. Digital marketing has to be done very carefully in order to show that they are a trusted business, but with printed paper you can make the judgement for yourself as you don’t have to worry about the online world of scams. All in all, printed advertising provides a much more higher chance of sales due to the fact that customers read the document for longer and at a time that they choose.

How Crystal Print Can Help You

Here at Crystal Print, we have been working in the printing industry for many years now, which has allowed us to hone and develop a few of our skills in order to help our clients better with their printing needs and requirements. We are blessed with a fantastic team of printers who are extremely dedicated to providing only the highest quality products for our customers. No job is too big or too small for us here at Crystal Print, we undertake jobs of all sizes in order to meet all of your needs and desires. Regardless of what you need, be it 5 business cards or 500 business cards, we have got you covered.

We care about and value each and every one of our clients and thrive on complete customer satisfaction, so you can rest assured that you are in good hands with us here at Crystal Print and you will get the best value for your money. Why not give us a call today on 01277 650661 or 01277 658844 to find out a little bit more information on how we can help you with all of our printing services? Alternatively, take a look around the rest of our website to find out what we’re all about, we look forward to working with you.

How Using Leaflets Will Increase Brand Awareness

Leaflets may look small, but they can have incredible benefits on a business. If you are in search of a cost friendly, effective form of advertising that will increase brand awareness, leaflets are by far the perfect choice. We believe that leaflets have many benefits and plus points, so much so the list is almost endless! However, in terms of increasing brand awareness you will be amazed at just how much something as simple as a leaflet has to offer. The team at Crystal Print have put our heads together to come up with the top five reasons why leaflets will help with your businesses brand awareness. We hope that they are of use to your business and you see a true improvement on your business’s customer base, profits and brand awareness.

1. Tangible

With leaflets offering a print that is there to hold and read at a time that suits the reader, it is more likely that it will result in a sale and increase brand awareness. This is due to the fact that the reader will feel no pressure into taking in the information or being interested in what is in the leaflet. By having a printed leaflet that can be touched and read through at the customer's convenience this will give the reader a relaxed and laid back approach to your services or products. Realistically, this gives you a much higher chance of moving forward to a sale and also increasing your brand awareness.

2. Affordable

Available to buy in mass amounts, having bulk leaflets printed gives you a cost friendly solution to increasing brand awareness. By having a affordable form of printing, it means you target and reach out to more people now that your branding strategy is cheaper. Here at Crystal Print our leaflet printing is available in bulk orders, giving you an amazing opportunity to save big and hit a large customer base! This will in fact increase your brand awareness more than you may realise as you are able to have more leaflets printed at a cost effective price, and therefore send out more leaflets to a larger proportion of customers.

3. Target Who You Choose

Printed advertising puts you in control of who you target, this allows you to determine where, who and when you hand out your leaflets. This will give you free reign into increasing your business and will only make your business better than it already is! You will be able to do many things with your leaflets including:

• Hand them out in towns to passers-by
• Leave them in shops for people to pick up on their own accord
• Post them to houses and businesses
• Have them inserted in local magazines and newspapers
• Place inside packaged orders
• Hand them out at events and exhibitions

4. Personal

If you are looking for a printed material that will not only give your customer a personal experience, but can kick start a customer relationship, leaflets are the perfect way to do this. They allow you to not only meet your potential customers face to face whilst handing out your leaflets, you can also leave a personal touch by having a box to insert their name or business. If you are interested in being totally individual with each print, you could even have their business name printed on which could be the difference in having or not having a sale. For printing material that will not only help with customer relationships but brand awareness to, Crystal Print believe that leaflets are the perfect solution.

5. Long Lasting

Your leaflet could find itself on a customer's’ fridge, draw or worktop until your services come in handy. For example, if you offer T - Shirt printing, the leaflet could be saved until they require this kind of printing. Not only are they long lasting in the sense that they can be kept, they can leave ever lasting memories for a customer if they always have your business remembered when seeking a T - Shirt printer. This will then in fact, grow your brand awareness as they know they can always count on your business, know where to find you and can even suggest your services to their friends, family or other business owners. Leaflets most definitely offer long lasting effects for not only your business’s customer base, but brand awareness too, so waste no time in having yours printed with Crystal Print today.
If you are in search of a cost friendly solution to increasing your business’s brand awareness, leaflet printing is the way forward. Having worked in the printing industry for many years, Crystal Print know that there is an array of benefits that come with leaflet printing and believe them to be extremely beneficial for any business. Make the most of your business and increase your brand awareness and choose Crystal Print for your leaflet printing today. We know you won’t be disappointed with our high quality leaflet printing, so get in touch with our team and we will cater to your every need!

Improving Your Businesses Advertising for the New Year

Crystal Print know that the beginning of the new year can be a tricky time for businesses and we are determined to help in any way that we can. Our team of highly skilled and experienced printers believe that improving your business’s printed advertising material can be of huge help to improve your business at the start of a new year. With years of experience in the printing industry behind us, we love nothing more than being able to help our customers in any way possible. Crystal Print offer a wide range of printing services for our customers and would like to help your business in the new year by printing new forms of advertising for your company.

By choosing Crystal Print for your printing this new year we will help and support your business and produce high quality advertising material with the aim that it will give you a boost in getting started again. Whether it be to promote your business with vehicle wrapping or having a new design for your printed stationery, we are here for you. We have put together a few of the ways which improving your advertising will help your business and hope they are of use to you.

5 Effective Ways to Advertise Your Business

Printed advertisements offer a brilliant way for your business to get the message out there that you exist and the type of services you offer. The list on advertising is close to endless, but Crystal Print have chosen five of our favourite advertising strategies. We hope that they are useful and help with your business’s advertising this year. Our top five advertising materials are:

1. Signage - There are a number of ways you can use signage to advertise your company. Crystal Print have found that vehicle signage is one of the most popular choices. Having advertisement material like vehicle wraps gives you  a 24/7 marketing campaign. Wherever you go, people will see your company name, logo and contact information emblazoned on your vehicle, leaving a lasting impression on anyone who sees you.
2. Clothing Printing & Embroidery - A good way to get your business’s branding out there is to implement a uniform into your workplace. This will help to generate brand awareness for your business and even out of work hours you are still advertising.
3. Business Cards - Business Cards are a brilliant idea for any business. They can come in handy at any time, unexpected or intentional by handing out your business card you are giving out a port of contact to a potential customer. Whether it be at a meeting, event, in the street or by post you can send your business’s contact details out in a small but useful fashion. Including your company name, logo and contact information, your business card can be stored or used immediately at a time that suits the client.
4. Leaflets - Leaflets can be very effective at advertising your business, if they are utilised in the right way. They can be used in a number of ways, by post to advertise your latest offers or at a business event to showcase your company’s services. Leaflets can come in useful for both expectant and unexpected customers, so whether you intentionally hand them out to people in the street or by off chance send them in a newspaper or post, they can generate sales.
5. Brochures - Brochures are a really good way of advertising and promoting yourself to other companies and your client base. If you have an office, you can keep brochures by the door so if clients are waiting to be seen they can have a read through and find out more about your company and the services you provide. They can also be posted through people's doors so they can give them a read and find out more about your business and how you can help them in their time of need.

Revamp Your Advertising

Refurbishing your advertising and coming up with new and exciting ways to showcase your business is a great way to improve your advertising material. If you already have existing advertising products such as: brochures, leaflets, business cards, or billboards then, it could be advisable to improve them with a revamp to keep them up to date and eye catching for customers. For example, if you have a poster which is worn down and out of date, we at Crystal Print know that people will often overlook unappealing and dull. Make the most of what your business has to offer and showcase yourself in the best light and choose Crystal Print today for all your printing needs! We will help with all areas of your printed advertising to ensure both existing and potential customers are amazed at your products and services.

How Crystal Print Can Help You

Crystal Print are in a very good position to help businesses that need to improve the print side of their advertising. We have extensive knowledge in this field and are able to assist you to advertise your business with our printing services. We aim to provide only the highest quality print products in order to get your business the most revenue that it can possibly generate all year round.

As a company, Crystal Print are able to offer a bespoke service unique to every company. We are able to listen to exactly what you need and how you want to advertise your business. Furthermore, we will advise you on how to properly go about it to get the most revenue for your company, from both clients and potential customers. By catching their eye and making them attracted to your company, this will increase the chances of them getting in touch with you if they ever need any of your services.

Why Print is More Valuable Than Digital?

If you were to print out the whole of the Internet, the stack of paper would go further than Apollo 11 travelled to the Moon. It’s a good job we don’t need to read all of that printed information. It makes the internet a lot more convenient to use as it is not printed. Also, it means that if there is a mistake, it can be corrected easier.

There are a few reasons found out from a recent study conducted by the Temple University Center for Neural Decision Making suggests that print has some significant advantages over digital content. We here at Crystal Print are going to tell you a few of those reasons.

Stimulation of emotions

Our emotions seem to be stimulated more by printed materials than they are by digital things. For the study, they used bio-metric analysis of emotional response and they found that all of the signals of emotional engagement, like sweat production, heart rate and the amount of body movement were lower with digital than print.

Desirability of the product

Desirability is a hugely significant point for e-business because it seems that some people desire products that are shown to them in printed form more than they want exactly the same product presented to them in digital, suggesting that your conversion rate is higher for print than digital.

Confidence and memory speed

The study found that people were a lot less confident remembering digital information than they were with printed material. Also, they were able to recall information from print quicker than they could from digital.

The time of engagement

From the study, they found out that people spent a shorter amount of time reading digital information than they do reading exactly the same information in print. This means that people spend longer scanning printed materials and don’t just glance at it once and move on. They actually take time to read it.

What does this mean?

In conclusion, the research conducted by Temple University Center for Neural Decision Making shows that your business has a better chance of gaining a more in-depth relationship with your customers and you can actually achieve more sales if you use printed material. If you are searching for a top quality printer in the Essex area, look no further and call on the experts here at Crystal Print! Simply give us a call today and we will show you the reasons why you should stick to printing when advertising and promoting your business!

Guide to creating the perfect Business Card

A business card is one of the most important forms of marketing for any business. More often than not a business card will be one of the first interactions a customer will have with your business. During the first few seconds of finding out about your business, customers will instantly make decisions about both you and your business. This is why it is extremely important to make sure that your business has an amazing first impression. Crystal Print have put together a simple guide on how to create the perfect business card to help you to stand out from the rest of your competitors.

Where to Start?

Whether you are a new business, or just investing in your first set of business cards it can be unclear on where and how to start the process. Does it need research? Do I need a design plan? Here at Crystal Print we appreciate that you may be unsure of how you would like your business card to turn out, and we are here for you through every step to provide help and guidance. If you are pushed for time or are just unsure on your business card, Crystal Print will provide you with everything you need to achieve that eye-catching, top quality business card.

1. Choose a product

Choosing the product is one of the most important steps of the perfect print. No matter if it is a business card or leaflet, the styles and layout of the product can reflect different things. Most businesses will provide a template or a gallery to showcase examples of their work. It is best to take the time to look through these in order to find the best product type to suit your business and its needs. These examples will show you what the finished result will look like and will determine whether or not they are beneficial to your needs.

2. Download a File

When you have chosen your desired template or preferred example, you can either download the file or inform the printers of which example you like best. From there you will be ready to input your businesses information, logo and colour scheme.

3. Creative Artwork in the File

Now that your template is ready for your businesses information, you can include your text and graphics. With it only being a business card, remember to keep things basic and not over crowd the card. Keep it simple and stick to the basics: business name, email, address, phone number, website, maybe a strap line and a logo. Remember, your business card must be easy to read, so don’t make the text too small or overcrowd the card with too much information.

4. Place Order and Upload File

When you are happy with design and overall look of your business card, go ahead and place your order. You can save your template as a print ready pdf and email or upload it ready to begin the printing stage. Business cards can come in a wide range of papers, weights and finishes so it may be wise to consider any extra touches to make the most of your business card.
Now that the stages of preparation for your business card is ready, everything will then be passed onto us here at Crystal Print. So sit back and relax, the next time you hear from us could be when your printing is ready and printed. If you have any further questions on our business card printing services, please don’t hesitate to give us a call today to discuss your needs further.