A guide to Banner Stands

I recently was asked to write a Guide to Banner Stands for work.com. In case you dont know, work.com is a website that asks what you know and to share it with others. They have a sister website called business.com which a very focused b2b search engine kind of like a google for business to business only.

Here is an excerpt from the guide: "Banner Stands are a very popular and affordable tool for the marketing and sales professional. They are lightweight, portable and setup quickly. Banner stands come in all shapes and sizes - having a basic knowledge of the various types available is going to save you time and money. Have your graphics designer create a banner stand with the following three principles in mind: Fast, Friendly and Free (Read the Tips & Tactics below). Plan your banner stand product selection and purchase based on your organization's future growth needs.".

Check out these websites - they are very broad and yet contain very focused content.

It looks back at you!

Here is a bit of creativity - I was excited about this project. The customer loved the design.

He currently runs his own Mortgage firm and is starting a new Real Estate Company in a very competitive market. I thought he was crazy, but he is a cash paying customer, Olympic Gold Medalist, Retired Airline Executive and former Gold Cup Captain - some guys have all the luck in the world.

Banner Design to Trade Advertising

Its always great to see a customer get some downstream value from the design work I do. Greenfield Software decided to use the same design I created for their UltraBanner in some trade advertising they purchased. I reformatted the files to a high resolution for 4/c process printing and changed the proportions of the design to fit the 1/3 page ads.

Greenfield manufactures software for the Temp Labor Industry and had me include three different sub-headlines in three different ads.

This type of work falls into to $99.00 Ultra banner_Design services I offer.

Bayada Nurses

I have been working with Bayada for about three years. They were one of my first customers - its my daughter Rosie's agency of choice.

Some of the agency offices have asked me to design various marketing brochures - and most recently is the CAP program brochure for the Charlotte office. Its a simple tri-fold with a nice friendly feel.

I have to admit that it took way to long to complete. Many thanks to Holly_A for her patience and support.

NEW Website Launch

The Ultra Banner.

www.theultrabanner.com

Its finally here. After three years on the web and producing more than 1500 Ultra_Banners, all sold thru the old website: www.showmeasignusa.com - I became convinced that my customers were ready for a new branding and positioning strategy.

The new site offers the visitor a chance to learn about my products: Ultra banner_One, the Ultra banner_Pro and the Ultra_Wall.

The previous site served me well - but average visitor page views were around 2.5 per visit. Also I was only getting a ROI of about 2%.

Check out the site and let me know what you think.

How Fast Can We Turn Jobs?

This not typical - but it happens every few weeks. I received a call from a new customer just after 2 PM on Friday afternoon. It was actually a referral - my favorite! Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches, Inc. had gotten my name from one of the 15 Florida Chapter CRS banners that I did almost two years ago...

"Can I get two Ultra_Banner stands delivered to Washington DC by Monday?"

Caught off guard, I visualized (in a micro flash) the various jobs in the queue, the time of day it was, my inventories, printer ink levels and 7 or 8 other things including the weather and I simply muttered: "Uh yeah. Sure". I called my self to the situation and managed to ask: "When will the artfiles be ready for preview?".

Well - apparently the files were ready and sitting safely in my Inbox a few minutes later. By 3 PM I had published previews for review and comment and placed the jobs into the printer queue by 3:30PM.

The job shipped that afternoon via FedEx Standard Overnight for $65.00... I guess thats pretty fast.

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck