You have just received an offer for free business cards. This sounds almost too good to be true. “What’s the catch?” you wonder. The fact is, there is no catch, the printer just wants to demonstrate to you their fine product.

The company that is offering the business cards has a lot of faith in the quality of their work. They know that if you could just see and feel the quality of their cards, you would see the value that their company offers to your business. It is difficult to see the excellence of the printing or feel the quality of the paper on which the cards are printed on a web-site. You need to see the vividness of the colors, the crispness of the printing, and the quality of the paper first hand.

The company that has the offer looks at the cost of sending out free samples of their quality work as just another advertising cost. It is just a cost of doing business for them. Advertising dollars are spent in many ways which include: mailers, billboards, TV and radio, and product demonstrations and samples. Free business card offers are an example of product samples. A business decision has been made that offering samples is a cost effective way to target a specific market segment.

The company offering the free samples is banking on several conditions that will encourage the recipient of the free cards to reorder more cards or other products at the normal rate:

1) They have confidence in the quality of his product and the recipient will be pleased with the quality of the product.

2) When there costumer realizes the quality of the product and the value they receive, the costumer will be very likely to order additional products from the same supplier.

3) Humans are creatures of habit. Once a business owner has established a good relationship with a supplier of any type, that relationship will usually continue, unless a dramatic event takes place.

Once the printer is able to entice you to order your free sample, he is confident that you will reorder. As a business owner who orders the free business cards, you then have a selfish interest to re-order more business cards from the free sample company for several reasons:

1) The printer has already completed the lay-out and one time production costs of the cards, so this cost has been eliminated from any additional orders, thus saving you, the customer, money..

2) Keeping the same card style and lay-out gives the impression of a stable, established business. It makes sense for a business owner to re-order business cards from the same company to save money, for convenience, and for continuity of the business’s image.

Offering free business cards is not always as costly to the printing company as you may think. The printer’s cost of ink and paper is not what he charges for the final product. His actual cost is much lesser than the retail price, so the ‘give away’ is not what he would charge at retail. While 500 business cards may cost you, the buyer, $40.00 the printer’s actual cost is much less, and that cost is the true cost of his ‘give-away’. Also, the lay-out designer and pressmen are already on the payroll, so the time involvement by them is already a business overhead expense. The point is, the true cost to the company is not as great as you may first think.

Bottom line: Free promotions can benefit both the promoter and the recipient. The costumer gets products to promote his business for free, and the business card company gets relatively low cost advertising. See, everyone wins.

Author: David Dumas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

Looking for a nice low cost way to print your promotional brochures this holiday season? Well, while cheap brochure printing is possible during the holidays, you have to be creative with your options to really make it low cost.

Here are a few suggestions on how to get those holiday promotional color brochures for a real low price and still make them look good.

• Printing at home – If you just need a few maybe 10-20 for your small business, a low cost alternative to printing is to print them at home. Most home or office printers can handle small-scale full color brochure printing quite easily. You might take a major hit in your ink or toner levels but at least you save on labor and delivery.

Moreover, you can also print extra easily when emergencies arise since all you need to do is just feed paper and print. Therefore, your basic cost for this is just your ink or toner plus the paper. This is the cheapest printing technique that you may want to consider.

• Getting those special holiday printing discounts – Now, if you still want to have that professional style of printing but still want it at a low cost, the best way to do this during the holidays is to search for printing services that have holiday discounts. Not all brochure printers offer this and you might have to search a bit to get the best printing discounts out there.

Sometimes this can be in the form of lower printing quotations, but most of the time these offers can also include free add on services such as chemical coatings, folding, hole cutting etc. Just look extensively for the offer the best suits your budget and your printing type.

• Don’t be afraid to print small – You may also try changing the physical dimension to lower the cost of printing. Instead of printing those long standard brochures, you might want to switch to a smaller dimension such as a letter sized brochure (when it is all opened up) or even smaller size. Printing smaller size means saving money on materials, so if you really need the extra money, do not be afraid to print smaller sizes. They should still be okay.

• Never get too wild – Finally, I can suggest to you that you should leave all your wild customizations behind. You might want glitters to appear, or you might want to create some made of plastic or rubber. All these ideas may seem good and unique but they also entail a great degree of customization that has a high price. If you are trying to save money, it is best to keep to templates and simple designs so that you will not have to pay the enormous customization fee.

Try all these tips out and you should probably minimize your budge for printing brochures significantly. Good Luck!

Learn about the developments in brochure printing industry that help businesses in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of the developments in online printing that help businesses in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/printing-articles/low-cost-brochure-printing-during-the-holidays-1731617.html