A Big Mistake With Calendars You Won’t Make Twice
April 2, 2014 by Jim Braaten · Leave a Comment
In my nearly 30 years in the calendar publishing world I’ve witnessed a lot of mistakes. Some are rather innocent and have little lasting impact. Others…well, let’s just say we’ve known about folks who will literally bet their house on marketing and using calendars.
What a shame and what a risk! There’s a simple rule that must be adhered to no matter how you intend to use calendars as a marketing tool. The rule is simply this:
Develop your marketing strategy first and then afterwards design and publish a calendar keeping those distribution plans in mind.
Quite often we get successful photographers who come to us wanting to print a calendar. Usually what happens is they have been told repeatedly how good their photographs are and that they should be used on a calendar. In due time, the photographer succumbs to this constant ego stroking.
Now, that’s not to say they shouldn’t print a calendar. The point is being told your work is good enough for a calendar and actually walking down that path is a big journey. Moreover, a handful of clients who admire your work is great news, but it’s going to take hundreds if not thousands of people inspired to fork over money if the calendar is to succeed.
Several years back I had the unfortunate task of meeting with a calendar producer who was losing his shorts, so to speak, because he had invested foolishly. He simply designed a pretty calendar and reasoned it would sell like hotcakes. Guess what…it didn’t! In fact, he had a garage full of nearly 25,000 calendars he had taken a loan out on with his house as collateral. Think about it…you have to admire the moxy to be so confident in one’s sales effort to risk your home to print thousands of calendars.
Sadly, it failed miserably because he didn’t do his homework. Long before ink ever finds its way to paper the savvy calendar marketer develops his/her target market to ensure success and to minimize financial risk.
When potential custom calendar producers start telling me about their project and what plans they have I often stop them and ask…”so, how do you plant to sell or distribute it?” Usually there’s a slight pause as this is not the most appealing aspect of the project. Yet, it is by far the most important element.
Typically, I tell a potential calendar client how important it is for the cart not to come before the horse on these matters. In other words, we understand how the designing and printing of the calendar is the fun part. Still, for a calendar project of any kind to succeed the bulk of the work must come before the fun. In this case it means planning for success.
At CalendarsNow.com we don’t want to print and sell calendars that are destined for failure. We also don’t like to see customers struggle financially because they made some poor planning decisions. We’ve actually turned customers away because they didn’t heed our advice and we felt they were taking a path consisting of poor planning.
If you want to talk calendars with us we are only a phone call or an email away. Best of all, talking to us about your next calendar project does not obligate you in any way to do business with us. Each day we willingly share our calendar production knowledge with folks all over the world, and if they ultimately choose to do business with us that’s great. If not…well, we hope to have served some value to the calendar printing industry.
Whether you’re thinking of producing your own calendar or perhaps just using one of our many stock calendars with your promotional message, I can guarantee you that just 5 minutes of your time spent on the phone with our knowledgeable staff will prove to be time well spent. Give us a call.