Bullseye working with local charities

Posted on September 1, 2011 by danielfmurphy

Have you ever looked at your instrument and thought “How can I go on tour with this blank canvas?!” Well now you can go to Bullseye for all of your instrumental designing needs. As of last Monday 23rd, we can now print on guitars (electric or acoustic), basses and saxophones!

The first people to try out this new feature were the volunteers of S.W.I.P.E charity from Slough. S.W.I.P.E. is a musical charity helping young under privileged people achieve their musical potential by taking them to concerts, throwing concerts for people in Slough and giving them opportunities such as this free trip to the Bullseye Print Department.

A group of four keen young people, and their leader Jamie Green, entered the Bullseye print department with their instruments, designs, and intent of making their passion their own.

With the help of the Bullseye Print department, the young people’s drawings, colours and patterns were brought to life as they rolled out of the machine on vinyl sticker sheets, courtesy of Bullseye Ltd. The designs were stuck onto the various and instruments and almost instantaneously were ready to play in the shop!

The young volunteers were delighted with their newly customised instruments and you can be too! Just visit www.BullseyePrint.co.uk to submit your designs today. However, remember we do not just do musical instruments, call us today to find out what else we can print onto! Whether it be your car, instrument, child, pet or partner, call today!

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Annual Shields – You can go your own way

Posted on August 24, 2011 by jackfmurphy

We get a lot of shields come in to be engraved year in year out and it is amazing to see how long some of these have lasted. You have club members bringing in a shield to get engraved that’s older than they are.

And that’s why a lot of people are hesitant to get their shields replaced.

It’s fair enough, there’s a lot of history in those there shields. When you’ve got a club that can date its awards back over 25 years the last thing they want to do is start fresh with 2011.

So what’s the solution?Annual Shield

The best compromise you can sort out is first to start moving the side shields – the little pieces with the names on them – onto the back. Take the very first years and start to gradually move them onto the back of the plaque. This still keeps the plaque together but allows space for those young whippersnappers to get their name recognised.

Not completely satisfied with that? Well what a lot of people do is buy an even bigger shield to mount the first shield onto. Then you get an extra set of names going all around the border. And it means you’ve got a MUCH bigger shield to give out every year. That’s always got to be good, hasn’t it? Isn’t bigger better?

The last option is to draw a line in the sand and buy a new shield. Keep ol’ faithful up in the clubhouse and have a nice new shiny shield, and in another 25 years time you’ll think ‘ah it’s probably time to replace this one too’.

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Marketing, back to basics

Posted on August 23, 2011 by jackfmurphy

Marketing begins with letting customers know who you are, what you do and why they want to use you.
We’ve already covered letting customers know who you are with signage. Now the next step is telling people what you do.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? If you sell one core product great, it could be quite simple.

But if you’re like a lot of companies and you’ve diversified over the years by now you’ll have quite a wide portfolio of work. All of your staff may know what everything is, but your customers may not.

This is easily rectified. Excel is great for organising anything. Products especially. So take all of your products and categorise them into a spreadsheet, if you haven’t already.

Now you have all of those products nicely arranged start to work out the differences, and the similarities between them. Separate them into sections, but always look for cross points between the products so you can offer more to existing clients.

Once everything is arranged it’s time to launch a full scale marketing attack. Look at the categories you have for your products and decide how to work out your promotional material. This can be anything from flyers and posters to booklets and catalogues. The important thing is to make your material cohesive, this is where categorising helps.

Once you’ve got the printed material down, turn to your email and start punting out to your mailing list. When you collect customer information, use it wisely. If they are a football club, you don’t need to send them an e-flyer about hockey.

As always with marketing, follow up all of your work. Don’t just leave it to fly on it’s own. Come back to it within a couple of weeks and see whether it’s working, what needs to be changed etc. So your next campaign can be even better.

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Custom Printed Wallpaper

Posted on August 22, 2011 by jackfmurphy

Custom Printed WallpaperWhether it’s an office or a bedroom, no-one likes a blank wall. A white wall can be dull and uninspiring, and it doesn’t do anything for office moral to have an infinite whiteness staring you in the face.

So why not jazz it all up a bit?

A blank wall should be an opportunity. Seize it and use it as a chance to completely reinvent your office and get people excited about being in the room.

The quick and effective option to improve your office would be wallpaper. A million different styles available, and you can sit for hours on the internet looking through patterns working out which would suit the company best.

Or you could look at it from the opposite side of the picture. You are a company and you already have a style, so don’t bend to a standard pattern to find what would suit you. You should get printed wallpaper that is made especially for you. Designed to have your branding and whatever you want.

You could take a different approach and have a golf scene, or a picture of a ski lodge and just sneak your logo in the bottom. A picture of a cityscape will brighten the office up and you can get the added bonus of having your logo in as well. If it’s a showroom, then get QR codes printed as well to engage more with your customers.

Just don’t make it too exciting or you’ll find yourself staring at the wall instead of working.

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Twitter Tools and Coupons

Posted on August 19, 2011 by jackfmurphy

We’ve had some good jobs come in over the past week, a few big flag jobs which are keeping our Mutoh Viper very busy and HootSuitesome good vinyl banners orders to making sure the Seiko is paying its way.

A lot of what we’ve focused our time on this week has been on marketing. There’s our new print website which we’re promoting at the moment, so we’re punting that out to every search engine we can and using Twitter to get the word out.

The new tool we’ve started using this week is HootSuite. It’s a clever little tool for bringing together multiple social networking accounts – so for us its Twitter and WordPress – and has all of the feeds for them. As it’s cloud I can log in wherever I need to with all the information still there, and just pick up where I left off.

The Twitter following is growing nicely. With the use of Klout we see how we’re getting on – it’s important to not get too wrapped up with stats, but it is nice to see positive stats!

We’ve sent out requests to a lot of our current customers to try and create a community that is both past, current and prospective customers. With a bit of luck the responses to those requests will start trickling in and we will continue to grow.

We aren’t desperate to have 100,000 followers hanging onto our every word, but we want a good few followers that find our blogs useful, and vice-versa, so we can start a dialogue with them. Isn’t that what social networking is all about?

In addition to this to try and drive more traffic to the site there are the daily blogs, and also we’ve put out a new coupon – WEB10 for 10% off our print website – which we’ve uploaded to a couple of different voucher websites. We’ve put out the bait, so lets see what comes back!

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Corporate Golf Days – Printed Golf Tees

Posted on August 18, 2011 by jackfmurphy
Printed Golf Tees

Printed Golf Tees

When arranging a corporate golf day there are so many things to work out:

-          How many bacon sandwiches do you need for the day – and what to give people that don’t eat bacon?

-          Does John in Accounting get on with Marge in Sales – or would their failed affair ruin their four-ball?

-          Will everyone have enough balls and tees – or will there be a punch up on the 12th hole again when giving out more tees was the last straw for Kevin in Marketing?

Now there isn’t much you can do about the first two problems – that’s a matter for the caterers and councillors – and if Kevin has had enough, then there isn’t much to be done there. You should probably look for another Marketing Manager. But the tees situation is easily resolved: printed golf tees.

You can get a few thousand sorted out easily enough. Get your company name and website printed on the tees and any leftover can be used for next year, providing you don’t change your company name and website.

At the start of the day distribute 36 to each player – 2 for each hole for those that enjoy taking a ‘practice shot’ or a mulligan. With a bit of luck they’ll have a few more to take with them for their rounds after. And what do you have with that? Free promotion of your business by the people who know it best. If this were Twitter I would say #accidentalbutintentionaladvertising.

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Customer discounts – an ongoing battle

Posted on August 17, 2011 by jackfmurphy

There is a motto that comes with small businesses, and it is ‘we are not a charity!’. Why should we give a discount just because the customers asks for it, that’s not fair, we can’t afford it, and so the list continues.

It’s tough when you’re in a sales situation and the customer demands a discount, for the only reason that they are a customer. So the question is how to deal with it?

You have two options:

-          Tell them the price is what it is and there’s nothing that can be done

-          Drop the price and hope you can still make a decent margin out of it

Option one may lead you to getting a job at the price agreed and everything is hunky dory. But it can also lead to the customer walking away and you lose the business. So the predicament is: is it worth losing the business, rather than taking a hit on the margin?

The problem is each situation is completely personal to that business. If you are on decent margins, and they are a regular customer, or you spot an account that could grow with a bit of encouragement then you could go with option two, and give them a discount.

However, if the customer is just a chancer – like many are – hoping for a discount, but they won’t be become a regular customer or a solid account, then is it worth it?

To bridge the gap in between the best bet is putting out a special offer for ordering on your website. Many websites are set up to be integrated into an ordering system, so you can offer a discount because you won’t need to spend the time processing the order. 10% off is a gesture to show customers you’ll help them if they help you.

We’re currently running a voucher for ordering on our print website, WORDPRESS10 will give 10% off any product on the site. The idea is to promote the website and entice people in. It’s a nice token that will get customers involved and once they’ve seen the quality and the service, they will be hooked. That’s the plan anyway.

So when your customer is jumping up and down demanding a discount, one option is to send them to your website with a voucher – saving you time, and them money. Everybody’s gotta be happy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSMXsGLQX-g]

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QR Codes for Businesses

Posted on August 12, 2011 by jackfmurphy

Firstly what are they?

QR CodeThey are those funny little pictures that are appearing more and more all over the magazines, posters and the internet. Some codes are very simple, like the one to the left, or more complicated like the one below to the right. To active the code you scan it with an app on your phone – iPhone, Android  or other, and then whatever information is preset in the QR code comes up.

What can they be used for?

You can have a message, launch a video on YouTube, take customers to your website and much more with a QR code. They are a way of engaging with your audience in a deeper level, and giving them an enhanced experience of what you provide. A lot of film posters now have QR codes because they can load trailers immediately on potential viewers phones.

How can they be used in printing?QR Code

QR codes can be printed on anything, and they can be used to develop your advertising. You could launch a video from your business card, advertising what your company does. Or your printed flyers can give your customers a coupon to use on your website.

It is all about engaging with your existing and potential customers in a way that goes beyond just having a picture and a bit of text explaining yourself.

How can you make them?

QR codes can be easily made on quite a few websites – our preferred is QRStuff.com – and they can be printed onto anything that we do at no extra cost. So next time you need to sort out your flyers, business cards, banners or anything then consider getting a QR code printed with Bullseye.

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Floor Stickers

Posted on August 11, 2011 by jackfmurphy

Floor StickerHere at Bullseye floor stickers are all we talk about. We find them just that exciting. It’s taken a bit of tweaking but we’ve spent a good amount of time finding the right materials for it, testing them all out and now we are pleased to launch our floor stickers properly.

We print onto a high quality vinyl which is then laminated with a heavy grade laminate, and then the stickers are cut to shape afterwards. That way you can have a full colour design with a stylish cut-out to match it. All you do is then remove the sticker from the backing, find the right place on the floor and BAM, you have a floor sticker. They come in up to 1 metre wide by however long you need it, you could even do your design in tiles and cover your entire floor with it from wall to wall.Floor Sticker

What can they be used for? Well they are just good ol’ fashioned advertising from the floor up. They can be used for showrooms to grab your customers’ attention when they first walk through the door. Or they can be used to add a bit of colour into the office, and impress your clients when they come to you for meetings.

It’s all about making the most mundane part of your office, the floor, that bit more exciting. Not enough? Get some printed wallpaper as well then.

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Small Business Marketing With Signage

Posted on August 11, 2011 by jackfmurphy

Printed FoamexHow can anyone know who you are or what you do without a good solid sign behind you? Or in-front of you as the case may be. Without your name and company details in 3 foot high letters several feet up in the air, many people will struggle to find your shop or find what you do.

If you see a shabby sign on a store-front, your first thoughts aren’t going to be positive. You’ll think ‘well they don’t have the time or money to make themselves look good’ which will lead to ‘why should I spend money with them?.’

We’re all very superficial, at least in shopping terms, so why not just admit it?

That is why signage is such a fundamental aspect of small business marketing. It is for many small businesses the first port of call with a customer, and you want to make a solid first impression as soon as they walk up to your shop.

But you don’t always need an all-singing-all-dancing sign with flashing lights and moving pictures. Much of the time, a nice clearly printed foam PVC sign will do the trick. It’ll sit up on top of your shop for a good couple of years and can be easily changed when you want to upgrade it. With your logo nicely displayed and a bit of text clearly explaining who you are and what you do, the world is your oyster.

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