How to get your suppliers to advertise your business
One of the good things that you can take advantage of if you are a commercial printer is that you have many suppliers. You need to advertise upon starting operations.
Your suppliers can greatly help in this aspect through their greeting ads. While newspapers are often the ones handling the solicitation of ads, you can do it yourself by contacting your suppliers. Here is what you can do.
1. Set your grand opening date. While you have already opened your office and you may already be running the presses for some small jobs, you can still set aside a date where you will formally open your shop to the public. Make some fanfare about the event so that people will notice that there is a new business in the vicinity.
2. Ask for advertising rates from the local newspaper. You can choose to place ads in one or two of the leading dailies in your city. Check their coverage and then ask for their rates for a full page, half page, ¼ page or 1/8 page ad.
3. Write a proposal. Now that you have the rates from the newspapers, you can now make a proposal for your suppliers. Tell them that you are going to place grand opening day ads in the paper (indicate which ones) and the rates are as follows. Get them to commit by placing blank spaces beside each price so that they can conveniently check their choice. At the bottom, put a line and the word conforme so that the supplier can just sign it, indicating that they will indeed support you with a certain size of the ad.
4. Identify your suppliers. These are the suppliers that you would most likely have: commercial printer supplier, ink supplier, paper stock supplier, building contractor, interior designer, furniture shop, computer store for your computers, printers, scanner, and fax machine, internet provided, manpower agency, generator set supplier, shelves and glass panel suppliers, hardware
5. Write to all of them. Not all of them will have a positive response and some of them will just get a small ad size. It does not matter. If 75% of them will give you ads, that is already a good number and will take up a lot of space in the paper.
6. Collect the logos, contact details, and advertising messages your suppliers. Lay out the ads according to the sizes given by the newspaper. Design the greeting ad in such a way that it will contain the greeting, your company's name, services, and contact details, as well as the name of the supplier from whom the greeting is from. Below the logo of the supplier, include their address and telephone numbers as well. Doing your own layout will ensure the beauty of the design as well as the accuracy of the details. You can manipulate the designs in such a way that will give you much mileage in terms of promoting your company and services.
Placing print ads in the newspaper for your commercial printing company could cost a lot. If you get your suppliers to do that for you, you could get a lot of mileage as a commercial printer without costing you a cent except for some effort.
