Hunting and Gathering: Preparing Marketing Materials for Publication
Prepare for the hunt. Whether you plan to design marketing materials for your dance studio yourself or contact a professional designer, you need to put some time into the basic hunting and gathering of materials before you head to the printer. Then, after careful preparation, good editing and thorough communication with your printer, you’ll see better results whether you do the work yourself or pay a pro to carry out your print or Web vision.
Over the past several months, different pros have presented some good ideas about dance marketing. In the July issue of Dancer, Danie Beck wrote about creative communication for the studio director based upon her 40 years of successful communication with students and parents. In September, we talked with marketing specialists who weighed in on how to make a marketing plan and focus content to create an appropriate marketing vision. With those ideas in mind, it’s time to put your ideas together.
Capture your audience: After you decide upon your product, it’s time to channel your hunting and gathering efforts to create marketing materials that meet important communication goals: 1. To get the maximum amount of information organized into text documents. 2. To organize, reorganize and edit content with a strong vision of how this information is useful to your reader. 3. To keep the reader on the page through great content and design that includes effective photography and graphics.
If you can’t keep readers on the page, it doesn’t matter what the words say because your audience takes a pass, tunes out, when they lose interest. Oh yes, we all do expect our information to be short, concise, interesting and useful. Think about your own reading habits as you hit and miss your way through Web or printed content, and put yourself in the place of the reader.
Choreograph your content: Does the idea of all of that preparation sound familiar? Like a well-choreographed dance, successful content comes from practice and collaboration. The best advice to all writers: it's critical to step back after you get the rough draft completed, analyze your goals again, and ask yourself questions about whether your content answers your goals. It’s also important to be concise and edit out repetition. Dancer art director Elizabeth Miller says, “Paring down copy for print can make your message more clear, and if people are interested, they will call you or go to your website. For instance, making the focus of a brochure just to summarize new fall classes while offering one free pass is much better than trying to go into great detail about any and every program you offer. Less is always more.”
In addition to designing Dancer each month, Miller has created all sorts of dance industry related marketing materials, such as brochures, websites and catalogs. Miller’s number one piece of advice? “Proofread everything. Have a friend read it. Spell check it, double, triple check it.” Another idea that works really well as you near a final proof: read the material aloud, record it, and listen or ask someone else to listen. If a sentence sounds strange or awkward, revise it. Why? “Because designers are not always the best copy editors,” she says, “and as soon as you sign off on a design and it goes to print, you assume any responsibility over errors.”
Don’t forget style: As you get words on the page, your grammar check on your word processing program alerts you that something is amiss. Don’t ignore the alerts, but don’t consider that the word application will catch everything. During the editing process, many of the major problems can be eliminated by online sources such as the standard for journalism, Webster’s online http://www.merriam-webster.com/. Use the thesaurus to spice up and vary your adjectives and verbs. You can go online to reputable publications to see how editing pros handle content and style issues. For style questions go to Associated Press Stylebook online http://www.apstylebook.com/. You can even tweet on A.P. Twitter with your questions.
Think beyond the basic steps: When you feel you are near the final edit, go back again to look beyond spelling and grammar for factual errors, inconsistencies, typographical and grammatical errors, mathematical errors, unclear statements, outdated information, and problems with organization of information. As you “choreograph” your text, the editing and proofing save money and safeguard your reputation. When you see an error after the ink is on the page, reprinting isn’t usually a budget option. Often, you have to cringe and live with it. The hunting and gathering is indeed like rehearsal. You wouldn’t cut “practice” and still plan to perform for an audience. Miller says to finalize copy as much as possible before commissioning a designer. “It’s just a huge waste of time and money if copy is not finalized and the designer has to rework something from scratch.”
Don’t use your time formatting type with your word processor because a designer with a professional design program may lose the formatting when the text is placed. First, be sure you use a word processing program your designer says will drop in or transfer to the design application. Then, let the designer format bold, italic, all caps, size and typeface on the design page and align the text to keep consistent styles. Avoid costly edits on the page: type only one space between sentences (not two), avoid random capitalization, use left justification only, and single space all type.
Connect with production pros: If you are doing the work yourself and are technically savvy, dance marketing expert Tracy Bauer suggests learning to use computer software like Photoshop or Publisher to design some of your own materials. Bauer says, “If you have the funds to hire a professional though, I do think that it is best spent on the design for your brochure and your website since those are your most compelling marketing materials that make a huge first impression and don’t need to be updated often.”
So, how do you get from the beginning to the end with your designer and printer while avoiding common pitfalls? Collect samples of the type of end product you expect. Create a schedule and budget that includes proofs and revisions and stick to it. Get everyone involved and on the same page from the beginning. If you know there will be a copywriter, a content designer, a printer or a web designer, who will answer to whom? A clear plan will get everyone headed in the same direction from the get-go, toward design that works.
It’s still a good idea to touch base early with a printer, even if you are doing the work entirely yourself. Local copy and print vendors can offer you estimates, guidance and design services through creative services personnel who put together brochures and websites every day. At the point of design and print, communication with the creative artist and the printer is crucial. Miller says, “Every professional designer should know how to talk to printers, how to get things made, and how to provide the correct file types for your printer’s use.” A few words of caution here: not every designer has a good rapport and good working relationship with every printer. In fact, it is sort of a given inside joke in the industry that printers can be difficult. It’s a wise move to allow designers to choose a printer with whom they have worked before.
Get what you want: Doing the talking yourself? To get what you want: 1. Be very specific about what you are expecting from your printer. 2. Listen carefully to avoid expensive misunderstandings. 3. Ask questions if you feel you need more information. 4. Build in extra time to edit and revise. Rushed deadlines lead to poor results. 5. Get specific estimates and deadlines in writing. 6. Ask for mock-ups if you use creative services and preferably two or more proofs regardless.
This is not the time to be shy about what you want or to give up and settle when you can get exactly what you envision. Printers have very specific requirements for top quality resolution and color, but don’t always communicate effectively about how to get the best quality. Miller emphasizes printers’ requirements vary and Portable Document Format (PDF) specifications can affect print quality. Get the information you need. “Some printers want PDFs, some will take native InDesign or Quark files and create PDFs for you.” However, Miller cautions, she recommends going to the printer with the PDF made, as fonts and links can be substituted or lost altering the design. Ask for a guide if you plan to make your own PDF. “All printers have their own PDF presets, which can usually be found on company websites or by talking to your printer personally,” Miller says.
More about photos and graphics next month, but ask your printer early about guidelines for color and graphics to avoid costly fees. It’s definitely better to know the parameters for the best end results for your product. Realistically, printers are paid to print what they get and work on stringent deadlines themselves. Careful preparation, thorough communication, and good time management on your part will definitely pay off. You have to be on top of your own game every step of the way to get the best product for your money and for your studio.
Terri Diffenderfer is a senior lecturer in photojournalism, newswriting and news editing and design University of Nebraska at Kearney.