With the arrival of Fall, our thoughts turn to the upcoming holiday season, and that gets us thinking about gratitude. Letting your clients know you appreciate them is something that should happen year-round, but physically demonstrating it often takes place during the holidays and involves sending a small gift.
A custom calendar is a versatile and affordable marketing tool that allows you to recognize your customers, capture new fans and even increase holiday sales. Impress your clients with a creatively designed product they’ll use year-round. Best of all, we can create calendars from postcard size to poster size, with lots of options in-between, depending on your budget and goals. From GotPrint, here are some ideas for custom calendars that you can adapt for your business!
Give Calendars Away as Incentives
Looking to increase your social media presence, boost your ratings on online review sites, or get your clientele to fill out a survey? Offer a free branded calendar to the first hundred people to complete your request.
Incorporate Monthly Discounts
Service-based businesses (such as restaurants, salons, landscaping, cleaning, mobile car washing, etc.) can keep customers coming back all year long by giving away calendars with coupons and offers on each month’s page.
Offer Exclusive Content
Active on social media? You probably take tons of photos and post your favorites to your website and social pages. Save a dozen of your best images and offer them only on your calendar, giving your fans an exclusive glimpse they can’t get anywhere else. For example, food bloggers can reveal secret family recipes, travel writers can showcase stunning vacation photos, and makeup artists can include their best beauty tips.
Tailor Calendars to Your Industry
Each industry has its own timelines and seasonal fluctuations, so a calendar designed around your industry can be a very useful asset. Appealing to teachers? Offer calendars that start in August and are pre-printed with school holidays, exam dates, and lesson plans for various subjects and education levels. Wedding planner? Gift brides-to-be with wedding checklist calendars that correspond to a year-long planning process. Bankers and accountants can help their clients reach their financial goals with calendars that include investment advice and monthly budgeting tips and goals.
Turn Calendars into Collectibles
If you’re a visual artist, create and sell calendars that feature a different work of art each month. Writers can market autographed collections with short stories or poems, and photographers can offer limited-edition copies of their outtakes. By releasing a new calendar every year, you can build demand and interest among loyal fans.
CrowdSource Through Contests
Get your fans involved by hosting a calendar photo contest and rewarding the winners with gift certificates to your business. Invite your public to submit photos centered around a theme (pets, nature, and food are always popular) and get the word out about the contest through social media, emails, and blog posts.
Make Your Calendar Educational
A custom multi-page calendar is a perfect platform for sharing knowledge that’s relevant to your product or service. Wine retailers can carry calendars that cover the history of wine, the different varietals, and how best to taste, serve and store wine. Travel agencies can display calendar brochures of their most popular destinations, with colorful glossy photos and plenty of historical facts and sightseeing advice.
Raise Awareness and Funds
Nonprofit groups such as charities, churches and museums can create informational calendars outlining their goals to keep their organizations front and center year-round. Studies show that as much as 31% of annual giving happens in the last few weeks of the year, so offering a thought-provoking and engaging calendar is the perfect way to thank donors and members.