Brochures are great for two reasons - their cost is low to create (Microsoft Publisher, Quark Express, PageMaker) and they are a great marketing tool. Consider the following items when putting together a brochure (cut sheet version and tri-fold version):

Color - Eye catching, and sets your brochures apart from others.

Content - Focus on the 3 strongest things you company does, and stick with them.

Ease of Reading - Does it read like a novel or does it make sense to average person?

First impression - What does the back or front say, without reading it, when it is lying on a desk for some to pick up?)

Size and Shape - Does it make sense for the average person who will pick up this item, does it enhance readability?

Please consider these items, and enlist a creative friend or relative, if you feel like it is too much for you to handle.

Post cards are my favorite item to work on. They offer flexibility and often are the easiest item to get noticed because most people don’t feel like they have the time to read a full brochure. Postcards are very effective because they have a cost advantage over other mailable items and they take a small amount of time to create and deliver. Postcards allow you to offer services to people with customized messages and allow you to do it often. You should consider the process of creating a postcard the same as a brochure. Please remember you have less space, so get to the point, and make the point concisely.

Marketing is very important to your business - consider the cultivation of prospects (possible new clients) to be extremely important to the success of your company. As you sit down to design your marketing materials, consider that each item should also be created in an electronic form so that you can use traditional channels (snail mail, hand delivery) to market your services, and also e-mail. To gather the names and addresses (postal and e-mail) is a chore that can be done in many way. You can buy lists, you can get lists by hand, you could hire someone to search all of the information, or you could buy a program that will allow you to search a website and extract names and e-mail address from any web page.

It has always been my advice to anyone in the live audio business to also consider other options that are available. These options are installations and sales. There will always be a “slow time” in the live audio industry throughout the year. Exploring other departments within your business will provide for you during the slow times. I think if you ask any owner of a live audio company, they all will say that installs and sales have helped their bottom line. The beautiful part of adding these two divisions to your business is that you are already covered under my insurance suggestions.

My favorite form of advertising and marketing for my audio retail business is co-op deals. This situation is where you choose your dealerships carefully, so as to promote your business, as well as provide for the lowest repair costs along with the most rider-accepted brands and models. Live audio “celebrities” (owners of the biggest, most well known sound reinforcement companies, for example) also appear in co-op ads, that result in better deals for them from the manufacturer whose products they are helping to promote.

Before you have made your final agreements with your local rep firms, or directly with the manufacturers, make sure to get their co-op offers in writing. There are many variations of co-op, most manufacturers offer some form that will help both parties. My only concern is that you get it in writing, and that you do your best to live up to your end of the agreement. Then, when it is time to evaluate the agreement, you can negotiate a better deal, or at least continue the existing relationship.

Two good sayings are: “Treat your customers as you would want to be treated and they will be a customer for life,” and “There are only 24 hours in a day, so please do not ask an employee to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself.”