Free Report: Inside Info On How To Save A Ton Of Money On Brochures, Stationery, Forms, and Almost All Of Your Business Printing Needs!

Hi. My name is Ken Hendershot, owner of Kennex Marketing Services in Mesa, AZ. I’ve been in the printing business for over 30 years now. Things have changed drastically over that time, especially due to computer technology.

The one thing that hasn’t changed much is that people think business printing is too expensive, too complicated, and full of too many surprises.

I’ve been able to save people tons of money and most of the frustration because I know the business like the back of my hand, and I’m always willing to be fair with people. There is plenty of money to be made in this business, and I’ve found that if I give people what they want at a fair price, we can all benefit.

That is the reason I’ve put together this report. The printing business is very complicated, very expensive, and filled with hidden pitfalls if you don’t know how to avoid them.

Hopefully you will be able to avoid these problems after reading this report.

Here, in no particular order, are the 13 ways to save big money on printing.

1. Use House Stock When Possible

Have you ever gone into a bar and ordered a gin & tonic, and they ask you which brand of gin you would like? Well, some people don’t really care what brand the gin is, they just want a gin & tonic. Anything in a bottle will do, as long as it’s of decent quality and they’ve at least heard of the name before.

If you order the house brand, the drink costs $4. But if you specify that you want Tanquerey or Beefeater or any other brand, the drink will cost you $6. That’s the price you pay for being picky.

Printing is a lot like ordering a cocktail. You can make it as simple or as complex as you like. Just understand that if you make it complicated it will cost you a lot more.

If you want 100# gloss book paper and are willing to go with the “house stock”, (which is usually of decent quality but certainly not the best), you will pay one price. If you specify a certain brand of paper you are almost always going to pay a penalty for that choice.

Now most people can’t tell the difference between one brand and another when it comes to paper. Many people can’t tell the difference between a #1 sheet (the best) and a #3 sheet (somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum).

If you are like 98% of the people in the world, the brand makes no difference, as long as the paper is of decent quality. You will save A LOT of money if you just accept the printer’s house brand of paper!

2. Conform To Standard Sizes and Specifications

This is the same reasoning as #1. If you conform to standard sizes and specifications, as in standardized paper stocks, you will be able to produce your job for much less.

For example, the standard size for letterhead and most product brochures is 8.5” x 11”. Printing equipment is designed to produce this size efficiently, and paper stocks are sized to trim down to 8.5” x 11” with the least amount of waste.

There are standardized sizes for almost anything you get printed. Business cards are almost always 3.5” x 2”, pocket folders are usually 9” x 12” when folded, and letter sized envelopes are always a standard #10.

If you choose something out of the ordinary be prepared to pay much more for it, possibly two or three times more!

3. Avoid Using Specialized Colors

Once again, this has to do with keeping it simple and within accepted print standards as much as possible. You can print using almost any color of the rainbow, and if you need an exact match for a corporate logo you can print with an exact-match color. But remember that it will mean printing with a 5th color in addition to the standard four colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

You can get a pretty close match using the standard CMYK and for most applications it will be close enough. If you require extra specific color matches, expect the price again to double or triple.

4. Use Printers That Do Gang Runs

What is a gang run, you ask? Well, simply put, it’s when your job is run in combination with other jobs, together on the same press sheet.

For example, many presses can run a 25” x 38” sheet. You can fit eight 8.5” x 11” sheets on one of these large press sheets. If the printer runs your job together with seven other jobs, he cuts his production costs way down.

A printer who specializes in this sort of thing, such as a trade printer (more on trade printers later), will pass along the majority of the savings to his customer. In short, they make their living by being super efficient, and make their profit from high production volume due to that efficiency.

It is true that not all print jobs are suitable for gang runs. If the quantity is very high or the color must be an exact match, ganging it up with other jobs is not the right thing to do. But for most of what your business requires, gang runs are a great way to save some money.

5. Avoid Typical Advertising Agencies

Advertising agencies specialize in handling large accounts for huge corporations. Huge corporations usually don’t care that much about keeping costs low. They just want to get things done, and ad agencies are all to willing to accommodate. They will handle every detail of your ad campaign, including printing brochures, business cards, or anything else you have in mind. But they will charge an arm and a leg to do it.

A typical ad agency will mark up everything at least twice, and probably more like three times. I can say with a virtual certainty that If you are a small to medium sized business and you are using a typical large ad agency, you are paying way to much for printing.

There are independent designers and pre-press technicians out there who will do everything an overpriced agency will do, but because their overhead is so low, they can give you great service and still get you great prices as well.

In fact, we are one of those small agencies. We have consistently been able to provide great service to our clients at costs that are still less than you could negotiate with your local, neighborhood printer.

Hard to believe? I’ll explain how at the end of this report. For now, let’s get back to how to save some money with your printing.

6. Pay Attention to Postal Regulations When Doing Direct Mail

The post office also has it’s own set of standards for printed material that it sends out through the mail. If you get them wrong, it can cost you a fortune in postage. Place the permit number 1/8th of an inch too close to the edge, or have the brochure open in the wrong direction, and the post office may refuse to deliver your piece at the reduced rate you expected.

Post office regulations can get really complicated, and getting info from the government is like pulling teeth, so if you don’t have time to waste dealing with the layers of bureaucracy at the post office, you need to find someone who is already an expert on the subject of Post Office regulation.

7. Don’t Deal With Print Salesmen

I have nothing against salesmen in general, but print salesmen are unique in this special way: 98% have no clue what they are talking about.

The printing industry is an extremely technical field, organized into small groups of specialists who know their own specialty very well but would have a hard time explaining what goes on in another department. Even people who have been in the business for years are baffled by some of the processes required to produce a printed piece.

For the most part, salesmen have almost no technical experience. They are good talkers but really can’t answer your questions with much authority.

On the other hand, there are people out there who do have a high level of technical ability, but they are hard to find because they don’t actively try to sell themselves to customers.

If you can find someone like this, they can be worth their weight in gold. Since they’re not professional salesmen, you may not always hear what you want to hear, but you will almost always get good information instead of smoke and mirrors.

8. Printers Vary Wildly In Quality and Price. Always Shop Around

There are three things to look for when shopping for printing: Price, Quality, and Turnaround Time. You can sometimes have two out of three. But you can’t get them all!

If you need things super fast you will either pay a premium price or quality will suffer. If you want great prices you may have to give a little on turnaround time, quality or both. If you demand great quality, you must pay the price for superior craftsmanship. It will cost more and probably take longer.

Most print buyers are price driven. They want quality and turnaround, but when push comes to shove they are willing to give a little to get a great price. There are ways to minimize costs. You just have to know who to deal with.

If you deal with retail printers and print salesmen it is very difficult to get excellent prices combined with reasonable quality and turnaround time.

But more on this later....

9. Printers Are Specialists In Certain Product Niches

No one can be all things to all people. And this is especially true for a complicated manufacturing process like printing. Each printing company has a specialty that they have carved out for themselves, based on the limitations of their personnel, their equipment, and their philosophy of doing business. You can’t expect to get envelopes done efficiently by a printer who specializes in complicated color work. And you can’t get decent four color work from a printer who’s specialty is carbonless business forms.

It is difficult to know the specialty of each printer unless you have a pretty intimate knowledge of how the business works. You can gain the necessary experience through trial and error (mostly error) but the learning curve can be very painful and probably very expensive.

10. Enlist The Help of Smart People Who Know The Business

A good broker/agent can save you a lot of time, frustration and money. If they keep their overhead low and focus on their client’s needs, these print professionals are worth their weight in gold (I know I already said that but it's worth repeating!).

Most traditional agencies don’t qualify as efficient and client focused. They are used to dealing with large corporations with vast advertising budgets, and often it seems like their prime focus is to make sure they spend the entire advertising budget their clients allow them. They do give good service but the cost is much too high for a small to medium sized business.

Small, independent agents, graphic artists, and brokers can do the same thing a large agency can but at a fraction of the cost. When you find a good one, make sure you don’t lose their number!

11. Use Professional Grade Software

Unless you are a qualified graphic artist I wouldn’t suggest doing the design work on your print project yourself. The cost to have it done professionally is basically a one-time charge. Once you have it done, getting it re-printed is a snap since the artwork is already created.

If you insist on doing things yourself, make sure to use the right computer applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, QuarkXpress, etc.). These are the programs printers are used to using. If you use something else (like Microsoft products, for example) the quality of your project will suffer and there is a good chance your artwork will need to be re-done anyway to fit the minimum requirements for the print industry.

If you’re not familiar with technical terms like image resolution, RGB vs CMYK, vector data, raster data, and the proper use of design elements like fonts, graphics, and white space or negative space on a page, then you are much better off sticking to what you do best (running your business) and leave the technical mumbo-jumbo to an expert.

12. Beware of Online Printing Companies

Online printers are popping up all over the Internet now. It has created a lot of price competition, to the point that I know of one printer who is giving away free business cards. Now free may sound great, but I’ve seen these free products and they’re not suitable for a real business with a real image to project. These free business cards look like something you would print yourself on a desktop inkjet printer (that’s probably how they were done!). They look cheap and homemade.

Your business needs to project a certain image of competence and professionalism. Everything you give to a client or potential customer says something about your business: Is it successful? Is it professional? Are they a fly by night operation who can’t afford to spend $60 for decent business cards? Will they be here next month or next year when I really need their help?

These are the questions that are always rolling around in your client’s head. Let’s not make them think the wrong thoughts about your business just to save a few bucks on your promotional materials.

Online printers also require you to have a pretty sophisticated knowledge of the printing business. If you know what you want, and you know the basics of how the printing industry works, and you are comfortable with creating your own artwork, and you are comfortable submitting electronic print files through a printer’s FTP server, then maybe online printers are for you.

But if you want to concentrate on the important things, like running and growing your business, you are better off hiring a competent professional to do those things for you. That way, if there is a mistake in your printing (and there are LOTS of mistakes in the printing business), it will be their problem and not yours.

13. Print Larger Quantities If Possible

The easiest way for ANY business to save lots of money on printing costs is to print in larger quantities. If you need 1,000 brochures, ask yourself if you can use 10,000 or 20,000 over the next year or so. If you can print them all at once instead of printing in small 1,000 lots each time you need them, the cost per thousand drops enormously.

For example, let’s say you can get 1,000 brochures printed for $390 ($390 per thousand), but if you print 5,000 the cost will be $595 ($119 per thousand). If you print 20,000 the cost will be $1875, but the unit cost will be much less ($88 per thousand).

This applies to all printed products. A large part of the cost is in the preparation of electronic files and setup of the machines. Once the machines are running it doesn’t make very much difference if they print 1,000 or 20,000. It’s just a matter of a little more time and some more paper. The setup costs are already taken care of.

So print more and keep the extras in storage. In the long run your printing expenses will be much less.

Conclusion

So there you have the 13 ways to save big money on your printing. There are probably others I haven’t thought of, and there are certainly some that apply directly to your situation more than others. But if you use this report as your guide you will at least know some of the right questions to be asking your printing company.

Helping small to medium sized businesses simplify the print buying process is what we specialize in. And we can usually do it for less than you could do it yourself!

• We have a nationwide network of "In The Trade" professionals who work only with us and not the general public.

• We are able to choose from hundreds of service providers. Each provider has their specialty, and each project we accept has it's own special needs. We match the needs to the specialty to produce the most efficient final product.

• We take your complicated, pain-in-the-neck project, manage it from start to finish, and give you exactly what you want at a great price!

The Bottom Line: You get what you need, with no hassles, at a price better than you could get by doing it yourself!

If we can do what we say, why wouldn't you let us prove it to you?

• An analysis of your current printing needs, focusing on your toughest problem areas.

• A discussion of possible immediate, short-term solutions to these specific problem areas.

• Suggestions to achieve long-term streamlining of your print-buying process. We will be able to suggest specific steps you can take to make the process more cost-efficient, and at the same time increase the effectiveness of your print (or other-than-print) marketing strategy.