Calendar Printing - Themes and Portrait Ideas for Unique Calendars

You can gather in plenty of inspirations for your calendar printing. With this ripe season where you can send out your very own calendars as gifts and even turn them into a promotional material for clients in the coming New Year, there really isn't anything stopping you.

Acquiring design ideas for themes and images can be quite hard, especially if you don't have a concept to begin with. Planning your calendars can be just as simple or hard. Remember to always assess how you want to use your calendars, the response you can gather from them and so on.

Grow Calendar 2011

If you want calendars to gratify your personal hobbies and interests, all you need to come up with is a concept or theme. If you need a calendar that would do well to build up your image, augment your sales or other, then it may do well for you to sit down and think it over.

Nevertheless, here are some ideas you can use for your calendars that are more or less popularized by noted artists, the pop culture and more.

Themes for Your Calendars

1. Get inspiration from the noted photographer Anne Geddes. If you are into baby portraits or your business and interests are aligned to it, then create or shoot portraits that presents babies in cute dresses.

For personal family affairs, why not shoot your very own babies and toddlers. This would make as a great replacement for Christmas cards you send out.

2. Spoof. If you have a big family or are involved with different organizations, you can very well create group pictures or images that are injected with a bit of humor. You can spoof other notable television series. Make families pose as the Simpsons of the Family Guy among others.

This is not only a memorable calendar you can look back to, but an overall activity that would be great for the holidays.

3. More than including photos or portraits of groups of people, it is better to picture people in actions. Groups or organizations can create a documentary of past accomplishments within the year. Highlight important events. Make sure to use photos that take you or your group out from the usual environment. Let your audiences know that you are actually out there and doing something.

4. If you want a trip down memory lane, this idea may be most useful for high school reunions. You can use images on the most memorable television series of your time. Put up images of actors that were the rave back in the day. Include your own high school pictures or those events that were highlighted in your year book.

5. If you are into cooking or culinary arts, a calendar with its generous space would also serve to be a great cookbook in one. Highlight a special dish and use it as your portrait. Leave enough room to give out the recipe and instruction.

6. With the previous idea, use the same concepts for other interests, hobbies or activities. Show your audience with an end product they can come up with. This can be applicable from arts and crafts, gardening, beading, and more.

Use these calendar printing ideas for your own use and create more inventive ways for a calendar that will last all year long.

Calendar Printing - Themes and Portrait Ideas for Unique Calendars

Grow Calendar 2011

Calendar Printing - A Whole Year of Promotional Advantage

Although calendars might yet be the most expensive advertising material you will be giving away for the year, rest assured that they are well worth their printing cost. Calendar printing is your means to invest on a design, on an advertising print, on an investment.

Calendars have a very good chance of staying with your customers for a year. If you have your doubts about the potential of your calendars, then wrap your head around these thoughts:

Grow Calendar 2011

1. Almost everyone who is affected by dates and the changing seasons need a calendar. There are always birthdays, anniversaries, season finale's that need to be noted and remembered. Most of the time, people need more than one calendar, they place one in their bedrooms, the kitchen, the dining room, at their desk, etc.

2. Bookstores sell their full colored calendars at atrocious prices. You can produce the same quality and the same materials at a fraction of what they are selling them for. Remember, bookstores have to have a high mark-up for calendars so they can still make profit even if they fail to sell a portion of their stock. Not to mention, they have high over head costs to pay for.

3. You are printing your calendars for your regular customers. It is likely that they share a common interest you can use. If you are a specialty hobby shop, use different hobbies for each month. If you are a pet shop, you may feature a different pet for every month. Find something about your business that catches human interest. This is a good way to advertise your products without being over eager to sell.

4. And assuming that your customer already has a calendar, or has little use for yours, he or she may be neighborly and give away the calendar to a friend or a neighbor. This gives you an added chance of not only exposing yourself, but winning over a new client.

5. Best of all, printing companies hoping to get a piece of the calendar business usually gives discount during this time around in the spirit of the coming holidays. This may just be the best time to get your calendars printed - so you may give them away as early Christmas and New Year as presents to your best customers.

6. Lastly, it's the thought that counts. The most important part is that customers are made to feel they are important to your business.

The advertising potential of these calendars extend. Everyone who enters into their houses and sees the calendar is exposed to your calendars as well. Moreover, the presence of your calendar, brand or business can serve as testimonial of your friend's use and patronage to the product or service. This is a great and motivating way too to acquire new clients.

It may be a small step to brand building, but it is a step nevertheless, and when you multiply these tiny steps, it should translate to higher sales.

Calendar printing may be more expensive than other marketing materials such as brochures and flyers, but the calendar will last far longer. Start with an early investment and reap the year long benefits.

Calendar Printing - A Whole Year of Promotional Advantage

Grow Calendar 2011

6 Reasons to Use Calendar Printing in Your Marketing Initiative

If you think people get enough calendars around the holidays, think again. People do not get enough calendars at the holidays! Especially smaller calendars that can be used at work or in a purse or car. Need more convincing to add calendar printing to your marketing plan? Here are six reasons you should use promotional calendars.

1. It is a low-cost marketing tool. When you think about how many times people are going to look at your name and your logo (at least once a day, if not more), promotional calendars are one of the most high-quality low-cost marketing tools you can use. If people look at your calendar at work, twice per day, 250 days per year and your calendars cost each to print, that would boil down to a penny per look!

Grow Calendar 2011

2. People start to look forward to them. My parents own a dry cleaning business and my father has bought promotional Norman Rockwell portrait calendars every year for the past 18 years and in the past few years, long-time customers have started asking about the calendars in October! The customers love the calendars and look forward to getting them each year. This builds loyalty between customers and my parents' dry cleaning business. Studies have shown that 85% of promotional calendar users do business regularly with the company that supplied the calendar.

3. You know who gets it and when. You can control the distribution of your calendars. You can hand them out personally or mail them, knowing that each person is going to receive his calendar. If you are using the calendar as a gift, you will know exactly how many to order because you know how many customers you have. (Of course you'll want to order more for any new customers.)

4. Customers see them as gifts, not advertisements. Because customers use calendars and need them, they do not see them as a blatant form of advertising. Customers are willing to accept promotional calendars because they are of use to the customer.

5. Calendars offer customers variety all year long. You can select whatever theme you would like, or more importantly, a theme you think your customers would like, and get a variety of photos on that theme. You can also choose from a variety of styles, like desk calendars, wall calendars, wallet-size calendars or day planners to give your customers something a little different.

6. Calendars gain value. As the year goes on, the busier people's lives get. This means more jotting of notes on calendars to remember dates, birthdays and important appointments. Some calendars are even used as a kind of phone book to jot down new telephone numbers. People are known to be lost without their calendars, and if they are using your calendar, they will feel thankful that you gave it to them, which will improve your business relationship even more.

6 Reasons to Use Calendar Printing in Your Marketing Initiative

Grow Calendar 2011