CBF Group's blog

No matter what the industry, there are people online looking for the latest information about their subject matter.

Our Free Ebook tools are being used by a publishing base nationally to promote magazines, newsletters, instruction manuals, cookbooks and a host of other multi page documents.  Each document is searchable online and can be viewed by anyone at any time.

As part of the service we like to shout about your publications online though our social media channels. So what is the impact of this?  If you’re social media savvy, you may know that there are multiple ways to get your message out there, most of them are real time information flow, so the chance of someone actually seeing your tweet, your Linkedin or your Facebook posts are minimal unless you are highly influential in your marketplace.  As a combined effort if we all shout about the presence of your Ebook,  it stands a better chance of being seen by a wider audience.

Using Cheltenham Borough Homes as an example, their campaign to highlight to their residents about the changes to the Housing Benefit system in April 2013, we helped design, print and distribute their items and we’ve put their materials online so the electronic document is available for all to see.  As part of our promotion we know that the content of the web pages we sit the Ebooks on are searchable by the search engines.  We find that the Ebooks naturally come up high in searches because of the work we put into the pages the books are sat on and the strength of the eBook site.

CBH Ebook Search

Once live, we have been able monitor the progress of the traffic coming to the Ebook and the longevity of the readers on the page.  Both of which in this case surpassed our predictions by giving Cheltenham Borough Homes over a third  more readers than they would have had if they had just printed the items.

If you need any further help with your publication or multi page documents we would love to hear from you.  Our Ebook tools are based here or please give us a call on 01242 237652 to discuss further.

FACT: We have over 400 customers that are now starting to convert their printed Brochures, Catalogues and Magazines in to eBooks using our FREE eBook tools. We are constantly receiving positive feedback from our customers that they are achieving 40%+ positive customer feedback using their eBooks on top of their printed materials.

For a lot of you marketers out there it is coming to that time of the year again when you are looking to plan your Christmas marketing strategy. This can always be a stressful time as you will be trying to create the best marketing materials whilst trying to keep to strict deadlines, stay within budget and at the same time put something out there that will create the best customer feedback possible.

Before it all starts becoming too much and getting on top of you all you need to do is pick up the phone or drop us an email. We will take the time to listen to you and find out all we need to know, so we can start advising you on the best way to approach and follow through with your Christmas marketing strategy.

Don’t just see CBF as a printer, we like to think of ourselves as a print partner. We don’t just take your order, print your materials, deliver it then run away until next time you call. Instead we will give you all the time you need to help plan your marketing print, produce the materials to the highest quality and give you our knowledge to make sure your materials are distributed in the most effective manner.

To help our customers we have invested a great deal of time and money to ensure their printed materials get the highest positive customer feedback without having to go over budget. We have the understanding that the power of the marketing goes beyond just the printed materials.

SERVICES AND TOOLS WE OFFER TO INHANCE YOUR PRINTED MARKETING

• Our customers receive FREE eBook tools to back up their printed publications. Our eBook software can be branded to your business standards, is searchable through the likes of Google improving your SEO and can be viewed by every format (PC, MAC, Smart phones, iPads and any other tablets)

• We also offer a social media support service and again this is a totally FREE service to our customers. We will work alongside you to promote your printed materials and eBooks through the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs and Email campaigns. Our existing customers have been achieving 40%+ extra positive customer feedback through using our social media support service.

• At CBF we have years of distribution and mailing experience. Once we know what printed materials you are producing we can help advise you on not only the most cost effective print but also the most productive method to distribute or mail out your materials. If your materials are not being seen by the right demographic then your efforts will be wasted and you will not reap the rewards from your marketing. We can even produce a personalised mailing campaign for you if you really want to impress your customers.

This festive season don’t be one of those people that are going home stressed out night after night trying to juggle arranging printed brochures, marketing mail outs and all the rest of it. Drop us a call and let CBF offer you the best Christmas present ever of a stress-free festive season.

Call us any time during standard working office hours on 01242 236 542 or email either of the following to have a call back arranged; alegrand@cbfnet.co.uk / lwillett@cbfnet.co.uk

Until then we wish you a Very Merry Festive Season!!

The CBF team.

There are so many different types of magazine publications out there these days, from glossy lifestyle magazines to scientific journals.

What do all of them have in common?

Within in their own right they are all bidding to win the attention of as many readers as possible.

Up until recently the only way you could stand apart from your rivals was by upping the content and print quality but now the magazine industry is now going through a massive change with the introduction of social media and ebooks.

Before I go any further let me explain what an ebook is in case you have not come across the terminology before.

An ebook is simply an electronic version of an originally printed book. Depending on the software the ebook supplier uses ebooks can be viewed on PC’s, MAC’s, Tablets and even Smart phones. Ebooks are made up from the same files that the printed publication would have been produced from, just without crop or bleed marks. As long as you have your publication in a printable format then you will be able to convert the artwork into an ebook.

Here is an example of an ebook that we produce alongside the printed magazine.

How can the use of ebooks and social media help build and grow my magazine?

It is unknown the exact amount of live users that the likes of Facebook and Twitter have, but we can safely say it is well into the hundreds of millions. Through finding and following your target audience you can start building up a wider following of people which will in turn increase your brand awareness. I maybe slightly bias as it’s the network that I use but I personally feel for a magazine Twitter is the best way to find your target audience quickly, get results and gain live feedback.

For example; you produce a Music Magazine called B-Music and you are based and distribute your printed publication around Birmingham. You could maybe send out a Tweet with a lovely picture of your latest edition, and then using hash tags (#) -which are searchable words and phrases – you could say “check on the latest #BMusic Magazine full of hot interviews #Birmingham #Music”. Through using the Birmingham & Music hash tags you will instantly get hundreds or even thousands of people who have an interest in those key words seeing your tweets.

This is when the ebook comes into its own. Once you have built yourself a following you can then start posting a link to your ebook for people to actually flick through like a real magazine. You could even point people to particular page, content and adverts within the magazine to get people really interacting with it and commenting on the magazine.

Real Case Study: Last week we added one of our customer’s magazines to our ebook software and posted a tweet just saying check out this latest edition. Within one hour it had 58 unique readers on average spending four minutes flicking through the ebook and it even got picked up by an online industry journal that had 800 subscribers. These are all people that would have not seen the magazine otherwise, not bad for a free service. Our customer was over the moon to say the least.

Now if you’re someone that runs a magazine you need to think about the following. Through introducing your magazine to the world of social media and ebooks you are not only building up your viewer base (for FREE), but think of the fire power you have when speaking to potential advertisers. You can up sell to them saying for the price of your advert you will not only been seen by (X) amount of people through the printed magazine but by many more people on social media sites. That said they don’t only have to go on social media sites, you can post the e-books within emails or include them in newsletters. The advertisers are more likely to go with you than any other magazine and they are more likely to stick around when they see what a great response they get from you magazine and ebook.

If you would like to learn more about our free ebook service and how we can help you manage it alongside a social media campaign, then please do not hesitate to call us on 01242 237 652 or you can contact me directly on alegrand@cbfnet.co.uk.

;

;,

I am going to keep this short and sweet but here is another reason why you should be speaking to CBF.

We don’t only provide a high quality print service we also give all of our customers a high level of support and all round business knowledge.

The service you get for your money goes far beyond your average print and deliver you get from most other companies.

Here is a short yet very positive email that I received after a short, casual meeting.

Hi Adam

Just wanted to say it was nice to meet you in person yesterday and to thank you for your very helpful & inspiring advice. You have given me a lot to think about and start working on. After your comments I am in the process of changing bits on our website as we speak. 

I will most definitely have to book in time to come and chat to you further as you clearly seem to have your finger on the pulse with ways to improve and create business.

Many thanks,

Jo

I hope you agree that is a wonderful email for anyone to receive and it is the reason why I enjoy doing what I do so much.

Maybe it is time that you picked up the phone and dropped us a call to find out why we keep on receiving similar positive comments from our customers.

We have done it again. Just when you were looking for one resource for printing and publishing your magazine, with all the free tools to help you put together a professional looking and efficiently rolled out publication, we have created MagazineprintQuote.co.uk. This is a central resource for all artwork templates and it’s free to download and use royalty free. This coupled with the free national delivery for all publications that we print, we also offer publications printed by us as an online E-book or E-Zine for free.

This offering alone is new to our industry, but we take it a level further and can include the online publishing as part of our social media strategy to promote all publications via Twitter and Facebook. This has proven successful enough for us to shout about as a bolt on service that helps promote the publication a sufficient amount for the advertisers to see further returns on their advertising investment. We have also come up against publications that already have an electronic version in place, to this we just highlight the extra exposure by using our tools as an alternative or an addition.

As there are so many variables to print quoting, we have created two simple forms which are; a 60 second print quote for simpler pricing and a full magazine quote to enable the more experienced print buyer to tailor their quote more specifically.

This site will bridge the gap for the publisher that needs a partner to help support their print requirements and one that understands business and their advertising revenue stream. We specialise in small to medium magazines with run lengths of up to 50,000 units, to fall in line with our in-house machinery capabilities. Magazineprintquote.co.uk is your first stage as an offering, with further plans to help all publishers have an independent resource to run their businesses.

We have also looked at the magazine mailing services online and found that they are very mechanical in process and not as personal as they could be, so to address this we offer free advice on how to get the most out of your mailings, how and where to save money on magazine mailing and highlighting the options open to our customers, with all the different mailing options available to them.

As a resource Magazineprintquote.co.uk is the first and only comprehensive magazine portal to help all small and medium size publishers get competitive prices for their publications, but to also be part of a bigger resource that would not be available to them without franchise fees or paid for subscriptions.

As we all know, the production of your magazine comes down to price, but with the added benefits of our unique offering, we have proven customer loyalty time and time again by building relationships with our customers.

As you can probably tell I am all over my Chinese proverbs today, to be brutally honest the one in the blog title I just made up but it sounds damn good.

In the most long winded way ever, I am trying to make the connection with my lovely new proverb and helping people to get their print standing out from the rest. Or as I now like to call it, ‘being the ripest apple’.

In this blog post I am going to be using all of my worldly wisdom to help you publishers of Magazines/Brochures to make sure your publication is the one that takes pride of place on the coffee table or is the one that is picked up in the Doctors waiting room.

There are numerous ways that you can make sure your publication stands out from the crowd and not all of them have to cost the earth. It is far too easy to slip in to the trap of just getting a standard A4 glossy publication throw together, just think though, you will now be looking exactly the same as all the other A4 glossy publications on there.

There are some simple questions that you can ask yourself when you are thinking about going to print on your publication.

What is it you are selling? For example if your magazine is advertising the newest sports cars you are going to want to really make the images pop, so a gloss finish would be best with maybe a UV varnish over some of the feature images.

UV Varnish 101: UV varnish is a liquid layer which is added to the paper stock after the printing process. You can have either Flood UV that covers the whole surface of the page of Spot UV which is used to make a curtain logo, image or a piece of text look more rich & vibrant in colour.

Example of Spot UV

Yet again if your magazine is based around gardening then you may want to look into more natural looking uncoated paper stocks. Recycled paper being used in your publication may also appeal to the readers.

Who is the average reader of your publication? Depending on what you are selling and who your average reader is colour and font selections can be extremely important. For example, if your publications are advertising activities for the over 50’s then you are going to want to select softer colours and slightly larger font sizes to make sure those people who’s sight isn’t what it used to be can still see everything clearly.

Where are your publications going to be kept or most frequently viewed? The size of your publication can be extremely important as it won’t only set it apart as looking slightly different but for the practicality of where is it going to be kept. Going back to the example of the activities for over 50’s magazine, chances are they are going to want to take it out with them in the car or on walks. This means there is not point if it’s too big or bulky, it would need to be something fairly slim line and maybe around the A6/A5 kind of size. If your publication is for property, fashion or motoring then is it more like to take pride of place on the coffee table. Because of this you are going to want your publication to have a refined, established look to it. This can be created by using a high quality gloss/silk stock, quality binding (perfect bound) and by being a bit more robust size like A4 or maybe 210x210mm to be a bit different.

Perfect binding 101: As a process perfecting binding involves the inner pages of the publication being trimmed down to size as double sided sheets and then collated into page order. Depending on if the publication is landscape or portrait glue is applied to the left hand edge and a four page cover including a capacity spin is attached creating the finished publication.

Example of perfect binding

If you are lucky enough to be able to splash the cash a little for the production of your publication then there are numerous finishing options that you can look into which can massively enhance the look and appeal of your publication. I shall talk about these finishing options in more detail in another post but some examples are; Flood UV, Spot UV, Foil Blocking, Gloss/Matt laminating, Thermography and many others.

If you would like to learn more about how to make your publication to stand out from the crowd then please do not hesitate to contact us at CBF on 01242 237 652 or email info@cbfnet.co.uk.

I can hear the questions being asked already, what is 3D printing, let alone a 3D printed car.

The honest answer is I am not a rocket scientist, or should a say a print scientist. What I will do is explain in terms that all of you should understand and more to the point by using words that I can actually spell.

3D printing or Additive Manufacturing as it is more commonly known as is the process of turning a 3D CAD image (Computer Aided Design image) into a fully functioning working model.

There are actually five or so different methods of achieving this, depending on what material the object is being made out of. The most commonly used method at the moment is called Selective Laser Sintering or SLS for short. This technique involves a high power laser to fuse certain particles of the materials being used to create the object (for example ceramic, plastic or metal).

Using the data from the CAD image, the laser will begin scanning cross sections of what’s call the powder bed; the powder bed is what contains the powder version of the material being used. The laser takes many, many passes over the powder bed each time gradually moving down a fraction. Each time the laser moves down it fuses together particles to create a layer of the material to correspond exactly with the CAD image. What you end up with is an exact physical 3D version of the CAD image.

Most people have barely even heard of 3D printing, but the concept of it has actually been around for nearly three decades. By the year 2020 the Additive Manufacturing industry is estimated to worth $5.2 billion and affecting our day to day lives in ways that you wouldn’t believe. 3D printing will produce everything from house hold materials, cars and even for medical use to replicate organs. You will even be able to purchase your own 3D printed just like you go out and by your home printed now.

To date one of the greatest achievements in the Additive Manufacturing industry was the creation of the body work for what is set to be the car of the future, the Urbee which was unveiled to the public at the end of last year.

Here is a link to watch the unveiling of the Urbee, it is definitely a sexy looking beast and as you will agree it is amazing to think it was created by a laser fusing together particles.

Unveiling the Urbee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07AQHelb1f8

3D printer in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiN8wNyLdTI&feature=related

What the future holds for 3D printing no one exactly knows, but what we can guarantee is it will be extremely exciting and will be making a big impact to our day to day lives.

Being in the print industry means here at the CBF Towers, we like to keep a close eye on what Graphic Designers are playing with and creating.

We need to be on the ball with regards to this because if we ever have any of our clients come to us with a project and our in house designers have too much on, we need to know who is at the top of their game out there.

So, as a little project since the start of 2012 I have been keeping an eye on things that are being liked on Facebook, materials that have been shown on Twitter, comments & recommendations from colleagues and just things that myself and the rest of the CBF team have liked that have come across our desk.

Over the three and a half month’s this little project has been ticking over, there have been some graphic designers that either keep popping up or have just really caught my eye by being innovative.

For all you graphic designers out there or people that just generally have an interest in the industry, I have compiled a Top 15 of the designers that I personally think are making some great noises in the industry.

I have picked the following designers by a very simple criteria including; quality of clients, quality of portfolio, variation in style (as no one likes a one trick pony) and innovation. If I felt the design has not only looked good but sold the product it’s representing and basically if I liked their work or not. At the end of the day I am Joe public and if I don’t like the design work then chances are our clients will not either.

Without any further delay here are my current Top 15 UK based graphic designers.

15). Toast Design @toastdesign

14). Fourleaf @fourleafagency

13). To The Point Design @ttpdesign

12). Rumba Design @rumbadesign

11). Cuco Creative @cucocreative

10). Kerve Design (Sadly no Twitter account but based in Bath)

9). 400 @400_design

8). Jazz Bones Design @jazzbonesUK

7). Bob Design @bob_design

6). Rowe Associates @roweassociates

5). Cheeky Monkey Design @thecheekymonkey

4). Whistle & Taylor @whistletaylor

3). Design Dough @designdough

2). The Drawing Room Design @tdroomdesign

1). Thinking Juice @thinkingjuice

Congratulations to all of you that made it on to the list and as UK representatives in the Graphic Design industry I hope you all keep up the good work.

At the moment it seems everywhere you go all you hear about is Social Media..Social Media..Social Media.

People are forever asking me; are you on Twitter, are you on Facebook, have you got a Pinterest account?

By the way for reference the answers are Yes, No and I am but not quite sure how & when it happened.

Anyway, for anyone who knows me personally or CBF as a business, will know that we are fairly partial to dabbling in the realms of Social Media. We focus on using every aspect of Twitter to create more leads and to spread the word that CBF are on the front line for providing print knowledge.

Being in the print trade I can tell you that social media is most definitely not killing off the need for printed materials.

It may sound controversial but yes, I am saying there is enough room on this planet of ours for social media and printed solutions to exist. If anything, I am saying that if businesses learned how to link the two together they would see leads and positive feedback like never before.

Here is an example of how this can be put in to effect. I would like to state because I am not a lawyer in my spare time and to be brutally honest I am not a huge fan of being sued no names are going to be mentioned in this example as it is based on a real case study.

There was a company that produced machinery for a much specialised industry. The industry was in fact so specialised, they only had a handful of competitors. However, to the Directors annoyance they were will not creating the sales they needed and the company was fast losing money.

The directors decided to do something about this and decided to bring in a Social Media guru to help them create a strategy to build their business. In short the amazing Guru told them to drag themselves into the present times and use the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter, to start writing a blog and create videos to post on Facebook and YouTube.

The company took the comments of the Social Media Guru and starting acting on them, although at first it did whip up a bit of a frenzy as the phones soon stopped ringing and the inquiries dropped.

In the weeks to follow, thought provoking chin strokes occurred and coffee fuelled all night meetings took place to try and come up with a solution to save the business. In the end a member of staff threw forward an idea that turned out to be a stroke of genius.

His statement was “why don’t we use the positive aspects of both print and social media to help point at our USP’s (unique selling points).”

Lots of Godfather style ponderous head nods followed, then eventually one of the directors set the employee the task of taking his idea and making it work.

Obviously, the case study did not give away all of the trade secrets but some that were mentioned were as follows.

He created a marketing pack that was sent out to all potential customers explaining who they were, what they did and why the customer should be looking at them to be their provider.

What he also included in the index of a brochure was a list of five or so YouTube links pointing the reader to videos showing certain aspects of their machinery and services they offer. Essentially turning what could be a fairly boring read into more of an appealing visual concept he also felt this would make their business seem more tangible.

He also introduced a similar idea to leaflets and booklets that were given out. Instead of simply stating on the material that they have a Facebook, Twitter accounts etc, he pointed out links educating the reader on how to become social media savvy themselves so they can interact with the customer. What is the point of telling someone you are on a social media website if they don’t know where to find you?

On the flip side, when using the twitter account he starting advertising to people to sign up to their newsletter that got posted out every 6 months and once again used social media to point at printed materials to create a more rounded, professional feel to the business.

Again, I am going to have to fudge the facts a little to hide the identity of the actual business but I can assure you the figures I am about to use are not a million miles away from the truth.

Within one year they increased their inquiries by “160%”, due to their customers have a clearer idea of the services which were being offered and they achieved a conversion rate of “80%”.

Needless to say the company is now thriving and is still growing rapidly to this day.

One thing I can say is that the company in this case study was a big company with a turnover of millions. This doesn’t mean that the structure put in place by mixing Social media with printed materials cannot be introduced into any sized business.

If you would like to learn more about how to introduce a similar structure in to your business, then why not book in to have a free consultancy with us? One of our team will work with you to make sure you are getting the most out of your business marketing.

Adam & the CBF team.

Sadly it is a fact of life that to keep your business running there are bills that have to be paid and suppliers you need to keep happy. We have all had it at one time or another when a payment has slipped, you fall out of favour with your supplier and all of a sudden you have extra stress that you really could do without.

Suppliers have to implement payment structures otherwise receiving payments for services they have provided would be near impossible. Especially with how tight money is for some businesses at the moment, suppliers can end up chasing money which is rightfully theirs for weeks, months or even years.

Staying in the good books of your suppliers is one of the most important things you can do to maintain and grow your business. Without the full support of your suppliers your business will not function to its full potential.

There are a couple of basic payment structures that most suppliers will keep to and these are as follows.

Percentage up front

This payment method is usually used in industries where the work load being undertaken by the supplier is variable.

For example: Graphic designers, Architects, Consultants etc.

Here is an example: Customer (Adam) speaks to supplier (LG Design) with regards to a quote for designing the artwork for some marketing flyers. Based on the information given by Adam, the estimator from LG Design will calculate how many hours he thinks it will take to create the artwork.

Let’s say LG Design thinks it will take six hours to create a couple of design options including a round of amendments. LG Design charges £50 per hour, which means they will take a payment of £150.00 up front. This is done because if Adam ends up not liking both design options and then ends up having to have 3 or 4 amended versions the total artwork time could actually end up being 10 hours. This means his total bill would have gone up from the original estimated price of £300 to £500. What could happen is Adam say he had only budgeted for the £300 and cannot afford the £500 bill. Most of the time the supplier and the customer will come to an arrangement to make sure all the money is eventually paid off in full. Worst case scenario for LG Design is for Adam to disappear without paying the bill but as least he has the £150 from the upfront payment to cover for some of the time and revenue lost.

Payment on receipt of invoice

This structure is most commonly used when a supplier is dealing with a customer for the first time. As the supplier is yet to discover if the potential customer is a good payer or not, they will request payment on delivery of the goods/service.

This essentially means as soon as the supplier has completed their part of the contracted agreement they can ask for payment immediately. The payment methods most commonly offered by the supplier will be by cash, cheque, credit/debit card or BACS payment.

Example:

Adam has now had his marketing flyers designed and has gone to his local printer to have them printed. Once the printer has printed the materials to the agreed specification and arranged to have the flyers delivered/collected they can issue an invoice for immediate payment.

This is almost like a retail payment method. When you go to the shops to buy a can of beans you pay for them there and then, you don’t come back three days later to pay for them.

Accounts contract

Accounts are usually set up between a customer and supplier when there has been a decision made by the customer that they will use the supplier’s service on a regular basis.

Example:

Adam’s original marketing flyer drop has brought his business in a lot of work and is now in need of repeat print order for office and marketing purposes.

Once Adam and the printer have got a couple of completed orders and payments behind them the printer will most likely offer Adam an account. Depending on the supplier having an account usually means they will offer you 7, 14 or even 28 days on your payments. This means from the date the invoice is issued you will have a set amount of days to pay by.

Suppliers do not have to offer this facility to their customers and it is hugely based on trust between the supplier and the customer. Customers should always remember this is a privilege and should always keep to their end of the contract by paying within the set amount of days.

All this said, as long as there is trust between you and the supplier these payments options do not have to be the be all and end all. As long as you are open and upfront with your supplier they will do everything they can to make sure you get the service you need with a payment structure you are happy with. Alternatively, if your supplier is not willing to be flexible you can always take your business elsewhere and your supplier will be fully aware of this fact. If you don’t ask you won’t get so always make time to speak to your suppliers about these kinds of matters. Suppliers are not scary monsters; they may even surprise you with how much they will actually do if you just ask them.

If you are not happy or are confused about your current payment terms with regards to your print provider, then why not give CBF a call and see if we can help.

Adam out!