Leah Hoppes, Strategic Marketing Consultant and Strategist with Vision Force Marketing, joined us to chat about her custom padfolios from Easy Pocket Folders that she uses as branded giveaways and promotional leave-behinds at her marketing workshops and seminars. We also chatted about how to “own your space” as a business, plus tips on how to elevate your branding.
“A lot of people start out with one thing, and then as their message changes or as their business grows, they start thinking a little more deeply. When you’re thinking about your branding, think big vision—where do you want your company to be in 5, 10, 15 years—then you create your branding to be THAT, not just what you are now. You grow into it, and you evolve into that.”
See more at EasyPocketFolders.com or call us at (800) 346-3063 to order custom pocket folders, notepads, or document pouches today!
For more about Vision Force Marketing, visit VisionForceMarketing.com, and read our entire interview with Leah below.
Vision Force Marketing does a redesign and with it, gets new padfolios.
Kelsey: Leah’s here to talk to us today about branding. We’re going to get into that in just a little bit, but before we dive in, I have something for Leah—she just ordered a custom padfolio order from us, so we’re going to do a little unboxing and show her her product!
Leah: I haven’t seen this yet so I’m really excited. Okay—the moment of truth!
Kelsey: Fresh off the press, fresh off the press!
Leah: Oh sweet, oh… these are really cool. These came out very, very nicely. There it is—I’m going to open that up.
We use these for marketing workshops and our training seminars, and this is something that’s really handy for us as a marketing company because we do so much education, it’s nice instead of giving away the hotel’s, or a generic legal pad, we actually have something that’s branded with our name on it. It’s a great leave behind, we can put our business card right here—if we don’t want to put the business card inside, our contact information is right here.
I love the back; I love what you guys did, they helped us do the layout for this with an overview of our company. We get so many fabulous comments when we pass these out.
Kelsey: So before we made these for Leah, we did have another design that she ordered with us, so I’m going to show those really quick, and then we’ll segue into why the change? Why the change in design, change in branding, what was the message shift that she wanted to create with that.
So, this was the original padfolio that they made—very nice design, it shows some of their accolades on the front, a little bit of their story on the back, same on the inside where they’ve got their contact information, but Leah, why did you decide to switch from this design to the new one?
Leah: We decided to switch the design primarily because when we first started, that was really all that we had—it was the cover of our website but we really didn’t have a strong brand, and we wanted to get away from just the picture of ourselves– because we are more than just the brand now as our company has grown. We did this earlier in the year with our new brochure so the new design matches our all of our social media, our print collateral, and all of our digital marketing.
So, that was really important, but what we loved was the function of the piece. When we took these and handed them out where we were speaking, people were like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen this,” and “Oh, I could use something like this,” and “I love this!” We got so much positive feedback that we wanted to redo it, but we wanted to do it better. With your guidance, you guys really helped us with taking the existing artwork from our brochure and reformatting it so it fit in this layout and made sense.
Kelsey: Awesome. And I think one of the things Kevin recommended too was that on the initial design you had a lot of text on the back… when you’re at a seminar, you want people to be paying attention to you, and not reading your marketing materials right then and there. This is going to go home with them, they can read it later, give them a little refresher, keep that message solidified in their brains, but you want them to focus on you and what you’re doing and the message they’re getting in that seminar.
Leah: Yeah, absolutely. It was perfectly spot on feedback that we received and so we’re really excited. They look great, and I think it really elevates our brand.
One of the things that is really important to us as a marketing company is making sure that we’re showing people, not only can we do that for their brand, but we can do it for ourselves. If you’re in any type of a space where your brand is really important, it really is critical that everything you pass out—everything that customers see matches and underscores that message that you have. I think finally, we’ve accomplished that with our brand. So, thank you. You guys did a fantastic job.
Practical tips from a marketing expert on when and why you should consider a rebrand
Kelsey: Awesome. So glad you’re you’re pleased with them; we’re happy to do them again. So let’s move a little more into the branding tips and tricks. You did a brand refresh. What do you see with your clients? Is it common to see a lot of rebranding, or do people pick a brand image or message and stick with it?
Leah: That’s a great question. We see a combination, but we see a lot of people start out thinking they’re one thing. As their business grows, they realize that their message is no longer resonating. Then they start thinking a little more deeply, and then they start going, “Oh my goodness, my message doesn’t fit, my logo doesn’t fit. I’ve either outgrown it, or I never really did it right the first time.”
So we do a lot of rebranding; we do the logo design, we help them pull everything together. And sometimes it’s because somebody has purchased a company that never really put a focus on branding before, so they ask us to come in and rebrand.
But a lot of it is just never having anything visionary from the beginning. One of the things we like to tell people is when you are going through that strategy or marketing planning, as you’re thinking about your branding, think big vision. Where do you want your company to be in 5, 10, 15 years? Because then you create your branding to be THAT, not just what you are now. You grow into it, and you evolve into that.
Kelsey: Great tips! Do you have any other tips for branding? Anything else like common mistakes or oversights you see happen?
Leah: I think a lot of the oversights we see in branding is not paying attention to how everything looks.. When a customer goes to your website, do they immediately know that it’s the same company that they just picked up the brochure from? Does that match the business card? Does that match social media? Because when a customer or prospect goes to any one of these elements that you have out there, they should instantly know they’ve found the right company, that they’ve gotten to the right place.
A lot of people cheap out on their print. They think the business cards aren’t important. They don’t think about branding a folder. They think they can just buy a generic folder at a drug store or a big box store and slap a sticker on it. And it just cheapens the brand.
If you really are trying to elevate yourself in the marketplace or differentiate yourself in the marketplace, or if you are a higher-scale business and you are at the higher end of a price point, your branding is even more important. It’s even more important to spend just a little bit more money and get things that are branded and get things that look professional.
Our term is “own your space.” Print is a huge thing, and a lot of people now are saying, “Oh, print is dead,” and it’s not. You have to pay attention to all of it.
How Easy Pocket Folders can help with your branding
Kelsey: That’s a great summary. We obviously do printed marketing materials here at Easy Pocket Folders. Beside the padfolios, we also do pocket folders, we do jotters, we do document pouches. I’m going to show you just a few of those things that we have here.
In case the padfolio isn’t really something that you think you’d use, this is a little mini version of the jotter. We can do full color on these. They open up and you can get these with ruled paper, blank paper, or you can even have your logo on the paper pad. That’s a really popular item; we see a lot of orders for those.
Pocket folders are pretty universal. We do mini ones, and we do these in full-color. We always have the option to do a die cut inside to put your business card in there. We’ve got the full-size pocket folders here, a couple different sizes shown.
Another thing that we like to offer are these document pouches; these are available in different sizes as well. You can put important papers in here, travel documents, legal documents, bank documents. If you’re presenting a proposal, this can be really fun. They’re made of nice, sturdy paper. They just open up and you put everything in there.
Those are just a few things we offer at Easy Pocket Folders. I’d like to thank Leah for her time today. Thank you so much for giving us your tips about branding.
Leah: Yeah, Kelsey, it was fun! We’ve been customers for several years now, and we love working with you guys. You’re always so helpful; even little things with the design that a lot of places don’t do that you guys do, and that’s huge for us.
Kelsey: We do have an in-house art department. If you’re not sure how to do your artwork, we can always help you out. Just give us a call! Our number is (800) 346-3063, or you can get started at EasyPocketFolders.com.
That’s all for today. We’ll see you later!