Postcard Printing Amidst the Recession: How to Minimize Cost

Yes, you have heard it all over the news we are in a recessions. This affects all of us from different industries. That is why the trend all over business firms nowadays is to cut or minimize cost. Since I come from a firm that uses postcard printing for marketing we had to think of a few ways to minimize the cost in producing them. Print postcards cost a significant amount of money because of the design time involved and of course the whole printing costs using postcard paper. If you are on the same boat as we were then, you are reading the right article. Below you will see the few strategies we did to minimize the cost of postcard printing Hopefully this too will help you through these trying times and maybe even give you the opportunity for growth.

Look for a cheap graphic designer: Yourself
The first thing we cut in terms of the postcard printing budget is the graphic designer. We usually had the postcard printing company find us a designer to make our marketing postcards. Unfortunately we had to axe him (Sorry Billy). As a brilliant idea they chose a cheap alternative to the designer, myself (actually “ourselves” since it was a group effort). Hiring professional graphic designers can be a significant part of your postcard printing budget. So eliminating that cost can save you some decent dough.

Of course be sure that you or any of the team that was picked, has knowledge of what he is doing. Image editing applications these days can be easily learned so don't fret if nobody knows how to do it. Keep in mind though that before starting the design, it is better know first how the design software works or you will be wasting your time. Once you have a pretty good idea of how to design using software they you should be on the safe side in creating your own design for the postcard. Of course at no extra cost.

Make it a little smaller
There are several sizes of postcards approved by the United States Postal office. They can be as big as 8.5 x 11 inches (just like a letter size paper) or it can be as small as 6 x 4.5 inches. There are a few more sizes in between that range like 7x5, 8.5x6, 9x6 and 11x6. If you are using a certain larger sized postcard you can cut cost by switching to smaller sized postcards. Of course smaller sized postcards are cheaper to produce than bigger ones. Just be sure to adapt your design as the size or dimensions change.

Paper Quality vs. Design Quality
The quality of the postcard can be judged by its paper and its design. You can minimize your cost by sacrificing that expensive full gloss postcard paper and switching to a medium quality paper. Also if your postcard is glossy on both sides, it might be better to have just one side of it set to glossy. With your paper down to medium quality, you just need to compensate for it by doing a better design. As an example, you can use special shading and lighting effects in your postcard printing design to substitute the effect of “gloss.”

Search for the best deals in postcard printing
Lastly, try to find the best postcard printing deals when looking for printing companies. Try to make your search as extensive as possible so that you can maximize all your options. Chances are if you search good enough you'll find the best postcard printing deals for your budget. A good tip would be to look for printing companies that specialize in postcards. These may have lower rates since their equipment is already set for postcards.

Those are the strategies we did to minimize the cost of postcard printing. It saved us some significant amount of funds, and we still got the exposure and marketing opportunities that we needed. Hopefully you can apply this to your own postcard marketing schemes as well. Good Luck!