Go Green with Digital Printing

Digital printing is a great way to be eco-friendly by lowering waste, harmful chemicals and pollutants.  Start your environmental practices by optimizing the print production of your marketing materials.  The growing trend of digital printing versus traditional offset printing illustrates that the public is becoming more conscious to environmentally-friendly practices in the way they do business.

First, digital printing lowers waste by reducing setup materials.  Traditionally, the setup of an offset printing press would require 5-10% waste of paper just to get the colors registered (lined up) and up to acceptable densities to produce accurate color representation.  This is due to the high speeds of the offset printing process.  But, with the new on-demand digital presses, the first print out of the machine is an accurate representation of the entire print run.  However, digital printing is a slower process and is meant for smaller quantity on-demand printing runs.  So a much faster offset press with soy-based inks on recycled papers is your best green choice for large quantity printing.

Digital printing also is primarily a toner-based technology that uses oils or waxes to seal the ink to the paper.  This technology doesn’t require chemicals as traditional lithography does in it’s printing process.  Some toner manufacturers even boast that their inks are edible.  This digital process results in less chemicals used for printing and less pollutants or hazardous waste as a byproduct.

Not every digital printing press is of the same quality, so you should do your research and find the best digital printer for your specific needs.  Older digital presses or printers may not have the quality you are looking for.  Newer digital presses may be designed for specific type of applications and may not be the most cost effective machine for your project.  So first describe your printing project and find out if their equipment fits your job specifications.  Then request a bid to make sure their prices are fair.  Finally, request printing samples of real jobs before selecting your new digital printing company.  If you find a digital printer with multiple presses that provide high quality printed products at an affordable price with excellent customer service and knowledge, then you should be set for your current and future digital printing needs.

In summary, if you want to be eco-conscious, a great place to start is with your marketing materials.  Green printing or eco-friendly printing is a step in the right direction.  You will reduce waste and toxins, while saving money because less resources are needed in the process of manufacturing your on-demand digital printing.

Digital Printing vs. Offset Printing

The printing industry has been evolving with the digital revolution, and print buyers now can choose between digital printing and the traditional offset printing process for production of their marketing collateral.  Each printing process best fits certain types of jobs.  This article will illustrate when to choose digital printing and when it is best to use offset printing.

Digital printing is best for on-demand printing, small quantities, short-run book printing and variable data printing.  Digital printing outputs each page with the ink or toner cured and ready for finishing.  Offset printing uses wet inks and the printed sheets typically have to dry for a certain time period or the ink will smudge or offset when cutting, folding, booklet making, etc.  So for your on-demand printing needs of rush orders, the best choice would be to use a digital printing company. 

Smaller quantities are best printed on a digital press because large printing orders typically cost less when printed offset with traditional lithographic printing equipment.  A digital printing company pays the press manufacturer per click, impression or per sheet for supplies and service regardless if the press is on a lease or paid in full.  So the cost for one sheet or a million is the same per piece.  But on an offset press, the majority of the cost is setup time and then paper cost.  Since offset printing is 5 to 10 times faster than digital printing, once the press is set for a particular job, the actual printing is completed quickly.  For example, a 100,000 quantity flyer order may take 1 hour on a printing press (setup and printing) that fits 16 pages on a single large press sheet.  On the other hand, it may take two days to complete such a large job on a digital press that only fits 2 pages on it’s much smaller press sheet.  But for small orders, there is no paper waste for setup of digital printing equipment, and within seconds quality printed sheets are ready.

Short-run book printing is good for digital printing equipment because your files can print collated and ready for finishing; where in the offset printing process only the front and back of a single sheet can be output per setup.  Also, much more bindery and finishing is involved when printing multi-page publications on offset equipment.  But there is a cross-over point in quantity when it is more cost effective to go offset vs. digital.  This cross-over point involves both page count and quantity of finished books.  Typically digital printing is more cost effective for quantities up to 1500.  Then from 1500 to 5000 books is a limbo quantity where only specialized equipment can produce books at a decent price.  Then from 5000 to millions, large web-presses are best.  And the higher the page count, the more setup and finishing is involved for offset printing, but stays the same for digital printing.

Finally, variable data printing (VDP) is possible only on digital printing equipment. VDP takes your direct mail to a one-to-one approach and individualizes each marketing piece such as direct mail postcards, newsletters flyers, etc.  Now you can personalize your digital printing with variable data images and text tailored to your customer’s needs, preferences or lifestyle.  With VDP you will increase direct mail response rates, average order size, revenue and ROI.  Response rates may soar to 36% from traditionally static printing response rates of 1-3%.

In summary, digital printing is the way of the future for the printing industry, but it has its limitations and uses.  So now, with a bit more information of when to use a digital printing company and when to go offset, you can produce your marketing or business printing efficiently and on schedule while optimizing your return on investment (ROI).

Printed Digital Books are the Wave of the Future

MARKETING IDEAS THAT WORK

AngelPrint.com designs and prints marketing materials for companies of all types and sizes. Today’s economy brings many challenges, so every marketing dollar has to count.

Top 10 Ways to Increase Your Sales
(All can be printed on-demand, low quantity and on an as need basis.)

During slow economic conditions, it is essential to market your business and drive traffic for your products or services. Quality, affordability and real solutions for your customers will help you succeed. This is why we are not just selling printing, but are also offering assistance to get the highest return on your marketing investment. When you succeed, we succeed! Download the printing specials: http://www.angelprint.com/EconoBooster052709-AngelPrint.pdf

1. Newsletters. You’re the specialist for your industry, so give tips or solutions for best utilization of your products or services. Your customers will appreciate your extra effort that your competition doesn’t offer. This will help up-sell what you specialize in.

2. Full Color Flyers. Color printing is not expensive any more. Stand out with that first visual impression.

3. Direct Mail Postcards. Keep in touch with your client base, and remind them on a monthly basis who you are, what you offer and why to buy from you. Repetition is key (3-6 times is best for any marketing campaign - print, radio, newspaper, internet, etc.) AngelPrint.com can assist with your entire campaign from design to mailing services.

4. Print Large. Have displays, window signs or banners featuring your promotions. Larger than life, beautiful images of your products will increase sales!

5. Special Event Invitations. Create traffic to your business with special events. Small, convenient-sized postcards are great handouts to promote events and drive traffic to your location.

6. Coupons. Everyone loves a deal. Create monthly specials to get people interested in your products or services. Chances are that your clients will order much more than just your specials. Rotate deals from month to month, season to season.

7. Gift Certificates. When people like your products, your services and your business in general, they will always refer customers to you. What better way for your clients to show their appreciation than with a gift certificate.

8. Scholastic Awards. Promote your products through gift certificates or awards. Give teachers a discounted volume price for gift certificates to hand out to their students. You’ll be surprised how much traffic and business this will bring.

9. Brochures. Your customers may not know everything that you offer. Here’s your chance to let them know why you’re the best and how you can help. Brochures typically have more information than flyers, so you can really convey the message of why your business is best.

10. Ask a pro - Design Assistance. If you don’t have time or the tools for marketing, ask a professional to assist you. If we print for you, we will offer design and concept assistance at a discounted price. Call us for your next design project.

Download the printing specials: http://www.angelprint.com/EconoBooster052709-AngelPrint.pdf

Big, Beautiful and Versatile

If you walk into the large-format area of Angel Printing in San Diego, you’re going to see a printer that has revolutionized art, engineering and business graphics. It’s a Hewlett Packard HP Z6100ps and it can handle large format printing jobs up to 60 inches wide and as long as you can imagine.

The HP Z6100ps is ideal for signs and banners and can be printed on virtually any kind of material, including paper, film and canvas. This printer uses HP Vivera pigment inks, so not only are the colors vivid but they are also fade-resistant, and you can use them inside or out.
While many of our Angel Printing customers use our large format printing capability for signs and banners, the HP Z6100ps is very versatile and can be used for many purposes. You have the advantage of being able to create anything you can think of, from huge posters or maps, to fine art originals or reproductions.

The resolution on the HP Z6100ps is great, 2400 x 1200 dpi, and that means you’ll get eye-catching clarity no matter what your project may be.

This kind of high-resolution printing power means that you are able to maximize your creativity. An architect can display huge drawings, and a clothing retailer can highlight the latest fashions. If you’re sponsoring a marathon, these big banners are just right for start and finish lines. Stop for a moment and ask yourself how you could benefit from using one of these big, beautiful, versatile signs in your business or organization.
You can use large format printing in many different venues. They are ideal for trade shows, conferences and conventions, and are just as useful for fun things like rallying points for company picnics or family reunions or for use in parades. They look great hanging from the ceiling of a museum or a shopping mall, and they can be used to greet people, provide directions to groups or to promote a product or service. Since the HP Z6100ps can print on film, these images are ideal for retail lightbox displays.

 How do you get your text or image transformed into a big beautiful beacon?  You can use any standard software program like InDesign, PhotoShop or Illustrator to create the design you want. However, when you increase the size of a small image, you may need our help to factor the original size, output size, viewing distance and other considerations.  Our Customer Service Department will do the calculations for you and make recommendations about what will work best.

In addition to our Hewlett Packard HP Z6100ps, our sister companies are able to print even larger to accommodate vehicle or building wraps. They are something to behold!
Go big, go beautiful and get your message in front of the public. Large-format printing is the way to do it.  Large format printing projects make a bold statement to the public, and an oversized image is sure to remain in the minds of all who view it.

Turning Key Words Into Profits

by Vladimir Medvinsky

A challenging economic climate is good for business. It helps us take an inward look so we can take steps to operate more efficiently, and it sharpens our outward look so we can become more innovative in our marketing.

Challenging economic times also motivates us to find other positive people to work with, and that’s one of many reasons I’m so pleased that our company, Angel Printing, is an enthusiastic  member of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce. Our Chamber is drawing us together and enlarging our vision in many ways, including allowing each of us to share profitable business strategies with our Chamber partners.

Free is Always Best

At Angel Printing, we maximize our marketing budget by doing things which are free, or nearly free, before we invest cash in other promotional activities.

The main thing we do is give outstanding service because we recognize the best advertising is word-of-mouth.  Our goal as a business is to exceed the expectations of our customers in terms of quality and service. When we exceed customer expectations, the good word spreads along the grapevine, and we reap the benefits. Exceptional service never costs, it always pays.

There are many free marketing opportunities on the web, and I’m amazed how few companies take advantage of them. Besides traditional web sites, business people have the opportunity to get profitable exposure with blogs, forums, directory listings and a plethora of other online marketing methods.

The “Key Word” Phenomena

One of most fascinating ways to boost your business online is to use key words and phrases in your web site or blog text, something which is part of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process.

What are “key words?” They are particular words or short phrases that are woven into your text and act as a magnet to search engines.  These words or phrases are indexed by all of the search engines, so when potential clients do a search using your key words and phrases, your site is more likely to pop up.

We have mastered SEO at Angel Printing, so we don’t leave key word/phrase selection to chance. We actually research the key words and phrases that potential customers normally type into a search engine, then weave them into the text of our site. By the way, we not only increase our own visibility on the Web, but we can do it for your business too.

Here is an example of  how it’s done.  I have highlighted several key words and phrases that would appear on a Web page on our site:

Angel Printing is a printing and graphic design company with extensive experience with internet marketing including search engine optimization (SEO).  

When you need top quality printing services, we hope you’ll think of Angel Printing. Not only can we do your printing job, but we can also supply top quality graphic design.  If you need help promoting your printed product on the Internet, we can drive traffic to your site using our proven internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques.

Notice that I have achieved high key word density (reused the same word/phrases)  in a short space. Search engines love that. However, also notice that I have made the text interesting. Some so-called SEO experts just randomly “salt’ text with key words and phrases, but the text makes  no sense, and that drives away potential customers.

I have also linked my comments to our site, www.AngelPrint.com. It is important to do this, especially when you are making a contribution to a blog or forum. Your key words and phrases are not wasted when you write a blog or leave a comment in a forum because readers can easily click on your link.

By selecting and using the proper key words and phrases, you can optimize the value of any Web asset.