In part 5, I’ll talk about what to do with posters, flyers and other ‘collateral’ you have created. But in this part, we’ll talk about how to get them designed and printed.
But, before doing that, we need to talk about photos……
Photos
You’re going to need photos for your posters, flyers, web site and any other marketing materials. Don’t copy pictures from the internet which you don’t have the rights to use. You could end up getting in trouble for that.
So with that in mind, here’s how you get photos for your materials:
Take your own
The preferable method – it’s free, you don’t have to worry about your rights to use them (providing you get permission from players/parents) and who wants to see obvious stock photos? Much better to use real pictures of people actually enjoying your sessions.
Tip!
Offer a free group coaching session where people give permission for themselves or their kids to be photographed. Get them to sign something up front to give their permission for the photos to be used on any marketing materials. Then have a friend who is a photographer come along to take photos.
How to find photos you can legally use for free
Google & Flickr
Google is not so good, but Flickr EXCELLENT as there are millions of photos which people have given the rights to use. But there are some restrictions and rules. Rather than go through it here, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income has written a post here with all the details.
Getting your posters & flyers designed
The problem with using a professional to design your materials is that every time you need to change something, you’ll pay again. That is why I highly recommend learning to use Photoshop. But NOT so that you can design from scratch – no thanks. It is so that you can edit, tweak, re-use and adapt materials.
Learning Photoshop was one of the best investments that I ever made. You don’t need to learn it all – in a few days you can learn the relevant bits, like editing text, colours, sizes & pictures. And then forevermore you’ll be able to adapt your own marketing materials rather than keep paying a designer.
Here are some methods with or without learning Photoshop……..
Without learning Photoshop
Fiverr.com. is a site where people from all over the world offer to do jobs for $5. Actually the price has gone up a bit now, but I can see that you can still get a flyer designed on there for under £10. With a quick search, I found this seller offering flyer design for £8.50 with unlimited revisions.
There are good and bad designers on Fiverr, and it may take a bit of trial and error to find the right one. I got lucky and got an awesome poster done the first time I tried it, but I used other designers and had good and bad. There is a rating system, so look for sellers with lots of ratings and good ratings.
So basically, you find a seller who looks good, buy the service, then send them a brief of what you want, including any photos. Then, after a day or two, they will send back your design. If you want some changes, usually they are fine with that – there can be some back and forth communication to get it right. If someone is really bad, and you’re very unhappy with the work, they will often let you cancel and get a refund as they don’t want bad feedback.
When you use fiverr, make it clear in your brief that your design will be professionally printed and ask for it to be ‘print ready’.
You will need to pay for this service every time you need a new flyer, even if it is just achange of date, unless you learn Photoshop, which is covered next………..
With Photoshop
Once you can do the basics on Photoshop, a world of options opens up to you, not just for leaflets and posters, but for all graphics – website, social media etc. Here’s my favourite….
Graphicriver.net is a site where there are 1000s of Photoshop templates for anything you can imagine – and you can buy them for as little as $3. Then with your basic Photoshop skills, you can adapt them to your brand – change photos, text, font, colours – anything. Look at the first few of 100s of tennis flyers:
Buy one of these and edit it to your heart’s content, again and again and again – and never have to pay another penny for design.
Getting your design printed
Shop around to find low-cost printers online. I can only recommend a UK printer, which is Instantprint.co.uk – they are amazing and low cost. At a glance, 5000 flyers are £81. You just upload your design, see an online proof to check that it’s ok and they arrive in a few days!
If you’re not from UK, just search for something similar.
Ask questions in the comments
That was a long post and hasn’t covered everything, but ask any questions you have in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to help