subject: The Wonderful World of Promotional CDs [print this page] The Wonderful World of Promotional CDs The Wonderful World of Promotional CDs
If you though CD production was something only done by bands and music companies, you're in for a surprise. Producing CDs in order to promote your business is something any company or organization can do to great benefit. Here's your guide to the wonderful world of CD production.
Optical media has a lot going for it as a storage medium. It's durable and can hold large amounts of data. This makes is perfect not only to back up vital company information. But the cheapness of CDs makes them perfect as media to distribute and promote your business and its products and services.
When it comes to promoting your business, you need to do it as effectively as possible to beat the competition. Fortunately since the advent of the digital age, you're not limited to plain old documents to get your message across. You can and should still use documents as part of your promotional strategy but now you can also use such multimedia formats as audio and video along with spreadsheets, vivid graphs and graphics and PowerPoint presentations to present your business in a way that's as complete and powerful as possible.
Take, for example, a spa owner looking to expand his business by attracting new customers. In the old days, he was limited to printing out a brochure with some text and a few colour pictures of his facilities. Now he can create a promotional CD giving a video tour of his spa showing his treatments in action and can include interactive menus giving information on everything from the efficacy of herbs to the benefits of various massage treatments.
He can have relaxing music playing in the background and include links to his website which customers can visit for more details and to make bookings at his spa. After producing his presentation, it costs just a few pennies to have CDs produced which he can then mail out or distribute anywhere such as at trade shows or even hand out in the street to prospective spa customers.
Just think for a few moments and you're sure to come up with many ideas on how you could present your own products and services when you have such multimedia options at your disposal. You could include a recording of a recent seminar you gave or put out your entire annual report in CD format including a video of the chairman's speech and an animated section outlining the company's performance over the last year.
Another marvel of the digital age is the business card CD. This is a standard mini CD which has been shaped as a rectangular business card. The surface of the card is printed with the standard business information including name, company name, position, contact details and so on, but the CD can hold over 50 megabytes of information which allow you to include any promotional message you like.
Depending on your company and the nature of your presentation you may need to hire an outside company to create your CD. Once it's ready, you need to employ a CD production company to produce your discs in bulk and print your information and logo onto them.
When it comes to CD production, you have a choice of two processes - CD duplication or CD replication. They sound similar but the technology is different and each has its own characteristics which you need to know before making a choice.
CD duplication is the same process you use on your home or office computer. A CD writer drive just burns a copy of a disc. CD production companies use robotic CD duplicators to process a high volume of discs quickly and efficiently. Photo-glossy labels from a laser printer offer a smudge-proof, full colour finish. Duplication takes just one or two days and is the most cost effective method for batches of up to 2000 discs. With duplication you can just get the printing done and burn the information yourself.
CD replication involves the preparation of a master disc which is then used to make the copies. This process takes far longer than duplication, between 10-12 days but for jobs of 2000 discs and up, it's the more economical method. Top quality printing of the discs using silk screen or offset lithographic is also possible. With replication, you can't add your own data later.
When it comes to getting your CDs in maxi jewel cases produced it makes sense to use the services of an online CD production company which has the professional equipment with the high accuracy necessary to produce perfect optical media including 12cm CD duplication and 8cd CD replication. You can find full details of costs and delivery times on their web sites. Most companies offer free delivery to the mainland UK.
