Compelling Reasons Why
You Should Use Custom Presentation Folders

If you are involved in the business of person-to-person presentation and solicitation, you need to use every tool available at your disposal to thoroughly and impactfully impress upon your recipients the value you offer, in order to increase your chance of success. One of those tools that may prove vital and indispensable is a custom presentation pocket folder. Indeed, leading, thriving, and successful enterprises, from gritty local plumbers to Fortune 500 firms employ them to their advantage.

If you’re wondering how folders can help and why you should use them, here are several compelling reasons.

BRANDING

A well designed custom folder can be a potent part of your branding strategy; this is perhaps the over arching benefit to having your own. Those who receive (and even those who just chance upon) your folders could get a good and lasting picture of who or what your organization is about or what it stands for.

IMAGE OF PROFESSIONALISM

Corollary to the branding benefit is the projection of an image of professionalism. Having your own custom folders gives the recipient the impression that you have thought out every aspect of your operation, down to how you present important information. It announces that you are formidable and one — along with your message — to be taken seriously

VERSATILE AND COST EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING AND MARKETING

Mainly because it is mostly given in-person to recipients with whom you have had preliminary contact (thereby giving you at least tacit permission) or who approached you (for example, at a trade show), compared to mass media advertising (TV, internet, publications, radio, outdoor) which casts a wide net covering unknown contacts, presentation folders can be a cost effective advertising tool for the one-to-one approach.

As you hand them out, your company's logo and other information are clearly visible to the recipient and those who see it as they are carried around.

Furthermore, you can insert any type of document or marketing material that fits in the folder’s pockets, depending on your goal or campaign. For example, if you are in an industry that has volatile and chronic price swings, instead of mass printing price lists, you could just print the lists on demand then insert into the folder. Because you are printing the inserted documents only as needed, you could tailor it and address specifically to the recipient, thus adding an element of personal touch.

EMOTION AND PERSONAL TOUCH

A custom printed presentation folder conveys a sense of 'personal touch', which could conjure up positive emotions. Even more so if the inserted documents are specifically designed for and addressed to the recipient. It makes them appreciate the fact that you took the time and made the effort to customize the presentation for them.
Eliciting positive emotions is pivotal because purchasing decisions are based largely on emotion. Even if you feel that facts and figures are your recipient’s main concern, at the very east, you may have put them at ease with the positive first impression from seeing your folder, and could have broken down the wall of resistance, thus making them more receptive to your proposal or message.

PAPER OVER DIGITAL

If the debate going on in your head is the choice of medium: electronic, digital versus paper, here are reasons to help you decide to go with paper — folders and their contents.

PERSONAL TOUCH
With regard to conveying the aforementioned personal touch, paper clearly beats out digital. Not only is digital (email, text message, thumb drive ) cold and impersonal, it is also —ironically in this IT age — less savvy, and cliché. Not to mention uncreative and lazy.

BETTER CONNECTION AND RECEPTION
Further bolstering the winning argument for paper is a neuroscience study which confirms that paper based content connects better with our brains, thereby making them easier to process, absorb and recall.

Also, aside from mental reception, the actual act of physically handing over a presentation folder ensures that it will, in fact, be received, as opposed to email which has a chance of being classified as spam and landing on the junk folder.

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
This might sound counterintuitive and go against general public perception regarding the use of paper and its impact on the environment, but, as pointed out by this University of California, Berkeley article, digital is not really that much greener than paper. This is mainly due to e-waste, the energy used to power devices and the industrial servers that store all the data, paper recycling and tree planting.

THE COUP DE GRÂCE

If the reasons for using presentation folders listed above are not convincing enough, perhaps this final point alone might be: your competition has awesome looking custom folders and you do not.