Printing company owners think I’m kidding when I say that a Chief Marketing Officer can do even more than they’re...
How to Run a DIY Print Sales Improvement Program
If your print sales team wants to systematically improve -- rather than leave things to chance -- try running a DIY...
Are You Choosing the Right Chief Officer for Your Printing Company?
As a printing company advisor, I help clients hire Chief Officer positions for sales, operations, and business...
How Printers Can Build a Strategic Lighthouse to Guide the Business
Where is your print business headed? Not sure? Too many owners rush to the tactical side without a strategic beacon to...
When Print Sales Are Down, Who’s Really at Fault?
When printing businesses see their sales drop, there are gaping organizational issues that can be the root cause. The...
Is Your Print Sales Team Holding You Back?
In my work consulting with sales and marketing teams in printing companies, I hear a common refrain from the marketing...
Do First Things First When Marketing Your Printing Company
When creating a new marketing campaign for your printing company, it’s good -- no, it's imperative -- to do the first...
How to Break Through the Creativity Block
You can have all the right people in the room and still have a creative block when you do marketing for a printing...
Busting the Hustle-Bro Marketing Myth
What does it take to succeed at marketing in today’s printing business? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t take. Buying...
How to Build Your Print Business From the Inside
Want to see what a difference it makes to have a well-built business? It can mean more sales, higher profits, and...
7 Items for Your Print Business Year-End Checklist
End-of-year business planning is a time of opportunity. It's a chance to make your print business more powerful and...
How to Get Your Marketing Program Unstuck
Whether you are marketing yourself or marketing your printing company, it can be challenging to get rolling again if...
Quirky or Classy, Your Newsletter is a Gift to Readers
The following customer success story will help you improve your newsletter engagement and content marketing results....
We Want You: Using Variable Print at Recruiting Events
Are you focused on recruiting new members and getting buy-in from your prospects? Try using variable print when...
A Coffee Table Book for Your Company? Do Tell!
Your business deserves the very best treatment in telling its story. Elevate it with print! Here's why, and I believe...
Is it the Right Time to Sell Your Print Business?
Printers ask me: "When is it time to sell or exit from my business?" Good question. Whenever that time is, we can't...
Marketing to the Lucrative SaaS Sector
Marketing to the SaaS sector starts by understanding the everyday challenges of this type of business. Today let’s...
Is Empathy in Your Marketing Toolkit?
I was brought in as an expert by another marketing consultant. He was working with an international company, and one...
Use Print to Ask for Feedback and Improve Customer Relationships
To improve our businesses, we need to continuously learn about the people we serve. Think about the process of asking...
This is Your Brain on Marketing
Remember the 1980s public service announcement: “This is your brain on drugs. (Egg sizzles in a hot frying pan.) Any...
Being a Better You is a Marketing Advantage
How do you create the kind of business that people want to work for, sell for, and advocate for? You have to start...
Stunningly Simple: An Uncoated Viewbook Beats Out the Bling
In the past, my client sent top prospects a glitzy book -- a sales-oriented white paper. It was packaged in a royal...
Do You Have What it Takes to Build Your Print Business?
Many years ago my printer called me to ask me to help Ed, a customer who was struggling financially and more than 120...
Email Marketing is Easy, Affordable, and Gets Results
Email is a basic tool, but it is very powerful and has decades of marketing practices behind it. It’s perfect for a...
Control Pricing and Put Print Profits Back in Your Pocket
Assumptions about pricing can kill your business. Here's an example. Recently I helped a printer get rid of half of...
10 Things To Do When Updating Your Website
Whether you bring in a pro to help you update your website -- or do it yourself -- there are 10 things to do before...
Timing is Everything When Educating Customers About Print Marketing
Timing. Is. Everything. Do your print customers know this? Do they know the clock is ticking? Do they know that time...
Lessons from a Printing Company Working with Netflix
I toured a printing company that printed the DVD packaging and disks for Netflix, back when the entertainment giant...
How to Sell Print to the Real Estate Industry
No matter what’s going on in the economy, there’s money to be made for printers who can get in the door with real...
Authority Matters in How You Market Your Printing Company
To stand out online and in your customers’ minds, authority matters. Whether you have the biggest company on the...
Say YES to Customer Lists from Colleagues Who Are Closing Their Doors
When the magazine I ran for 22 years closed its doors, the owners offered me all the business data and customer lists...
Hybrid Marketing Teams Are Here and They’re Hot
Marketing departments in printing businesses are being disrupted. Today's employees have been adjusting and adapting...
Getting Creative with a $20 Marketing Budget
Doing a small project -- even one with a ridiculously cheap budget -- can be a way to show customers that creative...
Chutes and Ladders is This Year’s Game of Life
Remember the game Chutes and Ladders? The kids' board game where you have to climb to the top before anyone else?...
How to Make Business Decisions for a Wonderful Life
A printer came to me with a dilemma. One of his customers wanted to buy his family printing business and turn it into...
9 Tips on How to Get New Customers From a Nine-Year-Old!
Is it possible to get new customers in this topsy-turvy time? Here’s a story about a little kid who not only did it...
Help Customers Make a Profit by Using Print in NEW Ways
"If you want me to use print for marketing, make it the kind of print that makes me some money." My client told me he...
Buckle Down and Write for Crisp Communication
Just for fun, I get together with copywriters, speechwriters, ghostwriters, and all kinds of cool writer types. We...
A Single Toe Can Help You Get a Foot in the Door
In times of uncertainty, look for toe holds where you can wiggle into new verticals or open doors in your market. ...
Your Customers Really DO Want to Hear from You and Here’s Why
When I was a kid, there was this thing called the Helping Hand Program. If you were hurt, lost, or in danger, you...
Hey! Stop the Green Acres Email Thinking and Plan for the Future
Many printers I talk to act like email is some fancy new invention. It's been around for 25 years as a business tool....
Make Print Powerful by Sharing Your Memories of Print
To help print thrive, we must find ways to share our personal stories about print with those outside the industry....
Spice Up Your Customer Emails with Print
How do you communicate with your customers? Are you stuck in one channel or are you mixing it up and keeping it spicy?...
Is Your Marketing Program as Attention-Grabbing as a Tricorn Hat?
Create a three-cornered marketing communications powerhouse to open doors, get recognized, and make yourself...
Helping Customers Improve Their Game and Other Advice from the Trenches
Remember the 1988 romantic comedy Bull Durham? Every season baseball groupie Annie Savoy adopts a single-A league...
Taming Your Business Marketing Beast – Here’s How!
I’m sitting down with a solopreneur to help get marketing under control. “It’s been about five years since I really...
How to Add Seasonal Content to Print and Email for Fresh Engagement
Using seasonal content across your marketing program -- in print, direct mail, social content, and email -- helps our...
Whether it’s Time or Tea… Always Leave Them Wanting More
Freshman year in college, a friend “willed” me her work-study job in a campus library. Located in a beautiful white...
The Compound Benefit of Raising Your Rates
“Marilee is distraught,” said my friend, “So I gave her your name.” My friend’s boss, Marilee, published a...
Print, the Cool King of Content
My client, King, sold new and used videos, games, and fan collectibles. He printed a newsletter every month. When I...
What Printers Can Learn from Start-Ups
There are lessons printers can learn from other people’s businesses.... especially when those businesses fail....
What Do You Think? Was This Marketing Campaign a Success?
Does everyone on your marketing team know what success means? Does the owner know? Here's an example of the disconnect...
Print, Text and Email Create a Recipe for Marketing Success
Print, text, and email are a delicious mix in this restaurant marketing campaign. To gain new customers (and keep them...
What Can Glamping Teach Us About Customer Experience?
My husband's parents are known for taking us on memorable family vacations. One year, all the adults and grandkids...
Is Your Email Marketing on Life Support? Revive it Now!
Did you take a gap year with your email marketing program? You’re not alone. Printing businesses often launch their...
How to Send Cold Emails Without Being Clueless
Over the years I have designed very successful cold email campaigns that converted in the double digits. I’m not...
Print is Perfect for the Off-The-Grid Demographic
Believe it or not, there are people in the U.S. and the world who don’t have regular or continuous access to the...
Three Things You MUST Do After a Trade Show
Whether you attend one trade show a year or ride the wave of many print-related events, there are three things...
An Important Message from Realtors to Printers: Location, Location, Location
Google loves to reward local businesses. And, Google wants to deliver accurate local results to those doing online...
7 Ways to Score Higher on the Customer Leaderboard
When your customers rank you on their supplier scorecard, do you know how you are rated and what data is being...
What to Do When the Sales Prospect Goes Dark
Printing company salespeople ask me about a common situation these days: GHOSTING. “What should we do if the sales...
To Get Ahead in Print, Choose Wisely and Surround Yourself with Excellence
Motivational speaker Jim Rohn is quoted as saying we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with....
12 Tips and Tools For Becoming a Successful and Prepared Print Professional
We increase our odds of being successful when we're prepared. The right tools make a difference when you are a recent...
Do You Smell What I Smell? Clean Up Stinky Data, Stat!
If you are using your customer's stinky old data and mail lists for email or print-to-mail campaigns... PLEASE DON'T!...
It’s Your DUTY to Make Print AMAZING
Can we please up our game? I yearn to see AMAZING print, but there are days when all I see is CRAPPY print. You see, I...
PG Turns the Tide With a Flood of Print and TV ads
How Procter and Gamble turned around the negative publicity surrounding Tide Pods with a well-choreographed Super Bowl...
Print and All That’s Good and Decent
Have you noticed that print has become one of the good guys? We’re not selling our data to the bad guys. We’re not...
Printed Coupons Make Life Easier for Busy Families
Who wants pizza? Don’t forget to add the anchov...I mean, the PRINT! Okay, I admit it. We are a...
First Steps For Marketing Your Personal Brand
When you are building your personal brand, it’s a lot like marketing your company. You have a daunting number of...
Carpe Printum: New Ideas to Help You Seize the Print!
When you visit the Printerverse, you learn how printers can Carpe Printum -- seize the print and get ahead of the...
What an Arcade Game Can Teach Us About Printing Sales
Remember Pole Position, the popular video arcade game of the 1980s? I loved it. Amazingly, the things I learned while...
You Can’t Go Wrong With A Printed Greeting Card
Don't you just love-love-love printed greeting cards on cool paper? One of the things I love is about greeting cards...
9 Superbly Simple Ways Printers Can Increase Email Newsletter Subscribers
When marketing with email newsletters, printers can get hung up on not having a big list of subscribers. My advice is...
How 1970s Brands Influenced a Generation Through Print Packaging
Forty years is a long time for a brand -- primarily through print packaging and some silly songs -- to sustain a...
How to Build a Winning Sales Process Around Customer Data
Every year I hold a deep data dive with my clients, and we focus on their ideal customers. We want to see who or what...
Ask These 3 Questions to Drastically Improve Future Print Sales
There are three questions to ask new customers that will DRASTICALLY improve your print sales. You must learn to ask...
Eight Disruptors that Will Transform Email Marketing
Email marketing is changing right under our MailChimpy fingers. In fact, it's iterating swiftly into what I call a...
The “Year of Color” is Here! (Are You READY?)
Optimism is in the wind. Things are picking up. People are feeling better. The clue? Color. People NEED color. They...
11 Tips For Turning Dabblers and Drifters into Marketing Do-ers
Do you do a little of this and a little of that in social media, email marketing, print, direct mail, and blogging? Do...
When Interrupting Prospects Pick The Right WHY And HOW
When building an integrated marketing campaign, it's vital to focus on WHY you are communicating with prospects and...
Should You Join Every Social Media Network?
Each time a new social media site or platform comes out, my printer friends ask me if they should join. If you're a...
Print Helps Broadcast Emails Deliver Important News
Is there a better way than impersonal, mass emails to communicate important news to customers and residents? Our...
Use print to capitalize on the #PokemonGO craze
Do you know about PokemonGO? PokémonGO is a mobile app game that uses augmented reality to view the world through your...
DRUPA Takeaways From a Stay-At-Home Attendee
I attended the largest global print trade show for 11 days by way of Twitter and the #drupa2016 hashtag. By attending...
Boost Email Open Rates with this One DAM Tweak
Digital asset management saved the day! I was doing the email strategy for a company that markets itself to prosperous...
TRENDING: Today’s Startup Print Customers Are DEMOCOLLABORATING!
We’ve talked about how to woo start up companies and cultivate a love of print. Now that you’ve won a startup...
7 Myths of Selling Print to Startups
When you are trying to sell print to a young, new company -- especially a startup in the tech sector -- you’ll have...
Young Companies are Buying Print and It’s Blowing my Mind
I just finished a project with a company that’s so print-loving it blew my mind. I'll call them Nater's Skateboards to...
3 Sweet Reasons To Use Email Plus Print
Remember Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ads? "Hey! You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" Yum! That’s how I feel about...
Print Takes Center Stage
Print is moving into the spotlight in cross media campaigns. Print has stepped into the spotlight and proved it plays...
How Do You Tell Customers Their Ideas Are Bad?
Remember the last time you told a customer their idea was bad? Did you hesitate? Maybe you didn’t want to lose the...
The Magic of Print (and the Selling Power of a Good Story)
I volunteer in the college center at the local high school. At this time of year, college recruiters and admissions...
Printers Win By Being More Involved
Global Brands are Becoming More Involved in Their Customers' Businesses, Driving Higher Profits and Quicker ROI During...
Where The Heck Was PRINT??
Last night was excruciating. A local business group held its annual celebration to honor its members. Although the...
How Fast-Growing Printers Capitalize On Success
Integrate print, email and blogging for quick marketing results By Sandy Hubbard When considering an integrated...
5 Mistakes You’re Making With Email-to-Print Marketing
In an email-to-print or cross channel campaign using print, the first step is to get those emails opened. Here are 5...
Sell Deeper Into Your Customer List With Data
by Sandy Hubbard Printers who have a solid, loyal clientele always need to sell more to existing customers. Here's how...
Sprinkle Some Marketing Automation Into Your Email-To-Print Campaigns
There's a synergy between email and print. Email opens the door. Print clinches the deal. When you add marketing...
Personalized 3D Printed Gift Lures New Customers
3D Printing adds Novelty to Email-to-Print Marketing Campaign A business acquaintance just started using 3D printing...