In the digital age, where screens often dominate communication, it's easy to overlook the power of local community...
Is TikTok Marketing Right for Your Print Business?
“TikTok is just a fad for kids. Kids don’t buy print, so I shouldn’t waste my time thinking about TikTok.” ~...
How to Get the Most Out of Your Chief Marketing Officer
Printing company owners think I’m kidding when I say that a Chief Marketing Officer can do even more than they’re...
Now Trending: Digital Media Needs Print Media to Extend Marketing ROI
The advertising landscape is in flux. Marketers and media planners are moving dollars to follow their audience to...
How To Boost Your Print Shop’s Open House with Digital Marketing
Hosting an open house event at your print shop is a great way to showcase your capabilities to your prospects and...
Should You Email People Who Didn’t Ask You To?
Print business owners and marketers: Raise your hand if you have ever sent email marketing to a prospect database...
Reality Check: The Perception of Printing
I record and produce a significant number of episodes for Podcasts from The Printerverse. Discussions about printing,...
Can Geofencing and Retargeting Work for Your Print Marketing?
Your prospective print customers are everywhere. And yet they can be so hard to find. Quite a few of them are using...
Marketing Strategy + Execution + Continuous Improvement = Long-Term Profit
Every printing company needs a marketing strategy, but most don’t have one. Strategically and logically combining...
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...
The Perfect Partnership: Collaboration Between Printers and Designers
In the world of printing and design, collaboration is key. From business cards to banners, brochures to billboards,...
Why Creating a Search-Optimized Print Website Feels So Good
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feels so good. Why? Because a search-optimized print website can help you meet...
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...
Cookie Cutter Print Marketing Doesn’t Generate High ROI
Print shop owner #1: “Lead generation is hard, expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating.” Print shop owner #2: “We...
Five Signs You are a Print Junkie – 2023 Edition
Do you see print everywhere? Do you count down the days until the new printing press or finishing equipment arrives at...
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...
Are Your Print Company Videos Optimized for Search Engines?
Video marketing is hot and print shop video marketing is getting even hotter in 2023. In fact, video is the...
2023 CMYK Manifesto: Disrupt, Disclose, Do Better
Greetings Citizens of the Printerverse and welcome to a New Year! For the first time in 3 years, it feels like an...
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...
Social Media For Your Print Business (Part 2 of 2)
Executing an effective social media for your print business is easier said than done. After all, social media...
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...
2022: A Year in Flux for Marketers
What a year in flux and uncertainty 2022 has been. COVID has receded, and life got back to some semblance of normal,...
Digital Marketing for Printers in 2022: A Year To Remember
For many printers, digital marketing in 2022 was like a rickshaw ride on a rolling cobblestone road. Fast, bumpy, fun,...
Print Samples: Before You Ring in the New Year…
At the end of every year, it is good to take some time and look back at where you’ve been. The world of print...
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...
Are You Getting Noticed by Print Customers?
Are you getting noticed by your print customers? Do you know how they found you? I recently sat in on a client’s sales...
6 Steps to Rebooting Print Business’ Social Media Strategy
Does your print business have a social media strategy? Maybe you publish a post everyone once in a while or perhaps...
Print Samples: What DO YOUR Business Cards Say?
Before every trade show, event, or customer meeting, look at your business cards. What do they say about you and your...
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...
How to Attract the Best Print Customers
“Nobody ever asked me what customers I wanted before.” This was told to me by the VP of Sales at a $25 million revenue...
Why Create an Account-Based Marketing Strategy for Your Major B2B Accounts
Selling print to large enterprise accounts can be a very profitable and scalable strategy. An effective way of landing...
Print Samples Sell Your Association
Every print association has had the same problem – how do you keep members engaged and interested in your events? Over...
3 Ways to Earn Trust Through Collaboration with Print Customers
The secret to earning referrals and long-term loyalty with print customers for their printing and print marketing...
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....
Increase Search Traffic Using The Pillar Content Model
It takes a lot of content about a topic to increase search traffic results. Google takes several factors into account...
Should You Send Your Print Customers Newsletters? 5 Ways To Know
Sending print customers newsletters is an idea that has crossed the mind of every print business owner or marketing...
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...
Improve Public Relations with These 6 Social Media Steps
Many, maybe most, companies still don’t understand how to use social media to improve their business. There are many...
Video (and More!) Marketing Strategies for Your Print Business (Part 2)
People love video marketing. OK, maybe that’s not true for everyone. People love video! Yes, that is true, especially...
Video Marketing Strategies for Your Print Business (Part 1)
Video is a marketing tool that print business owners should not ignore. Generally speaking, printers just don’t...
Best Digital Advertising Strategies for Printers to Reach Targeted Print Buyers
Part 2 of a 2-part series How can your print business reach print buyers by using digital advertising? There’s no...
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 This the Decade of Branding?
The wide range of marketing skills and talents fall into two categories of people, Marketing Creatives and Marketing...
Print Samples: Why You Need Your Own Magazine
Many years ago, as we were getting ready for Drupa in 2012 one of the sales team members I was working with in Europe...
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...
Is Your Website Meeting Your Goals?
Over the past few months, I’ve written about the changes in Google search results pages and how they impact companys’...
Print Samples: Love Letter to All Our Pals in Print
Have you ever been specifying a print job and couldn’t remember how to spec an element? Do you want A4 or B4? How do...
How to Help Overworked Print Customers Buy From You
Making print sales isn’t easy these days. Supply chain issues are disrupting the process and the ability to promise...
Should Your Print Business Pay to Advertise with Mark Zuckerberg?
Part 1 of a 2-part series Paid digital advertising is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways for a print...
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...
Print Samples: Create Your Own Magazine
When was the last time you told someone about a great magazine article you read online? For many, reading online is...
Combine the Powers of Digital Printing with Digital Marketing
If you’re like most print service providers, you are trying to grow your business. You want new customers while...
How Google’s New Search Results Page Impacts Your Search Performance
Google continually makes changes to search results pages, walking a fine line between providing a good user search...
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...
Print Samples: The Wonderful VIGC Member Package
Do you belong to an association? A bowling league? Intramural golf? What about a print association? Is that...
Build Back Better Brings Print Customers
This is not a political post. It’s a financial one for design, print, and marketing pros. At the end of 2020, the...
Witkowski, Dejan and Strull Launch MarketWise Academy
MarketWise Academy was founded out of the desire to help creative communities navigate and thrive in a post-pandemic...
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...
The Real Cost of Print Customer Acquisition
What does it cost you to get a new lead to your website from your digital marketing campaigns? The cost equation...
Build Trust to Grow Your Business
Edelman PR consultancy recently released their annual Edelman Trust Barometer report. They surveyed over 36,000 people...
Print Samples Danish Style
Print shows in Europe often bring out displays of amazing print samples gathered by passionate people who want to...
2022 CMYK Manifesto: Know, Show, Do, Share
This annual post has traditionally focused on what is in front of us in order to help customers generate business...
Leveraging the Power of Digital Media to Grow the World of Print
The title sounds a bit like a paradox! But the idea came to me this cold winter morning as I sat with my parents...
Two Great Resources That Help Your Direct Mail Stand Out
It’s no secret that direct mail has been an effective marketing channel for decades. While the twenty-first century...
Do Customer Loyalty and Rewards Programs Drive More Print Profit?
This blog is part 3 of a 3-part series: Maximize New Opportunities Through Current Customers. Catch-up here: Part 1 -...
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...
Wrapping Up 2021 with Bullish Thoughts for 2022
This year has, in many ways been one giant blur. It was January, yada-yada-yada, and here is my year-end wrap-up post....
How A Customer Reference Program Can Help You Sell More Print
This blog is part 2 of a 3-part series: Maximize New Opportunities Through Current Customers How many print buying...
Explore Print Sample TV: Even More Print Samples!
A few weeks ago, we had a chance to create a bucket of new episodes of Print Sample TV! We have some cool things...
Top Ten Tips for Email Marketing Best Practices
Many printing companies rely on email as their primary communications tool for reaching customers and prospects....
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...
Sales Notes from a Campaign Trail
Sales Notes from a Campaign Trail Having just run for a seat on my town council, campaigning for two solid months,...
Print Samples: Pushing the Envelope
The folks at the Envelope Manufacturer’s Association have a mission – envelopes. But it is more than that! They share...
Now Playing at a Theater Near You: PRINT!
I recently wrote an article about the return of the theater experience for the Ricoh Business Booster site where I am...
Are QR Codes Being Used Effectively In Direct Mail?
Last month’s Have QR Codes Finally Reached Their Glory Days? Blog post illustrated the resurgence of the QR code in...
Is Your Print Business Maximizing the Value of Your Customers?
What is a customer worth to your business? The simplest calculation is your customer lifetime value (CLV), which is...
Packaging Design Meets Graphic Design
Startups juggle many things when launching products. It is a combination of taking care of business and a labor of...
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...
Know, Like Trust: Funneling Suspects into Sales
Most people who have been in sales for even a few short years have heard about The SALES FUNNEL. You might have first...
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...
The Intersection of Branding and Packaging
Packaging is designed to contain, protect, and transport products. Packaging provides a fourth purpose – to inform...
Do All Your Employees Know the Elevator Pitch of Your Print Business?
No. The answer is no, they don’t. Some of your employees are non-customer-facing so MAYBE it’s not necessary for them...
Print Samples: Why You Should Use Postcards
Postcards are the lingua franca of communication. Even in today’s Instagram world, people send postcards when they...
Project Peacock: A Resource Playground for Printers and Creatives
These days good information is increasingly difficult to come by. Unless you already know what you’re looking for, you...
Does Your Print Business Really Have a PR Plan?
The truth is that most businesses (print or otherwise) do not have a public relations (PR) plan. We are all busy and...
Print Samples: Let’s Play with Playing Cards!
When was the last time you played with a deck of cards? Real cards, not the online solitaire version? Over the last...
Winning Sales Strategy: The Moment for a Quick Sales Victory Lap
If you read my posts with any frequency or listen to the Print Buying UK v. USA Podcast co-hosted by me and Matthew...
Lead Generation and Marketing Considerations For Printers
The other day a client forwarded me an email that was written by the president of a commercial printing company who...
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...
What’s Your Priority? Sales Revenue or New Lead Generation?
What do you think is the highest-priority marketing objective of print businesses today? To drive sales revenue or...
Print Samples! Tell a Story with YOUR Business Card
Do you carry business cards? Some people have started to avoid them and exchange phone bumps to transfer contact...
The Funnel is Dead. Long Live the Customer Journey!
I remember the first time I read about the marketing funnel and how prospects go through an awareness, consideration,...
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...
Should Your Print Business be Advertising on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn advertising is an expensive form of B2B digital advertising. It’s also one of the most cost-efficient. Wait,...
Print Samples! The Jazz Fest Vibe
Print-on-Demand has a certain vibe. It’s immediate. It’s vibrant. But it’s also not the way many printers work. In...
3 Proactive Plans for Productive Planner Prospecting
Sometime during 2018 a woman walked up to me in the airport and struck up a light conversation about how often she...
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 Much Should Your Print Business Spend On Marketing
A print industry friend of mine asked my opinion about how he should budget for marketing this year. I’ll share with...