Authenticity Matters in Brand, Print Business and Personal Messaging
Authenticity for brand, personal, and print business messaging has become more important than ever. Whether it’s in advertising, social media, or everyday conversation, people want to feel that the messages they receive are genuine and truthful. Last week was International Women’s Day and the flood of messaging on March 8th showing support for women was […]
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 things first. Successful marketing teams look at the big picture, outline the program, create a plan that everyone understands, and – only then – take action. If that doesn’t happen, even an experienced team […]
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 are getting great ROI on our marketing, our customer base is growing, and we get new leads all the time.” Both these printers are doing the same thing. One is winning and the other is wasting. Marketing ROI […]
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 your print shop? Do you know what Pantone color the sky is? Do you make vacation plans around printing industry events or incorporate them? Do you look at digital marketing and come up with […]
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 company. Here’s my perspective on how to get the creativity flowing when you do print-digital-media marketing in the printing industry. This story is about a client who does specialty screen printing and […]
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 fastest-growing trend in digital marketing. Why? Because video works. Videos have proven to be 53 times more likely to generate first-page rankings than other traditional SEO techniques. Live, short-form videos shot and edited from a […]
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 actual NEW year and not a continuation of what I refer to as the uni-year. The uni-year covers anything that happened between March 2020 and December 31, 2022. All the maintaining status quo […]
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 into the hustle-bro marketing mythology. What is hustle-bro mythology? If you watch YouTube, you see snippets of pre-roll advertising that feature earnest, fast-talking “hustle bros.” These dudes talk about how their program made them millions […]
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 marketing can be ambiguous. ROI is hard to measure. “Going viral” is close to impossible. So why even try? Because social media, across its various platforms, is and will always be one potential step in your future […]
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 better morale. Let’s talk about how to build your print business from the inside so it works better on the outside. Working on the inside of the business sounds lofty and philosophical, but what […]
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, but cases are up 50% over the past two weeks. Americans are as divided as ever, and the major political parties still have a winner-take-all attitude. But there are some signs that tracks […]
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, scary, rewarding, painful, interesting, and exhilarating. Things moved fast in the first few months of the year, mostly due to the macroeconomic post-pandemic surge. Consumers and companies were excited about getting “back to normal” as […]
