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 strategic. It should happen across all departments and be handled systematically and proactively. Is that how fiscal year-end works in your company? Most printing companies do not have a documented year-end process that gives them enough […]
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 you’ve gotten off track. Here are some easy ways to get your marketing program unstuck and on the road to success. WHAT’S REALLY HOLDING YOU BACK? When I work with clients who are not looking forward […]
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. For my birthday, my cousin ships a gigantic gift box filled with unusual items she collects all year. Might be silver ornaments shaped like body parts to protect me from illness and injury. Could be a six-fingered glove, with […]
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 holding your recruiting events. Personalizing the marketing package helps you gain trust and commitment. I’ll give you two examples of how to combine personalized print when recruiting. My friend was a designer for an event organizer. She […]
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 this with all my heart: Print makes stories memorable. It gives ideas stature. Statistically, most of us have written carefully-crafted information about our companies. Yet it resides only on our websites! Why? What if you […]
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 wait until the last minute to position your business to attract a buyer. Here’s one way to see where you are on the “readiness to sell” scale. Think of a strike price. A […]
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 of their tried-and-true lead gen programs was not doing the job anymore. We met with the corporate marketing people, and they explained the program. Then we got on a Zoom call with the salespeople, and […]
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 for customer feedback, for example. While it’s not specifically a marketing activity, it shows customers we care about our relationship with them and we want to serve them better. When you ask for customer feedback, […]
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 questions?” As kids, we all made fun of the ad, and it became the meme of its time. But it made an impression. It had a short, simple message with a shocking image. No long explanations […]
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 with people. In my experience, when my clients work on improving themselves, the ripple effect creates a distinct marketing advantage for the business — including the ability to market to potential employees […]
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 purple turned-edge leather binder with a branded silver clasp. Bling-a-bling-bling! The white paper (created by a big-name agency) was crammed with features and benefits, had pie charts and QR codes, and the typical […]
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 days behind in payments. “Ed’s a great guy,” the printer said, “It’s a long shot, but if there’s any hope of getting his business turned around, we think you’re the one who […]