Building a House, Building a Marketing Campaign

Imagine building a house. Before you saw a single board or dig the footings for your foundation, you must first finalize your blueprints. Without plans telling you what your desired result should look like, you won't be able to accomplish very much.

You also need to make sure you have the tools to accomplish the job. In construction, tools all have very defined purposes, and failing to listen to safety guidelines about using the tools can end up either hurting you or destroying your house.

Once you have your final plans and all the tools and materials you need, it's time to get to work. Now is your opportunity to put all your knowledge to the test. The process might be slow, but as you go step by step, you start to see progress. Before you know it, the final result begins to take shape. The further you get, the more confidence you gain in your abilities.

Most of us will never build anything more elaborate than a bird house. That doesn't mean, however, that the steps involved in building a house cannot teach us anything. Even just planning how one might begin to build a house can teach us something about how to succeed in marketing a company.

The planning

Before building a house, everyone involved in the process needs to know their role and desired outcome. Without a final goal, it would be impossible to create anything useful or of value.

The same holds true in marketing. Marketing is most successful when you have a final goal and vision in mind from the beginning. Understanding the end goal is the only way you'll know where you're going and what the final result should look like. This final vision will guide you as you develop your campaign message and plan for reaching the desired intended audience.

The tools

When building a house, you need to use a variety of tools that each serve a very distinct role. In marketing, you'll also find various tools in your tool kit. From direct mail to Facebook ads to inbound marketing, a successful campaign involves understanding the purpose of each individual tool and how to successfully use them.

Perseverance

Building something as large as a house will require an incredible amount of perseverance. There will be times when you get discouraged or struggle to see progress, but you still must keep going.

The same lesson applies in marketing. When starting a new campaign, it can be hard to see tangible results right away. The results will come. You just need to keep pressing forward. You must be willing to put in some effort before you begin to receive any return.

Building a house is something most of us only imagine doing. Those who have had the opportunity to work on such a project, however, know what an educational experience it can be. Even if you only ever dream of building your own house, consider the steps you would take. You might be surprised at the tips you can learn about marketing your company. If you're interested in making your dreams a reality and getting your marketing plan off the ground, contact us today. We'd be happy to help you get started.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

Transparency and Authenticity: Two Keys to Marketing Success

Trust is essential to success in today's business world. It's not enough to offer a terrific product or service. You need to back that offering with the type of high-quality brand experience people won't find anywhere else. Doing so doesn't just create customers -- it creates advocates. It creates a legion of followers who are willing to champion your brand to their friends and family members, extending your reach farther than you ever could on your own. In order to achieve this, however, you need to focus on two key qualities: transparency and authenticity, especially in your marketing message.

 

What is Transparency in Marketing?

At its core, transparency means being truthful about your business at all times. Far too many business leaders believe that acknowledging problems or mistakes is akin to showing signs of weakness. As they see it, letting people know your business may be going through a rough patch is proof that blood is in the water and the sharks will soon begin to circle.

In reality, transparency is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a trusted brand. If you make a mistake, don't attempt to sweep it under the rug. Instead, lean into it, take the heat, and use the experience to better your organization. From that regard, transparency isn't a weakness at all. It's a way to show your organization is run by human beings who sometimes make mistakes but who always care about their customers above all else.

Consider the recent surge in data breaches that have affected some of the biggest companies on the planet. There are commonly two types of reactions to these events. Some companies try to pretend like a data breach didn't happen for as long as possible. This never ends well and only damages their reputation. Others step up, take full responsibility, and go to great lengths to do right by their customers. These are the companies that survive the PR disaster that a data breach represents.

Authenticity is Key

Gabe Newell is the co-founder and managing director of the Valve Corporation, a highly successful video game development and distribution platform. When asked about the early days of Valve and the major success it had with digital distribution when so many other platforms were faltering, Newell said the key was simple. "One of the things we learned pretty early on is don't ever, ever try to lie to the Internet," he said. "They will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity."

Newell understood what so many others failed to: authenticity is no longer a recommendation for business professionals. It's a requirement.

Building a following for your business is always a challenge, especially as new competitors crop up with each passing day. Transparency and authenticity are two of the most important resources you have that will move you toward that goal.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

Integrating Social Media and Print: How to Leverage the Best of Both Worlds to Your Advantage

It's certainly no secret that social media is increasingly becoming one of the single most important tools to connect with your target audience in the most meaningful ways possible. After all, sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more have hundreds of millions of unique users who are actively engaged in social activities on a daily basis. It would be a shame to let such a valuable resource go to waste.

At the same time, you certainly don't want to neglect your print campaign. It's still one of the most effective marketing weapons in your arsenal and always will be. So how do you ensure you're paying equal attention to both print and social media?

The answer is simple: integrate social media into your print campaign and leverage the benefits both have to offer.

Grab Attention and Refuse to Let it Go

In today's crowded marketplace, the goal of any campaign is to grab the attention of prospective customers. You aren't just trying to sell a product or service -- you're trying to quickly show why your product or service is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest.

Integrating social media elements into your print campaigns is one of the best ways to accomplish that. It allows you to get your message in front of more people in the places they're most comfortable holding that conversation.

For an example of this concept in action, consider the hashtag. People use hashtags for everything from highlighting key words and phrases in a post to finding trends, joining ongoing conversations, and adding a definitive statement at the end of a sentence. By including a hashtag at the end of your print mailer, you're giving your customers multiple options regarding how they can join the conversation and communicate with your brand. If they'd like to continue to learn more about your product or service via the hashtag, they can always do so. If not, they can continue their exposure by way of the print materials the same way they always have.

In essence, you're giving them choices, which is one of the best ways to grab their attention and refuse to let it go.

Tracking Success

Integrating social media and print is also a great, easy way to track the success of a particular campaign over a long-term basis. Consider putting a unique hashtag on the end of each print piece you mail. If messages with that hashtag are then retweeted 200,000 times on Twitter, you know your message is being received loud and clear and that your target audience is more than willing to continue the conversation online.

Digital and print marketing don't have to be independent of one another. Anyone who tells you it's a "one or the other" proposition is wrong. Print and digital are both great at accomplishing their own things, or even the same things in different ways. By integrating social media and print together, you're combining the benefits of both platforms into one environment and are truly creating a "best of both worlds" scenario.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

Predictive Analytics: One of the Keys to Direct Mail Marketing Success in 2015 and Beyond

Direct mail marketing is still one of the best and most efficient ways to connect to your target audience, even in this social-media-centric world. But that doesn't mean you need to eschew technology altogether. Case in point: predictive analytics are quickly becoming not just a recommendation, but a requirement for anyone running a direct mail campaign.

What Are Predictive Analytics?

At their core, predictive analytics leverage statistics, data mining, and similar techniques to create a prediction about future behaviors. The idea is to take the past behavior of your target audience and use it to make educated guesses about future activities.

The concept is used in Internet advertising on a daily basis. Have you ever wondered why you suddenly see advertisements for home audio and video equipment or Blu-ray movies right after you purchase a high-definition television set online? It's a combination of programmatic advertising and predictive analytics at play. Marketers know that based on your purchase, there are certain types of accessories you can definitely use.

If you just bought an HDTV, it goes without saying that you could probably use some shiny new Blu-rays to play on it. By targeting you with advertisements based on that information, businesses know they have a much better chance of making a sale than if they randomly targeted 10,000 people, many of whom might not have an HDTV at all.

Many businesses don't realize this same idea can also play a very important role in how their direct mail marketing campaigns are conducted.

How Do Predictive Analytics Help in Direct Mail Marketing?

The major benefit predictive analytics brings to the world of direct mail marketing is one of precision. You no longer have to spend time and money each month to send mailers out to all 3,500 people who live in a particular ZIP code. The fact you were sending out materials to many people who ultimately had no interest in your products or services was always just an accepted "cost of doing business," but that doesn't have to be the case any longer.

Thanks to predictive analytics, you now have a better chance of targeting the RIGHT people within a particular ZIP code based on their past interests and behaviors. Instead of sending out 3,500 mailers and achieving a 20% conversion rate, you can save time and money by only sending out 1,000 mailers while achieving an 80% success rate at the same time. It's about giving you a much smarter way to spend your marketing dollars. It's also about empowering you to stretch your marketing campaign's strength even further.

In direct mail marketing, success doesn't mean spending as much money as possible. Instead, true success and market penetration are achieved by spending every dollar the right way. Whether you have $10 to spend or $10,000,000, that theory will always hold true. By making excellent use of advancements like predictive analytics, you can make sure your important materials are actually getting in front of people who find them valuable. This will go a long way toward increasing not only the efficiency of your campaign, but also its general return on investment.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

What Lessons You can Learn from Vacation Planning

It was almost the end of senior year at the university. Four close friends -- Sarah, Maria, Andrea, and Kaitlin -- were preparing to celebrate the momentous achievement of earning a degree. To make their upcoming graduation even sweeter, each had found employment that would begin a few weeks after they received their diploma. These girls had plenty to celebrate.

To make some final memories before they headed off into the work world, they decided to take a trip together. They quickly realized, however, that each one of them had a different idea of what constitutes the perfect vacation.

Sarah dreamed of spending days relaxing by the ocean, doing little besides napping by the water, swimming, and enjoying fantastic food by night.

Maria desperately wanted to explore some fantastic cities. She had never been to New York City and thought the excitement of the Big Apple would be perfect.

Andrea agreed that cities sounded perfect, but she thought one of the historic cities of Europe sounded more appealing -- a dose of culture along with the excitement of a city.

Kaitlin was interested in an active vacation, and exploring the Grand Canyon sounded like the perfect adventure to her.

As the girls worked to reconcile their different ideas of vacations, Sarah started laughing. The girls turned to her with confusion and asked what could possibly be so funny. Sarah sighed and said, "I'm going to work for a marketing firm in two months, and I know part of my job is going to be developing buyer personas for a startup. I learned in class how important it is to really understand your buyers, but we've all demonstrated this lesson far more clearly than any textbook."

Here's what Sarah meant.

Marketing one-on-one

Customers expect personalized marketing. General information that leaves questions about the value of products and services won't engage them. Thanks to the Internet, customers are now in control of the beginning of the buying process. They can read online reviews and research companies long before they make a purchase.

To answer this consumer need, companies must learn how to market to their customers on a one-to-one basis. This requires knowing customers on a personal level and knowing what they seek. In-depth buyer personas are essential for this task.

Using buyer personas for personalized marketing

A well-developed buyer persona will mean understanding details far beyond gender and level of education or job. For example, all of the girls in the opening story were college-educated women in their early 20s, but they also had vastly different interests. A quality buyer persona will include information about budgets, pain points, goals, and roles within a company.

Using this information can help you determine the questions buyers are likely to have. This can guide the creation of content and marketing materials that speak directly to potential customers.

The more precise you can make your marketing materials, the more effective they'll be. Identifying buyer personas is an excellent way to refine marketing efforts and better understand exactly who will be responding to campaigns. If you're interested in improving your marketing efforts, speak to us today. We'd be happy to help you learn more about how to market to your intended audience.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.