Marketing Lessons from Iconic Rock Bands

Few entities can inspire the kind of loyalty rock bands do. Think about performers like the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and Phish, to name just a few. Groups like these have entertained generations of audiences and encouraged strong followings among their most devoted fans. Sure, their music plays a large part in building and maintaining a fan base, but so, too, does great marketing.

Bringing the content to the people

Most recording artists want to sell as many records as possible. That's only natural, after all. So they focus on promoting albums and use concerts as a way to advertise their music.

The same idea is true in business, where companies often use their professional blogs and social media channels to promote their content and toot their own horn. They might provide occasional helpful information for followers, but their main purpose is selling, and their attitude reflects that.

Some of the more iconic bands, however, have taken the opposite tack. They place their primary focus on entertaining their fans. They want to provide an "experience" that encourages fans to spread their music and enjoy what they have to offer. Album sales grow naturally as the word spreads and more and more people are drawn to them.

That's the same idea behind successful inbound marketing. It all starts with the experience. Great content draws customers to your sites and pages. Once there, you engage them, encourage them to spread your information, and watch your sales increase as your brand reach grows.

Staying dedicated to the goal

Success didn't come overnight for most iconic bands. They had to tour constantly, often for years, spreading their music gradually from town to town and venue to venue. Their sound evolved naturally during that time, as they strove to meet their fans' demands for entertainment. Eventually, they were able to reap the benefits of their dedication.

Once again, the same holds true with social marketing. When you begin using a digital marketing strategy, you have to be willing to give your efforts time before you begin to see a strong return. You have to regularly produce quality content that will bring people back and encourage them to become fans. You need to hone your voice and get to know your audience. Other websites need to find your content and begin linking to it. Search engines have to recognize your value as your popularity begins to rise. In time, you'll begin to see positive returns for your effort, but only if you continuously produce high-quality, valuable content.

Creating your own voice

Of course, all the marketing in the world wouldn't have helped these bands grow if they didn't have something unique and worthwhile to share. They created incredible music that people love to listen to. For your marketing efforts to be successful, you have to be able to show your potential audience that you're worth their attention, too. That means developing your own voice, creating new ideas, and building on your strengths within your niche. You want to stand out against the crowd and give people a reason to return to you again and again.

The next time you sit down to enjoy the music of your favorite artist or band, pause and consider the incredible marketing lessons these musicians have to share. If you're ready to start taking your marketing campaign to the next level, let us know how we can help.

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.

Instilling School Spirit at Your Company

Many factors go into the decision about where to attend college. While majors, location, and ranking undoubtedly hold a high place, the experience of other students and the school's reputation also play a crucial role.

Schools must strike a careful balance between providing a rigorous academic environment, while at the same time offering an enjoyable experience that will make students talk about their school in a positive way to other prospective students.

Satisfied students can be the best brand ambassadors an institution can find. When students love their school, it emanates from everything they do.

• The students root for the home team during sports matches.
• School tour guides who speak about the university to groups of prospective students are enthusiastic and insightful.
• Successful professionals who have 'made it' in their respective fields eagerly voice their support for their alma mater.

Such enthusiasm builds a positive culture around the school and encourages new students to come and try it out. Building a strong brand around any organization entices people to want to belong to that particular select group and culture.

What colleges can teach us about building a winning culture

Most professionals realize that employees are important for keeping the company running smoothly. They know that turnover is bad because it wastes time and resources. They also know that high turnover can damage their reputation among potential hires.

What they don't realize, though, is the importance of employee satisfaction when it comes to the customer experience.

Just like the college student who loves their school so much they broadcast it to anyone who asks their opinion, employees who feel respected and appreciated help to broadcast a positive image of the company and can increase customer satisfaction rates.

Think about it.

Employees are the face of your company. When they feel valued, they take the time to invest their energy into the company and their interactions with customers. They also strive to embrace a culture of success, which can help inspire their peers to improve their interactions with customers, too.

Employees and brand advertising

Employees can be wonderful sources for building up your brand. Just as happy college students take the love for their school to every facet of their life, satisfied employees tend to bring their jobs with them wherever they go.

Think about the last time you heard someone complain about the company where they work. How did those complaints impact your perception of the company? Chances are, that negative feedback made you feel worse about the brand in question -- and less likely to turn to them when you need products or services in their industry.

An entirely different experience, however, comes when an employee is positive and upbeat about their employer. When they tell you enthusiastically that they can help you solve your problem, you become inclined to trust them.

Treating your employees well can help boost their satisfaction and improve how they represent your company to the general public. Remember that your employees are the face of your brand. That means you need to select them -- and treat them -- with that goal in mind. Cultivating a great employee culture is a wonderful way to improve your brand's reputation from the inside out.

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.

High School Loyalty and Brand Community

There's something about high school that inspires loyalty for decades after graduation. For an outsider looking in, it can be difficult to understand why people care so much about their past high school experiences. Whether it's journeying hundreds of miles for a high school reunion or feeling offended when someone insults the old sports hero, high school loyalties run deep for many people.

Why?

High schools have built an incredibly strong community within their walls. The students have countless shared experiences together, from classes and teachers to events and activities. These common moments help to tie the collective memories together.

This same sense of community, which helps bring high schools such strong loyalty, can also prove helpful in the business world. Building brand loyalty can lead to higher numbers of repeat customers and more referrals, both of which are excellent for the bottom line. Here's how to go about building a community around your brand.

Create shared experiences

Help customers get to know each other and your representatives. Host get-togethers and customer events. Get involved in your local community. Raise money for a national charity, or sponsor regional fundraising events. All of these are fantastic ways to bring your customers together, improve your reputation, and get your brand in front of new potential customers. They're also great conversation starters with followers later on social media or in blog posts.

Encourage connections

Invite existing customers to tell stories about using your products or services on various social media platforms. Have contests where people take pictures of themselves with your product or share stories of how your service helped them. This type of sharing builds credibility for your brand and helps participating customers feel more connected to your company. It helps encourage a concept known as the 'bandwagon effect,' where people are more likely to try a product or service when they see others doing so. Having customers share their experiences with your brand helps all customers and potential customers see themselves as a part of a desirable group, which increases loyalty.

Highlight clients and employees

Show prospects the people behind the reviews and the employees who will be helping them succeed. Highlighting past clients and employees in this manner serves two purposes. First, the person highlighted will enjoy and appreciate the attention cast upon them. And second, other customers will feel a connection to the person and thereby feel a strong connection to your brand.

Building a strong community around your brand can help tremendously when building brand loyalty. Just like a high school looking to encourage its alumni to come out and root for the home team, creating a strong loyalty can serve your company well for years to come. Keep the above three tips in mind and start coming up with ideas to build loyalty for your brand.

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.

Are You Keeping Your Resolutions in Life and in Marketing?

With the new year upon us, it's time again to consider resolutions for the coming year. Unfortunately, most of us have a far easier time making resolutions than keeping them. Genuine lifestyle changes are difficult to achieve. If you're planning to make radical shifts in your daily life, consider the following:

Bite off small chunks at a time.

If you haven't run in over 30 years and are 40 pounds overweight, it's not reasonable to say you'll run a marathon by spring. Instead, set a goal of completing a mile a day for a certain number of weeks, then slowly increase your distance. Trying to get too much done too quickly can lead to burnout and discourage you from continuing.

Make the goals reasonable.

A person who's just learning to cook might never win a "top chef" competition, but that doesn't mean they won't be able to successfully cook a full Thanksgiving dinner. Set goals that are difficult enough to provide motivation and challenge, but make sure they're also realistic and attainable.

This same advice applies to a business.

Getting new business is tough. Countless seminars and classes make it sound as though doing X, Y, and Z will have you raking in millions in just a few months. While there might be a genius entrepreneur somewhere for whom that's true, for the vast majority of businesses, it's not.

Instead, look at the advice given above, and find ways to apply the same philosophy to your business. Like an out of shape person starting to run, you need to take it slowly at first.

Also, give your marketing budget and prospects an honest look. Set realistic expectations for the next quarter and year. Creating progressive goals will give you something to celebrate when you attain those milestones and encourage you to keep moving forward, while preventing burnout and keeping your company on track.

Of course, this way of thinking applies to more than just goals. It can be equally useful in other aspects of your business, such as marketing. When you hear about a new type of marketing with great potential, take the time to develop your strategy and grow in stages, rather than jumping in blindly with both feet. This more tempered approach will keep you moving in the right direction without becoming overwhelmed.

We've all failed at some point with our New Year's resolutions. Those who genuinely want to succeed understand they must set reasonable goals to avoid biting off more than they can chew. The same idea applies to running a business. Here's to a successful 2015 for you and your company.


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.

Have You Learned the Unique Language of Marketing?

Imagine walking into a room. You hear the buzz of people talking, laughing, and calling to one another. Yet, somehow, you can't seem to understand anything they're saying. You might catch a word here and there, but in general the subject the people are speaking about is lost to you.

Did you just walk into a conference room on a business trip to a foreign country, or did you walk into a marketing conference center?

For those who are new to the world of marketing, especially online marketing, either scenario might seem realistic.

How is being thrown into the marketing world similar to landing in a new country?

When a person first moves to the United States without knowing English, the language gap can feel insurmountable. Basic tasks, including banking, buying groceries, or even returning other people's greetings while walking down the street, can become extremely difficult (if not impossible). Many of those who don't know English when they first arrive spend a considerable amount of time and energy studying the language. In doing so, they begin to make sense of the sounds they're hearing, including what the new vocabulary means and how to use the words. As their language skills improve, new residents find their confidence rise as well. Suddenly, when they walk into a room buzzing with chatter, what once seemed like overwhelming noise now begins to make sense to them.

Similarly, marketing comes with its own defined principles and vocabulary that those who are unfamiliar with the industry might find confusing. There are a range of rules that tell people how to use and be successful with the various platforms, along with industry specific (and even platform specific) vocabulary that doesn't make sense anywhere else. As the newcomer becomes more familiar with the language and nuances of the marketing world, they also find the chatter in the room starting to make sense.

How succeed in learning a new language

Whether studying the language of marketing or a new foreign tongue, there are some constant principles for mastering the new form of speech.

1. Practice, practice, practice

Anyone who has ever learned a new language will tell you how critical it is to practice. Reading all the lesson books in the world will mean nothing if you don't put those lessons into practice every chance you get. This might mean talking to yourself while making breakfast, but whatever the case, practice those vocabulary words.

2. Immerse yourself

Immersion is always the best way to learn a new language. For foreign languages, this might mean seeking out a few people who speak the new language, or even moving to a country where it's spoken. For marketing, it might mean a steady diet of marketing books, webinars, and similar primary sources for instruction.

3. See if you can find a mentor

Sometimes, a mentor can make all the difference in the success of a language learner. A mentor can help you pinpoint your language weaknesses and practice them with you. In marketing, a mentor can help you become well versed in a variety of marketing platforms and their uses faster and easier than trying to go it alone.

Learning a new language is a difficult proposition, whether you are trying to master marketing speech or a foreign tongue. Both have specific vocabularies, along with rules that govern how the language is used. Keeping these ideas in mind can help you learn the new language and become increasingly successful in the world of marketing. If you're interested in getting acquainted with the 'language' of marketing and want to learn more about how to reach customers, contact us today.

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.

Just What the Teacher Ordered: The Business Building Benefit Marketing Reports Provide

By the time most of us graduated from high school, we were well acquainted with researching, writing, and editing reports. College often meant more of the same.

While few would list report writing as a "highlight" of their academic career, those hours spent compiling reports were not spent in vain. Sure, report writing helped many of us learn how to plan out a project and conduct research, but they also taught us a bit about the topics we were researching, too. By forcing us to look in depth at the various subjects we were studying and analyze them from a number of different angles, we gained a far better comprehension of the subject matter than we might have if we had just read the textbook.

It's important to remember those benefits, especially when it comes to marketing your company.

How marketing reports are like your old school reports

Like their high school and college counterparts, marketing reports can also feel frustrating. People often view such assignments as time wasters that are only done because they're demanded by the c-level executives upstairs. In reality, however, marketing reports can offer considerable insight and help everyone better understand the company's marketing strategies and how they can be improved.

When you sit down and really invest the time needed to complete a thorough marketing report, you'll walk away with a much better understanding of your company's current marketing practices, how well each campaign is performing, and how it all relates to your company's bottom line. Without a well-researched report, it can be easy to gloss over weak spots and overlook opportunities for continued growth.

What a marketing report should exam

There are an infinite number of metrics a marketing report can examine, but some have more appeal and a greater ability to shed light on the success of your marketing strategy. Here are a couple to consider.

How much does it cost the company, on average, to obtain each new customer?

Take a look at your total cost in sales and marketing over a given period of time. Then see how many customers you obtained in that same period. Divide the cost by the number of customers, and you'll have your average cost of obtaining a single customer.

Determine what percentage of that cost is related directly to marketing, so you can see which campaigns worked and which ones didn't. Such insights can prove valuable in helping the marketing team improve their regular performance and illustrate the success of any changes made.

How many leads were generated directly from marketing?

Your marketing team should also be able to report how many successful leads were generated specifically from marketing efforts. Begin by calculating the percentage of customers who began as marketing leads. Then look at how many leads started elsewhere (e.g., in sales), but were influenced by the marketing department before making a purchase.

For added benefit, try to break down specifically where these marketing leads are coming from. Newsletters? Direct Mail? Trade Shows? Events? Website?

Marketing reports offer valuable information about the state of your company's marketing programs and what can be improved. Although they might be viewed with the same frustration as the school reports of your youth, they can also offer incredible insight and education. So don't overlook the opportunity reports provide to regularly analyze the success of your marketing efforts.

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.

How to Fix Your Call To Action

Your call to action, or CTA, is easily one of the most important parts of your marketing. It's where you find new leads and convince your audience you offer something worth exploring. Whether your CTA invites people to sign up for a newsletter or attend an event, all CTAs are not created the same. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when developing this critical part of marketing.

The words

The words on your CTA are critical. Most people will be skimming it, so it's important to make your offer's potential value obvious to everyone who sees it. Use precise, clear language that explains what customers are going to receive. Bullet points are fantastic because they're particularly easy to skim and tell the audience exactly what they're going to receive.

The words you use in your CTA should also line up with the text around it. For example, if you offer home cleaning services and are offering a free download on the safest cleaners to use around children, your CTA will probably best fit at the end of articles that discuss the dangers of certain cleaners or how to safely secure cleaners away from children. Try to create a tangible link between the content and the CTA. This will help ensure your offer reaches those who are most likely to be interested in what you have to say.

The appearance

While what you say is certainly important, so is the overall appearance of your CTA. Choose contrasting colors to help the CTA pop from the page and attract viewers' attention. A CTA that just blends will be overlooked and have a poor conversion rate. Similarly, make sure the CTA is big and bold, so no one can miss it. Don't hide the CTA in the corner, using the same font size as the rest of the page. It will be too easy to ignore.

In the same way, use images and other visuals to help consumers get a concrete look at what they'll be receiving. Using images helps people develop a strong association with the product you're offering and makes it look more appealing.

The importance of testing

When planning your campaign, develop more than one CTA, then test them to see which one resonates more with customers. You might be surprised how much difference a particular word choice or color can make on your conversion rates. Run basic A/B tests on the CTA, and get concrete answers about which offer is getting more prospects turning into customers.

An A/B test is simple. Say you have one CTA and then develop an alternate page. The A/B test will randomly show some prospects respond to the original and some the alternate page. It will then track how many people convert from prospects to customers from each CTA. You can use this information to see which has a higher conversion rate, so you get the best CTA.

Developing an efficient CTA will bring you leads and potential customers. Take the time to follow the steps above, and create a CTA that will maximize your potential.

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.