Individualism in Thought and Action: Is it always a good thing?

Certainly, a strong sense of individualism is a valuable asset to possess. Free market capitalism is based in large part on the ability to be both clever enough and individualistic enough to see a need and meet that need in a way that no one else has done before.

After all, it is the individual who supplies the needed answer, where only the question existed before. They do this by doing something in a new way, differently than it had previously been done, providing a product or service that is in some respect novel. In a way, they predict the future by inventing it. They supply something that was simply overlooked by everyone else. Albert Einstein said it this way: "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got." The individualistic entrepreneur wants something more than what they have "always got," and they set in motion the mechanism to obtain it.

Apple's, Steve Jobs may have been the poster child for innovative individualism, but he is by no means alone in this capacity. Indeed, most successful entrepreneurs in Western culture adhere to the belief that their success was the product of their undaunted individualism.

Bandwagon Effect

For the most part, we have all heard of the bandwagon effect. It happens when an individual or group forms an opinion based, to some extent, on the stated or observed opinions of others, particularly if the others have formed a growing majority. Those who are influenced in this way are said to have "jumped on the bandwagon." According to this confirmed psychological effect, the more people who hold an opinion, regardless of how true or untrue it may be, the more additional people will have a tendency to accept that increasingly popular view as their own. The bandwagon effect, therefore, relates to how opinions are shaped by the observed behavior of other people. It is based on our innate attraction for group activity. No matter how individualistic people may be, they are still affected by this innate attraction to group behavior. We are, after all, extremely social beings.

Among other things, research into the bandwagon effect has focused on politics due to the critical nature of the effect on election results. However, the effect has been observed in many environments, explaining the growth of fads and fashion trends, as well as the popularity of Internet memes on social media, especially as they are said to "go viral."

In business, too, the bandwagon effect has a definite place. As such, it seems radically opposed to the apparent benefit of individuality, but the connection is both meaningful and useful, and should not be overlooked.

The concept of rugged individualism is the basis for the Boot Strap Theory, whereby someone of more modest means can pull himself "up by the boot straps" to a more successful position in society. Keep in mind, though, that successful business ventures must acknowledge the necessity for meeting the needs of a wide spectrum of customers or the relatively fewer "individuals" served will not provide enough of a base for financial success.

Individuality really is a good thing as long as it comes with the realization that it is not alone in some sort of exclusive importance. For most businesses to develop and prosper, owners need to realize that most people are not leaders, but followers by nature, adhering (whether they realize it or not) to the bandwagon effect. A successful business operation usually depends on the overall popularity of the business. Social media constitutes a good tool for exploiting the benefits of the bandwagon effect. However it is accomplished, though, the smart manager will explore the benefits of increasing the popularity of the business by understanding and taking advantage of the bandwagon effect.

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.


#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

How to Create and Amplify Desire in Your Marketing Materials

If your marketing campaign is all about telling a story (and make no mistake, it most certainly is), the most important quality that story can have is a sense of desire. When you really stop to think about it, marketing is similar to almost every other medium in that regard. If your story took the form of a movie, desire would be the need for your audience to stay right where they were and not even think about getting up for popcorn. If you were writing a novel, desire would be the absolute need of the reader to turn the page and find out what happened next. In marketing, desire involves communicating to your target audience exactly why they need your product or service in their lives and why they can't stand to live another day without it.

Creating Desire in Marketing

One of the single best ways to create a desire in your marketing materials is to use your target customer's own natural sense of curiosity against them. Help them visualize the many ways that your product or service can fit into their existing lives through a combination of scenarios. Highlight what makes your company a very different (and better) animal than your competition. What you absolutely should NOT do, however, is give the game away too early. If a customer thinks that they have all of the information about every last thing a product does, they may feel compelled to easily write it off without giving it a second thought.

Don't rely too heavily on trying to be clever or to "impress" your potential customer, per say. Not only is it difficult to master without wasting space, but it also isn't necessarily something you even need to do once you've piqued their curiosity in the first place.

Simplify the Next Step

Much has been written about the idea of the call to action as a way to direct the reader farther along towards the sales funnel, but many people don't realize that it can also be a great way to amplify desire in a customer.

Say you've designed a perfect, enticing ad campaign that both highlights benefits about your product and also leaves enough to the imagination where they can't help but want to know more. A great way to kill that desire before you've had a chance to use it is to make the next step far too complicated for its own good. People don't want to fill out a form to get an e-mail to download a PDF to possibly satisfy their curiosity and desire. Keep it simple: "Having this wonderful product or service in your life is only a phone call away." That one simple technique can put many potential customers over the top and turn them into sales.

These are just a few of the many reasons why the concept of desire is such an important one when it comes to marketing. If you can master the art of desire, you're almost leveraging the power of your potential customer's own brain against them. Once the seed of desire has been planted, it is one that will essentially grow and come to fruition on its own. Once a potential customer truly and deeply wants something, they will move heaven and earth to make it happen - which is absolutely something that you want to create in as many people as possible.

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.


#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

Is Your Message Being Diluted in Your Marketing Materials?

When it comes to the marketing materials that you're putting out into the world, there is nothing more important than the factor at the heart of it all: your message. Ultimately, the best-looking print mailer, poster, or other material in the world won't mean a thing if you don't have the clear, concise message in the center of it to back it up. If you're worried about whether or not your design instincts are getting the better of you, and you are, in fact, diluting your message in your marketing materials, you can use these delightfully simple tips to find out.

Are You Overloading the Reader Visually?

Graphics, interesting font choices, and more can all be great tools to help get your message across to readers - but they should be complimentary, not supplementary. Every element that you use in your materials that is not contributing to your message is only taking away from it - never forget that. If your materials have swayed decidedly in the direction of "a lot of style, very little substance" in that you're loading them up with tons of bright colors, flashy logos, images and more, there's a great chance that you could actually be accomplishing the exact opposite of what you set out to. Start designing your materials with your message in mind and then lay everything else around it. Don't design the best-looking print material you can and THEN try to cram your message in there somewhere.

Does it Take Longer than 30 Seconds to Discover Your Message?

In order to achieve a maximum level of effectiveness, your message needs to be as simple as possible. "This company is the one you can trust." "This product is the one that can solve your problems." "This service is the one you need to make your life easier." These are (admittedly simple) examples of marketing messages that can be identified and absorbed quickly and easily. If it takes longer than 30 seconds for your target audience to realize what you're trying to say, you've probably already lost them. Trust us - you don't have that kind of time.

Do You Have Enough White Space?

White space is undoubtedly the best friend that you have when it comes to the print marketing materials that you're designing. People don't want to read a wall of text to find out what you're trying to say - they want to be spoken to directly and succinctly. If brevity is the soul of wit, white space is the brevity equivalent when it comes to your marketing message. If you design a particular material and have very little white space left over at the end of the process, the chances are high that you should probably take another look. There are undoubtedly elements, whether graphics or text or something else entirely - that you can drop without harming what you're trying to say.

Anything that isn't directly contributing to your marketing message is only serving to take attention away from it, which is absolutely something that you do not want under any circumstances. People shouldn't have to work to figure out what you're trying to say - it should be immediately clear. By keeping these few, core tips in mind regardless of the type of material you're designing, you'll place yourself in a better position to establish a direct line of communication with your target audience in the exact way that you intended.
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.


#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

Employee Engagement: The Most Important Aspect of Your Business You're Not Paying Enough Attention To

As a marketing professional, one of the core qualities that drives success in nearly everything that you do ultimately comes down to creativity. The employees that you've hired have to be free to let their creative juices run wild, turning in the types of materials that establish a direct link with your target audience in bold and innovative ways on a daily basis. Making sure that they have the tools necessary to unlock that underlying creativity is no doubt something that you think about daily. A related point that is just as pressing (if not more so), however, is just how engaged those employees are in the first place.

You could hire the most objectively creative or hard-working employee that you could find and it ultimately won't make much of a difference if they are actively disengaged from the environment they're working for in the first place. Employee engagement, in general, isn't just one of the most important things to concern yourself with, but it's arguably the MOST important thing for a number of fascinating reasons.

The Employee Engagement Problem

Many recent studies have been done that were designed to provide valuable insight into not only how important employee engagement is, but what happens if you're a business owner with an uninterested workforce. According to a study that was completed by Dale Carnegie Training, only 29% of workers in the United States are actively engaged with their jobs. Roughly 45% are not engaged in any way and, to make matters worse, a full 26% are actively disengaged.

When you're dealing with a disengaged workforce, you're dealing with people who aren't giving 100% of their time, energy, and creative effort to the task at hand. You're dealing with people who aren't doing their best because, to be quite frank, what's the point? You're also creating a situation where you can't hope to accomplish your own goals and the goals of your business because the people you depend on don't see the same value in moving your business forward. Rest assured, this is a problem that you need to address at all costs.

How to Fix Employee Engagement

According to another study that was conducted by Towers Watson, 79% of highly engaged employees also reported that they had both trust and confidence in the people who were leading them. A survey given out by the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (PHWP) indicated that employees who felt that their contributions were truly valued by their employers were 60% more likely to report that they were doing their very best inside and out of the office on a daily basis.

If you're an organization with an employee engagement problem, it stands to reason that the first step to take involves looking inward for the solution. Employee engagement is almost intimately tied to morale, so what is the true nature of the issue you're dealing with, here? Is it that your employees feel like you don't know what you're doing? Do they need more training?  Do they feel like you have unreasonable expectations? Do they understand the client goals? Do they feel unappreciated? Are they unhealthy chronic complainers complaining to anyone who crosses their path and don't pick up on people's cues that they've had their fill of negativity?

Do they like each other? A (cheesy) old saying tells us that "there is no 'I' in 'team'" - in the world of business, this is very much true. Employees that like each other not only as companions but as people are more willing to help each other when times get tough. They don't just think about themselves - they think about themselves in the context of a much larger whole. They think about success less in terms of their own careers and more in terms of your business. Talented employees who don't like the environment that they're in because of their co-workers essentially accomplish the exact opposite. A Harvard Business School study of 'Toxic Workers' found that negative employees resulted in lower coworker morale, reduced efficiency and increased costs.

These are the important questions that you'll need to answer in order to drive employee engagement as high as it will go. Employee engagement is absolutely the key to unlocking the true productive workforce that you need and to create an environment where "creativity" is the name of the game, thus allowing you to create the best possible marketing materials and establish the best possible connection with your target audience moving forward.

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.


#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

Put Your Core Values on Display Through Marketing

The core values that you've dictated for your business play an important role in just about every decision that you make. What many people fail to realize is that they need to play an important role in your marketing, too. Marketing isn't just about communicating what services you provide or what products you offer, but what type of business you represent. The customer/business relationship is one that is built on trust, and putting your core values on display through marketing is one of the best ways to strengthen that relationship both now and for all time.

It's About Clarity

In many ways, the most important part of marketing has nothing to do with whatever new product you're touting at the time. It's about distilling everything - your products, your services, your employees and more - into a single message that lets the customer know who you are, what you're trying to do, and why you're trying to do it.

Consider the message that ends every Visa commercial you've ever seen, the message: "It's everywhere you want to be." This message isn't overly reliant on how shiny the cards are or what perks or rewards you might get for signing up. It's beautifully simple and conveys an important message: by signing up for a Visa card, you've got access to a trusted financial resource anywhere you could possibly need it. You've got a partner that you can depend on, day in and day out.

That one simple message is one of the single best examples of putting your core values on display for your audience through marketing in the modern era. It says everything that you need to know about what type of company Visa is AND what type of service they offer in six short words.

Honesty and Integrity Can Also Mean Humility, Too

If you've decided that two of the most important core values for your business are honesty and integrity, you need to accept the fact that the best way to display this to your audience will not necessarily always be positive.

Consider what happens when you make a mistake as a business owner. Maybe you released a product and said that it did one thing, while it really did another. Maybe you claimed that it did one thing really well, when in reality, it was barely functional and not ready for public consumption. These are the types of mistakes that business owners make on a regular basis - it's a fact of life.

The thing that separates the successful business owners from the ones who quickly disappear, however, is what they do next. If you've always told your customers that you value honesty and integrity, the path is clear: you own up to your mistake in your marketing. You acknowledge the problem as a learning opportunity and pledge to take the experience and use it to do better work in the future.

It's something that you see time and again. Coca-Cola introduced the stunning disaster that was New Coke in 1985. Microsoft released the Windows 8 operating system. What do these businesses have in common? They're still around, thanks to the fact that they understood that the core values of honesty and integrity sometimes mean humility, too. They admitted that they made mistakes, apologized to their customers, and pledged to do better in the future.

Far too many business owners label the core values of their business as "not for public consumption." Now, more than ever, the relationship between a business and its customers is one that is forged from a strong sense of transparency. One of the best ways to show your customers what type of business you are is to let those core values reflect outward with your marketing materials.

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.


#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

Resilience: Withstand the Hardship

One of the more important characteristics of a successful business is resilience. Without resilience, a business that suffers any setback is far more vulnerable to hardship or even complete collapse. In fact, failures frequently precede success in many people's efforts in business or otherwise. Just look at some of these examples.

Walt Disney was fired once because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." A recording company executive told the Beatles that he just didn't like their sound. Stories like this are accounts of people with the persistence to avoid defeatism in the face of difficulty. They had the needed resilience to keep going, to strive for future successes instead of wallowing in failure.

Another lesser known example is that of Thomas Carlisle, who took more than a year to compile his monumental history of the French Revolution. A housekeeper mistook it for trash and out it went. Carlisle dedicated himself to re-creating it, and with three more years of hard work, recalled it from memory and produced the replacement--a monumental history produced with an equally monumental reserve of resilience in the face of defeat.

One of the most familiar such stories in the business world is that of Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl. Frankl survived Nazi Germany's, Auschwitz to become a leading proponent of a humanistic therapy approach for motivating more productive decision making. In Frankl's best-selling book, "Man’s Search for Meaning," he details the critical moment when he realized the objective of creating this revolutionizing form of therapy.

Frankl had fallen into self-pity over his concentration camp existence. He now saw his life as meaningless and trivial, but he suddenly realized that to survive, he would have to overcome this feeling. He would have to find some overarching purpose. He would have to have the resilience to form some positive objectives in the face of so much negativity. Frankl envisioned himself delivering a lecture after the war on the subject of the psychology surrounding a concentration camp. From this simple beginning sprang his entire school of thought, which he called, "Meaning Therapy," with a mission of recognizing and creating significance in the lives of others. With resilience, Frankl turned around not only his life, but the lives of countless others. Today, employee resilience training is common in the work place.

Frankl's resilience was born of an ability to find meaning against all odds in a horribly negative situation. Finding meaning is just one of the characteristics of those with high resilience, though. Another, perhaps strangely, is an acceptance of reality - for only from a realistic acceptance of a challenging situation can an adequate response be generated to fix it.

The investment bank, Morgan Stanley, had its offices in the World Trade center before that awful day on September 11, 2001. As it happens, Morgan Stanley had a diligent concern for preparedness, which included preparing for possible disasters requiring building evacuation. When the first tower was hit, it took them exactly one minute to begin the evacuation of their offices in the second tower. Only because of their preparedness and training were almost all of the company's 2,700 employees saved when the second plane struck its target fifteen minutes later.

Their realistic approach, accepting the reality of the existing threat of terrorism, brought about the preparedness plan that allowed Morgan Stanley to remain in business. This resilience in the face of potential disaster saved them when the danger became a reality.

Some people and some businesses break under pressure. Others succeed due to their resilience in overcoming adversity or planning for its resolution. Which one are you?


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.

#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint

Buyer Personas: What They Are, Why You Need Them, and What Should You Do About It

In marketing, one of the most important terms that you need to keep in mind at all times is "focus." In order to run a successfully executed campaign, you need to remove as much of the superfluous noise from your materials as possible and boil it down to the core essentials. You can't appeal to all people all of the time, which is why focusing on creating the right message and using the right delivery channels is so important. Buyer personas are a concept that allow you to do just that in a host of different ways, all of which are beneficial to you and your team moving forward.

What is a Buyer Persona?

In marketing terminology, a buyer persona is essentially a person that doesn't exist. They're a fictional representation of the type of person who is most likely to buy your product or service after hearing your marketing message. Buyer personas are created using as much actionable information about your ideal customer as possible: How old are they? Where do they live? Do they have any children? How much money do they make? What types of products have they purchased in the past? What do they like? What do they hate?

If you knew all of the answers to those questions when talking about a real person, you'd already have a pretty vivid picture about how that person acts and what their personality is. You'd certainly have an easier time talking to that person and relating to him or her - which is what buyer personas are all about in the first place.

Why Are Buyer Personas Important?

By creating a fictional representation of the person who makes up your ideal customer, you always have something to refer to when crafting your marketing materials. Say your business' buyer persona is Jane - she's a 35-year-old mother of two with a combined household income of $150,000. Instead of "throwing everything and anything at the wall and seeing what sticks" in terms of your marketing campaigns, you have something to compare your techniques to. How does your product or service fit into Jane's life? How does it solve a problem that she has? How does it align with past purchases she's made? The answers to these questions will drive your marketing decisions moving forward.

Crafting Buyer Personas

Creating a buyer persona requires you to be two things at all times: detailed and accurate. After you've been in business for an extended period of time, you have access to huge volumes of data regarding things like market research and even your past customers that you can draw from. To a certain degree, all of this data should dictate the buyer personas you create, which in turn should dictate the direction of your marketing. Are a significantly large number of your past satisfied customers men between the ages of 18 and 34 who have no kids? Congratulations - you have the basic framework to begin building a buyer persona. Any marketing technique that isn't directly appealing to that specific type of person is one that you now need to re-think.

It's important to not go "too far" when creating buyer personas, however. If buyer personas are all about focus, going out of your way to have too many personas is a great way to instantly undo all of the benefits that you've just worked so hard to build for yourself. Focus on a few core types of customers and craft buyer personas for each, and then compare every marketing move that you make against the information you've compiled for guidance on what to do next.

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.

#print #directmailmarketing #chooseprint