Dave Hultin, Author at Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

What would you do if you saw a young child drowning? Consider this story: You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river. Suddenly you hear a shout from the direction of the water—a child is drowning. Without thinking, you both dive in, grab the child, and swim to shore. Before you can recover, you hear another child cry for help. You and your friend jump back in the river to rescue her as well. Then another struggling child drifts into sight…and another…and another. The two of you can barely keep up. Suddenly, you see your friend wading out of the water, seeming to leave you alone. “Where are you going?” you demand. Your friend answers, “I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids into the water.” That story is a public health parable (adapted from the original, which is commonly attributed to Irving Zola), and provides the starting point for Dan Heath’s book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen. We’ve all been there, right? The daily fires and emergencies demand attention. They’re all we see. But sometimes these problems are just blinding distractions that keep us from seeing

Printers have a habit of working in a production timespan measured in days, if not hours! Why? Because print buyers demand a faster turnaround, and efficient technology makes it possible. The print production scheduling guidelines of “one day per task” from back in the day when I started my career in print just don’t apply anymore. With those ever-shrinking production timelines, how does a phrase like “Print Production Started Last Year” even make sense? Here’s how: You started building the customer relationship long before that first production step was scheduled. You may have scheduled the physical tasks for each step of print production, and those tasks may cover the span of a few days or hours, but you started building a relationship with the print buyer long before that first production step was scheduled. When Does Print Production Start? Print production begins before the print buyer orders printing; before they know you are a print and communications expert. It even starts before you take the time to sit down and show your prospect how print is a powerful vehicle for communicating their important ideas. Print production begins the first time you proactively contact your prospect, and that first touch may have occurred last year, before

I’m not even sure when it happened. At some point, Fargo, North Dakota, the city in which Marketing Ideas For Printers calls its home, changed from a big little city into a little big city. And that means dealing with big-city challenges, which lately, haven’t been pleasant. An Upside-Down World A few nights ago, I watched a live stream video showing violence and destruction in downtown Fargo as visiting insurrectionists used the tension associated with the death of George Floyd to bring their dangerous message to our little big city. I know we’re not the only city wrestling with this kind of violence, and I pray you’re all safe. Along with this topsy-turvy violence, our society as a whole continues to adapt to the twists and turns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Again, I know we’re not the only city wrestling with coronavirus, and I pray you’re all safe. So, how do you handle the challenges brought to your doorstep? How are you adapting to lead others well in such tumultuous times? Here are three things I like to keep in mind. 3 Things to Remember When Embracing the Challenge of Change 1. Perspective is Everything There’s currently some internet wisdom

Woman watching Coronavirus Resources For Printers webinars

Do you remember when you first realized that COVID-19 was not just “some other continent’s problem,” but was indeed something that would hit close to home? When you felt that impact coming, did you lose sleep? I think most small business owners did. All of a sudden, we found ourselves wide awake at night running through a checklist of things to do to keep our companies surviving and brainstorming ways to ensure we could help others during this time. A New, Bigger Team Focus For us, those sleepless nights led to the rapid creation of the Coronavirus Resources For Printers webinar series. This webinar series was launched to provide help and hope to printers during these unique times. As this series has grown, not only have the core values of Others First and Positive Attitude had the opportunity to shine, but Team-Focused has branched out to include a whole community of printers that have rallied together to share ideas for the benefit of ALL printers. This community continues to expand to include other industry vendors and consultants who share that same desire to provide help and hope. (And there are a lot of them! There are a lot of good

As the coronavirus continues to affect nearly all businesses across the world in some way, you might find yourself trying to brainstorm creative solutions to ensure your print business not only survives the pandemic but thrives after “normalcy” returns. Let me add to your brainstorming by throwing out an idea for you – an idea that could have exponential benefits for your company: adding a subscription-model to your print business. Now, before you dismiss this idea and quickly retort, “Yeah, but hold up. I’m a printer, and I don’t offer subscriptions,” consider the following: A recent study shows that 76% of Americans have a least one subscription service, while over 60% have two or more. The average subscription billing vendor is growing 30-50% annually. The subscription e-commerce market has grown by more than 100% percent a year over the past five years. Subscription-type businesses, whether in-part or in-whole, help businesses (like yours) weather times of crisis such as these because of the economic “moat” they’ve surrounded themselves with. How Subscriptions Could Benefit Your Print Business Subscriptions have a unique way of providing what consumers are looking for, such as personalization, convenience, and straight-up simplicity. There’s also the fact that: Subscriptions

At the time I’m writing this article, our country is adjusting to a new normal forced upon us by the Coronavirus. We’re all calibrating to this new normal by the day (if not by the hour), so by the time you read this there may be even a different version of the new normal. Here are some tips to help you survive (and even thrive!) in the new normal. Empathize with Your Message The Coronavirus update email faucet turned on wide-open once it became clear that the Coronavirus would be sticking around for a while. There are the obligatory emails from our kids’ schools and our church; those get an automatic pass through my personal “pay attention” filter. Then there are the emails that are nothing other than a disingenuous series of sanitized words carefully crafted to show the reader that a company was actually able to implement the common-sense virus-fighting suggestions and best practices. I’m sure you’ve received these emails too. The subject line is almost always a tip-off. Here are some examples of those email subjects, fresh from my inbox: A Message to Our Clients COVID-19 Action Plan Coronavirus: What you need to know Account Update: ____’s Response to COVID-19 COVID-19 and our commitment to you I understand that these messages are important (at least to the sender!) and may indeed even be necessary, but they sure are impersonal. They’re almost always

Next week, you might be one of the many printers passing through the Houston airport as you arrive for the 8th Annual Spring Conference for the National Print Owners Association (NPOA). I thought you might find it interesting to know that as you head over to claim your luggage at the baggage claim, you’re experiencing the result of some creative problem-solving. The Problem With Waiting Several years ago, passengers passing through the Houston airport often complained about how much time they had to wait to claim their bags. Airport management was concerned that the number of complaints was excessive, and as any good customer-focused business would do, executives at the Houston airport addressed the issue head-on. The Conventional Solution Additional baggage handlers were added, and the average time to wait for passengers to claim their luggage fell to eight minutes, which was a wait time well within accepted airport benchmarks. Problem solved! Or was it? Even with the reduced wait time, the complaints kept coming. The airport executives found they needed to explore the problem from a completely different angle. So, they zoomed out their perspective on the wait-time issue and learned that while the baggage typically arrived at the

Running a print business is hard work. But did you know that you need to be running more than just one business? That’s right. You need to be running three! (Hold on now, take a deep breath, and keep reading!) While that might sound incredibly overwhelming, it’s not as scary as you might think. The truth is, you’re already running three businesses; however, you might not be giving them the attention they deserve. Three Businesses in One Your three businesses are: Your “Get” business, Your “Serve” business, and Your “Keep” business. Each business represents the different ways of approaching your customers and prospects, and the purpose of each of these “businesses” is different: 1. Your “Get” Business The goal of your “Get” business is to turn prospects into customers. Your “Get” business communicates the value you offer and encourages print buyers to use your service for the first time. In this business, you’ll need to remind your prospects over and over again on why they should choose you as their printer. Your success in the “Get” business will be measured by how many of your prospects become first-time customers, and it will depend on your efforts to ensure a steady

What’s more fun: adding something new to the lineup of products and services, or taking something out? Ask that question to anyone, and they’ll almost certainly say, “Adding something new.” Ask any marketer, and they’ll say “ADDING SOMETHING NEW!!!!!” Expanding the lineup of products and services offered is fun, exciting, and just plain sexy. It’s the byproduct of doing business! Subtraction is Necessary However, while additions are sexy, subtraction is necessary. I had an excellent reminder of that recently when Rachel Nies, our Director of Marketing, brought to our team’s attention that we’re offering printing templates for print buyers to use for their CD and DVD printing projects. As part of Rachel’s cycle of regular content review, she correctly noted that CDs and DVDs aren’t nearly as relevant as they once were, giving way to cloud storage and distribution, flash drives, and high-speed internet connections that more readily supporting large file transfers. You can see those templates in context on the Layout Templates page of one of our public demo websites, but you have to get there before Rachel does because we’re going to remove those templates. When those templates are removed, that will mean we’ll no longer be able

It seems a day rarely goes by without our team here at Marketing Ideas For Printers fielding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) questions from our customers and prospects. I recently found myself answering one of those questions with one of our newest customers and found myself remembering the advice of Sal, the SEO Expert. Sal offered good advice almost two years ago, and it’s still relevant today. So, I thought it time to reintroduce you to Sal’s tips and expand on Sal’s recommendation to approach your website’s SEO strategy the same way you approach a book. It All Starts with the Title When you enter a bookstore, whether the physical or virtual version, what do you notice first? Of course, it’s the book covers, and the same is true with search engines. That’s because the title is what appears in your website’s home page tab or window bar, and it’s the equivalent of a book’s title. Books are known by their titles, so it’s essential to ask yourself: How do you want your website to be known? How do you want to be known to the search engines? Then, make sure the answer to those questions reflects in your website’s title.

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