Contributor Blog Archives - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

When the flash of digital marketing often outshines the steady glow of substantial content, it’s easy for print businesses to fall into the trap of chasing clicks over creating connections. But let’s get one thing straight: attention without retention is the marketing equivalent of a mirage—enticing from afar but ultimately leaving your print buyers parched for real value. The Seduction of the Spotlight for Printers In your quest to cut through the noise, you might prioritize the allure of attention-grabbing tactics. And why not? The initial rush of a spike in website traffic or a flurry of social media engagement is intoxicating. But here’s the rub: if all you offer is the marketing equivalent of a fireworks display—spectacular yet fleeting—you miss the opportunity to truly engage with your audience beyond the initial “oohs” and “ahhs.” Remember: Attraction Is Just the Beginning Focus not just on drawing your print buyers in but on what happens next. Your marketing should be a beacon, not a flashbang grenade. The Overlooked Middle Child: The Consideration Stage Much like a middle child vying for attention among siblings, the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey often gets overshadowed by its flashier counterpart, awareness, and the eagerly

Greetings, Printer Friends! As I recently found myself in front of the camera for a new work headshot (which you’ve probably noticed on the Tip of the Week videos), I couldn’t help but reflect on the changes that life has etched onto my face over the past ten years. As a woman who navigated the challenges of raising three teenagers, confronted numerous health hurdles, and joyfully ticked off items from her bucket list, the person staring back at me in the photograph is undoubtedly not the same individual I was a decade ago. And guess what? That’s perfectly okay. Embracing Change: A Personal Journey The journey of the last ten years has molded me into someone resilient, compassionate, and, dare I say, wiser. It’s been a ride filled with highs and lows, but each experience has contributed to the person I am today. Much like our personal lives, businesses, too, undergo transformative journeys. At Marketing Ideas For Printers, we’re no exception to this evolution. A decade ago, we were a different company with different goals, a smaller (all-local) team, and a vision for the future that was just taking shape. Fast forward to the present, and the growth we’ve experienced

Welcome to the start of a new feature to help you Sell More Printing! This article aims to highlight the exceptional sales and marketing efforts of others so you can adapt them to help you sell more printing. First in our sights is the Money Tree, which provides a creative and clever way to show appreciation to your best customers. The Money Tree The Money Tree is an actual plant. (Its fancy name is “Pachira aquatica” if you need proof!) The name makes it sound like it has a centuries-old legend attached to it, but its story is just a few decades old. Its popularity started in the 1980s when a Taiwanese truck driver braided the trunks of five small trees in a single flowerpot. Here’s a picture of the Money Tree I keep sitting on my desk: Send a Money Tree to High-Value Print Buyers Here at Marketing Ideas For Printers, I now send a Money Tree to subscribers purchasing a premium subscription service by following this simple process. First, I make an informal YouTube video that shows my Money Tree and mentions how we’ll both be able to fertilize our Money Trees and grow together. We then have

If you’re a word nerd like me, you already know the trick to getting unstuck in any word game – you change your perspective. From rearranging the letters to spinning the board around to silently asking things like, “Is paczki* a word?”, you do whatever it takes to get your brain to engage in a different way. *(Paczki is a word, by the way, a 23-pointer!) If you’ve been feeling stuck in your ways and are looking for a fresh perspective to boost your print business, you’ve come to the right place! Here are a few tips on changing your perspective and taking your printing company to the next level. Start with why. First things first, ask yourself why changing your perspective is important. As the old saying goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” In other words, if you want to see real growth and success in your printing business, you need to be willing to try new things and think outside the box. So, how do you go about changing your perspective? Here are a few tips: Look at your business from your print buyer’s perspective. It’s easy to

Every business owner knows that customer service is critical to staying competitive. But what about communicating expectations? Do you ensure your print buyers know what to expect when doing business with you? Recently, I received an email in response to an order placed by someone in our organization. It impressed me so much that I printed it out and shared it with the team. The message was short but concisely expressed precisely what the customer (me, in this case) could expect in their journey. This got me thinking—how often do we communicate these expectations with our own customers? This email response above created anticipation for the next interaction. It made me want to follow their guidelines even though they weren’t even stated. It eased my mind, knowing that there wasn’t going to be any guessing. Even more important, it makes me want to do that for my customers. It’s simple and didn’t cost a dime. The Benefits of Setting Print Buyer Expectations Upfront Setting expectations upfront is a great way to create trust and credibility with your print buyers. It gives them an idea of how your business operates and helps set up the foundation for a successful relationship between

If we were like every other business, we’d be offering you a year-end review right about now. But, you know what? Here at Marketing Ideas For Printers, we like to do things a little differently to allow for a greater vision. It looks like this. We follow a quarterly rhythm for working on the bigger projects that bring content and online ordering solutions together by asking ourselves, “What are the most important things we need to accomplish in the next 90 days?” We then create that list and get to work on those most important projects. Often, one of the first things I do when starting a project like that is to write a press release announcing the completed project. That press release is used for vision casting and for internal use only; its purpose is to help everyone involved understand what the project’s end result is supposed to look like. That, in turn, helps everyone get pointed in the right direction immediately. In the spirit of those “predictive press releases,” I thought you’d enjoy my perspective on the coming year here at Marketing Ideas For Printers and what’s coming your way to help you sell more printing. 2023: A

A while back, I told you about how much I enjoyed my comfort zone, in contrast to my risk-taking husband, in a blog titled 7 Do’s and Don’ts for the Risk-Adverse Printer. These days, I’m still not riding kayaks off of cliffs or participating in family skydiving events like the one below; however, that doesn’t mean my comfort zone hasn’t been shrinking. Stepping out of a comfort zone will look different from one person or business to the next. For some, it could be as simple as one step in an unknown direction. For others, stepping out means the daily battle of fighting their way toward a goal they’ve been working on for years. Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you’re looking to step outside your comfort zone. Know Your Motivation To move outside of your comfort zone, you must first learn what it’ll take to motivate you there. After decades of overthinking, I’ve come to understand the number one thing that pushes me out of my comfort zone is not the adrenaline rush (a.k.a. absolute terror!) of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Rather, I am motivated to get uncomfortable if it means helping someone

Improvement is a concept akin to owning a print business or simply being human. We’re all geared toward ways to improve ourselves, improve processes, and become more efficient. Don’t believe me? Check out all of society’s recent advertisements, and you’ll see adjectives like “better,” “greater,” and just about every other “er” you can think of. While striving for improvement is a good thing, it’s our job as leaders to pursue improvement in a way that won’t burn out our teams or make them constantly feel the “burden of better.” How to Start: Start with One How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. A journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step. You get the cliches. If you want to create a culture of improvement in a healthy and sustainable way, start with one. Pick one process, product, or customer interaction and start there. Creating an improvement culture doesn’t happen overnight. Cultures throughout the world are the product of generations. Stephen Covey stated it well: “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you

At its core, marketing is about solving the pain points of your buyers. As Jonathan Lister of LinkedIn says, “As marketers, we should be changing the mantra from always be closing to always be helping.” Marketing genius can feel tricky and elusive to some, but it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than simply helping others make their lives easier. Below are three real-life examples of marketing genius I’ve recently experienced, marveled at, and learned from. 3 Displays of Marketing Genius in Real Life 1) Apple’s New Face ID Apple has been synonymous with “marketing genius” for a while now, but have you ever stopped to think why that is? One of the more recent reasons has been their ability to quickly see, adapt, and meet the needs of their users amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic came with many frustrations: online learning, shutdowns, vaccinations, etc. COVID also brought with it mask-wearing, and as every Apple user knows, it’s a real pain not to be able to open your phone with your face I.D. because you’re wearing a mask. So, Apple responded to the pain point. First, Apple began to meet this need with the iOS 14.5 upgrade,

Have you ever gone on a road trip without a plan? I’m talking no destination, no starting place, no clothes for any particular climate… really, no plan at all. The kind of road trip where you get in the car and start driving, figuring out which direction to head as you go. Unless you are a true “free spirit,” I imagine this would be pretty unusual. Yet more and more, I meet business owners with no idea where they’re heading with their business. Instead of having a plan, these business owners keep coming into the office and putting out fires, doing whatever they do every day, hoping for new orders and new customers to come in. Busy Vs. Productive: There’s a Difference If I’m being honest, and I am, this describes how my dad and I ran our business in the early days of Brandywine Printing. We were super busy all the time, but we weren’t always happy with the work we were doing. We didn’t realize that if we could just get organized, we would be able to accomplish more with less effort, and our “busyness” would be productive and, therefore, more profitable. But as the saying goes, “You