Print 4A Purpose

4 Ways To Do B2B Direct Mail Marketing Right

 Today, I recieved a piece in the mail from one of my suppliers and it was a perfect example of a B2B company doing marketing and directly mail in an interesting and engaging way.  My hat is off to Appleton and www.TeamAppleton.com.

 Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving churches, nonprofits and small businesses.

 Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidamoore

 www.facebook.com/davidmoore.me

 

 

99.9% Isn’t Good Enough

We made a mistake last week and didn't discover it until after the order was delivered.

Our aim is for perfection every day. It's not only the goal…it's the STANDARD.

Our customers can see a big difference between "almost right" and "right", between "good" and "best", between "so-so" and "excellence." Quality not only pertains to our printing, but to our processes as well. Not only WHAT we print, but HOW we print it.

In a process like ours, quality trickles down into the details handled by several people. I shared this quote with my staff about a year ago: "Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." They are my quality control. And attention to detail will either produce a profit or put us out of business.

David Kearns, former CEO of Xerox, believed that "25% of all work in American industry was done to correct errors."

You've heard the question before: "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, how will you ever find the time to do it over?"

Why isn't getting 99.9% of the details right the first time good enough? If we accepted 99.9%, consider this:

• 2 plane crashes per day at Chicago O'Hare
• 16,000 pieces of mail lost at the US Post Office every hour
• 22,000 checks deducted from the wrong account every hour
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions each year

I take pride in the quality of work I do personally and that which we deliver as a company. But we are all human and as much as I hate to admit it, I make errors and so do the people I manage. And as long as it is not a habitual thing, the real question is, "What do you do after you screw up?"

While the consequences aren't as catastrophic when we don't get it right, there are consequences. Lost time and money at best, lost customers at worst.

So what did we do with our screw up? We called the customer and confessed (they hadn't even noticed). We replaced the defective job within 24 hours. It did cost us the time and money, but the customer was very pleased not only in the final product, but in the manner in which we addressed the "screw up."

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving churches, nonprofits and small businesses.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidamoore

www.facebook.com/davidmoore.me

 

 

 

 

RSS- What is it?

Everyone in the blogging industry has heard of the word RSS, but do they know what it actually stands for? I bet a lot of people don't know what the real meaning behind RSS is. They just see it as a simple address to use for reading the blog in a feed reader, that's as far as it goes. In this article I will explain to you what the meaning of RSS is and the benefits there of.

The Definition of RSS

RSS (most commonly expanded as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed" or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship (Wikipedia).

Using RSS in Blogging

Running a blog and having a RSS address is really useful. Having a RSS FEED entitles your readers to have access to your blogs content without having to visit your actual blog. They subscribe to your RSS FEED in a "Reader" of their choice (I prefer Google Reader) and can scan your posts among the posts of many other blog feeds they have subscribed too. They don't have to visit multiple websites or blogs. All the desired material is "Fed" into the "Reader". I actually use Google Reader as my homepage. This is a great time saver and makes it easy to follow read multiple blogs and news sources.

Different Feed Readers

There are numerous feed readers around that you can use to subscribe to the different blogs of your choice, but the most popular feed readers are:

1. Google Reader
2. FeedReader
3. Bloglines
4. FeedDemon
5. NetVibes
6. RSSOwl

I have become addicted to blogs via RSS and Google Reader. But it's the kind of addiction that expands my knowledge base every day. You literally have the best minds of your industry of choice just one click away. Thanks to RSS.

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving small businesses, nonprofits and churches.

Follow me on Twitter: @davidamoore

www.facebook.com/davidmoore.me

David A. Moore

How Social Media Has Changed the Business Card

Social media tools are changing the way businesses and individuals are marketing themselves. That's no secret. But have you considered how social media has changed the business card?

Think back just a few years ago and, in some cases, a few months ago. You have pretty much always had the standard information:

• Company Name
• Your name
• Title
• Physical address and/or P.O. Box
• Office number / Fax number

Then we evolved into the internet age, we added:

• Website URL
• Email address
• Cell phone

And now new media has changed the face of the business card. Those proficient in social media want the world how to contact them via:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Skype

The standard business card has not gotten any bigger, just more crowded. Where do you stand in this progression? Have you begun to add social media information to your business card? Is it more prevalent in one industry over another? It is looked upon as being more professional or less?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

(Thanks to @MariSmith for allowing me to use her business card as an example. By the way, this "Relationship Marketing Specialist" has over 65,000 Twitter followers and responded to my request in less than one hour. Pretty impressive.)

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving churches, nonprofits and small businesses.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidamoore

www.facebook.com/davidmoore.me

Personalize Direct Mail with Variable Data Printing (VDP)

 

 

How Jobsite Radius or Neighborhood Marketing Works

When I was tub & tile contractor, every bathroom I worked in averaged 15+ years old. My company refinished old bathtubs or showers and recoated the old pink, green or blue tile.

The point I want to make is this…if the bathroom I was working in looked like this; so did the one next door. And next door to that. And next door to that. In fact, the whole neighborhood was full of old bathrooms that could use my services.

Enter Jobsite Radius Marketing (or Neighborhood Marketing). This is not something for every contractor, but for certain specialties and if the average revenue per job is high enough, this can be a perfect tool in the marketing toolbox. And for me, it was.

What is radius (neighborhood) marketing?

It's direct marketing to prospects in the immediate area of your current job. You place a yard sign at a completed jobsite and then get marketing information into the hands of prospects in the neighborhood. There are a couple of ways to accomplish this:

1. Manually – Simply use custom printed door hangers and walk around the neighborhood. This takes more time but it's cheap. It might be harder to discipline yourself to do it every time and consistently hang enough door hangers to have impact (25-50 pieces minimum).
2. Automated – Enter the address of the job you just completed and postcards are automatically sent to a specified number of neighbors. Very fast and easy although a little more expensive. It's just as easy to send 50 as it is to send 150.

Think about it. All of the nosey neighbors have seen your trucks or trailers in front of the jobsite home the last couple of days. They're curious already and wondering what kind of work your customer is having done and considering all the projects they would like to do themselves. Then a couple of days later, like magic, your postcard shows up in the mailbox.

XYZ Contracting has another satisfied customer in your neighborhood!

Your postcard or door hanger lets the prospect know exactly where to look for evidence that you do the best work on the planet. They can walk around the corner and see your yard sign in the Jones' or Smiths' front yard. So whether they know your customer or not, they can knock on the door and ask, "Does XYZ Contracting do good work?"

The entire neighborhood needs you just like your customer did. Let's say, due to your radius marketing, you get another job a couple blocks over. You complete the job and repeat the process. Put up a yard sign and handout or send out 50+ radius marketing pieces. And now, imagine a new prospect in the same neighborhood has now received a second door hanger or postcard. He now thinks, "XYZ Contracting is everywhere and has got to be the best _________ contractor around!"

So if jobsite or neighborhood marketing sounds like something that would fit your business needs, give me a call or email and we can customize a program for you to try.

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving churches, nonprofits and small businesses.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidamoore

www.facebook.com/davidmoore.me

Using a Simple and Effective Call to Action for Direct Mail

Poster + Foam Board + Rubber Cement

Video - Direct Mail Tip Using Variable Data Printing (VDP)

 

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider to small business, churches and nonprofits.  You can find @davidamoore on Twitter and Facebook.  

What I’ve Learned About Twitter a Year Later

 

Just the other day on Twitter, I saw a tweet stating how long someone had been on Twitter. The link took me to the site where you type in your Twitter name and it tells you when you joined Twitter and how many days ago you started. I was quickly informed that I started using Twitter on February 1, 2009.

I have always found Twitter very hard to explain. It is one of those things that either you know about it and use it or you just don't get it. Not that I'm any smarter than anyone else, but Twitter has so many intangibles that are "experienced" the longer you use it and that makes it very difficult to explain.

For me, my Twitter experience has started and stopped multiple times. I would grow frustrated from the growing "spam" following me or the lack of actual Twitter users in my geographical area. So from time to time, I would just give up, thinking that it was just a big waste of time. I would stop posting for a few days or maybe a week or so.

Slowly but surely my number of followers grew. I remember breaking the 100 barrier and each 100 follower increment thereafter up to the 1000^th follower. And as I focused on the number growing, I was excited and I was achieving Twitter goals, but my SATISFACTION with Twitter began to diminish. Seems I had the wrong Twitter goals.

 

Twitter is about people making connections. The more followers I had, the less connected I became. As a February 2009 Twitter newbie, I carefully handpicked those I wanted to follow. I followed their conversation and made relevant comments when appropriate. When others chose to follow me, I personally responded with a direct message. I was so new I didn't even know that automation existed. I distinctly remember when I had about 60 followers and feeling a connection with them. I remember @mvolpe making comments about his Saturday workouts with his wife and @JohnJantsch making comments about his Labrador Retriever and me sending him a picture of mine. But as more people found me and followed, I actually lost connection. I found it difficult to "get to know" the new followers while keeping up with the old ones. Consequently, when I focused more on the interesting new people I followed, I let the existing relationships slowly deteriorate. Frustration would set in and it would give me another reason to "quit."

Over the past year, I have begun to learn how tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite could help eliminate some of my frustrations. I have also watched and learned from others on Twitter who are doing it right. Somehow they manage a large number of followers, remain engaged, stay very responsive, and seem to still have plenty of enthusiasm for their online community.

Recently I have started a second Twitter account. While I still actively maintain my original account @davidamoore, I created @churchprinter to start over and do it right from the very beginning. The new account has a more targeted audience. And with new tools to manage activity and relationships, and armed with the knowledge to do it better than a year ago, @churchprinter has given me the joy of Twitter again. At the same time, my renewed excitement has improved the whole experience with @davidamoore as well.

I'm still learning everyday from those I follow. There are some Twitter "superheroes" out there and I appreciate the informative tweets and links they have provided. I have also stumbled across several people that I have gotten to "know" online and they have made the Twitter experience worthwhile again. I will still make mistakes and haven't fully taken advantage of the available technology, but Twitter is fun again. And I've found that the more fun it is, the more useful it becomes.

You'll find volumes of "how-to" Twitter advice everywhere you look. But my advice to other Twitter newbies:

1. Have fun
2. Grow very slowly
3. Get to know your followers
4. Do not focus on the number of followers
5. Keep learning

Advantage Printing is a commercial print and marketing service provider serving churches, nonprofits and small to mid-sized businesses.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidamoore or www.twitter.com/churchprinter

David A. Moore