Marketing a Good Cause

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Jared

While we print and mail a ton of postcards for our customers, we typically don’t get to see the results our customers generate from their marketing efforts. So it was especially good to hear back from one of our local print customers – The Community Closet – about a campaign they recently ran.

But first, a little context. The Community Closet is a non-profit thrift store serving Park County in Livingston, Montana. Since 2005, they have been providing low-cost, pre-owned, clothing and household items to those in need in the local community.

In addition to donating merchandise to schools and other non-profit organizations, the Community Closet board of directors distributes store profits to Park County non-profits, civic organizations, and individuals in crisis. One of these non-profits includes the Livingston and Park County Food Pantry – and Community Closet typically donates $1000 each year. But due to the poor economy of late, and the increase in demand at the food pantry, they wanted to give even more. The store set aside this past January as Food Pantry Month, and committed to donate 10% of revenues to the food pantry.

To promote their Food Pantry efforts, they came to PrintingForLess for help in designing both a postcard mailer and a print ad for the local newspaper. They spent just over $1,000 on their marketing campaign (postcards, postage and newspaper ads combined) and shared the following results with us:

An average daily revenue increase by 20% compared to January of 2009;
Total, January 2010 donations to the Food Pantry were $2,184.00 with a cash donation increase of 114%;
Many donors commented on the Food Pantry program when they came into the store with their thrift donations; and
The Community Closet was able to build positive awareness in the local community.

Caron Cooper – the Executive Director of the Community Closet – was ecstatic with the results they generated from their advertising campaign, and made the comment that she had never before seen such a direct correlation between their advertising efforts and results (increased revenues – and in this case, an increased donation to the food pantry).

Kudos to the Community Closet for a job well done and for being such a positive influence in our community!

Turning Love Letters into Love Videos

Posted on May 13, 2010 by jcooper

I am of the opinion that when it comes to highlighting what your company does and why someone should work with you, video often speaks louder than words. Here at PFL, we use multimedia in many different ways, but our favorite thing to do is showcase our remarkable small business customers by giving them a voice.

Have happy customers? I suggest working with them to create unique video accounts of how your business has helped them be more successful. You’ll deepen your relationship with your customers and give them a way to promote their own businesses. Hint: The more off-the-wall and creative the better!

Need some inspiration? Here is a video of PFL customer Jason White from Mattress Safe showing off his dance moves:

The Lesson List – What I’ve learned

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Danton

The Lesson List – What I’ve learned

I’ve spent more than 20 years working in rapid growth small businesses and recently had a MBA student ask me one of the most interesting questions I’ve had in some time. What have been the 3 most important lessons I’ve learned? It is a great question and harder to answer than I thought. After sleeping on it, here is what I came up with:

Like a shark, you have to swim forward or die
Innovation is the key to any young business. If you are not looking to improve your service or product at all times a competitor will do it and you will lose your advantage and go out of business.

You should be willing to do anything for money as long as it is legal, ethical and moral
Too many people in start up businesses get fixated on their ideas and don’t make money when they can. If you run a painting company and someone asks if they can buy brushes from you, why not make some extra money even if that is not your main business?

Stupid people cost you money
While this seems harsh, it is true. Failure to hire and train the very best people you can is the death of many businesses. If you hire someone who just does not get the job done, cut them lose as soon as possible. You are doing both parties a favor.

It is not often that you get a request to share your hard earned wisdom in a short and concise manner. I’d suggest that everyone try the exercise even if you don’t share your answers with anyone. You might be surprised with how useful your lesson list can be as you deal with your day to day problems.

Employee Training — An investment, not an expense

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Tim

I remember a job from years ago where the training consisted of me filling out some paperwork, skimming a manual, a quick pep-talk from the boss and then getting thrown in, to “learn as I go.” That was not a great experience, and I learned things sporadically, got frustrated, and frustrated my employer. Many of you can probably relate in one way or another to getting “training” at a job like this.

Here at PFL, we value training our new employees. So much so that we pay them to train for four weeks before they are even out on the floor, test them, have graduation requirements and other full time employees who are expert in their departments take time to train them. Why? Simple–if we are not learning as a company, we will fall behind. A business learns as its people learn.

Take a look at this short list of questions, and see if any spark an idea for your company:
-How can you use training to improve company culture?
-What can we focus on in training that we are currently lacking or can strengthen on the floor (sales, efficiencies, etc.)?
- Are we seeing leadership opportunities for the trainers, and recognizing future leadership needs in the class?

Don’t look at employee training as a part-time thing. Employees are an invaluable asset to your business–that is a no-brainer. But, investing in them strategically and looking down the road is the smart way to get the rewards that pay off now and in the future.

Who’s your Partner?

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Andrew

No business is an island. But while we focus heavily on our customers and employees, we sometimes forget another key stakeholder: our vendors.

An unfortunate discovery yesterday reminded me that it is our job to communicate our expectations to our vendors clearly and unambiguously, and their job to execute crisply. If we are sloppy in our Purchase Orders, we can expect sloppy execution from our vendors. That lesson cost us $1,800.

Treat your vendors like valued partners. At the same time, hold them to a high bar.

Who’s your Partner?

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Andrew

No business is an island. But while we focus heavily on our customers and employees, we sometimes forget another key stakeholder: our vendors.

Treat your vendors like valued partners. At the same time, hold them to a high bar.

Planting 1,000 Seeds with Word of Mouth Marketing

Posted on January 5, 2010 by jcooper

I just returned from attending Gaspedal’s Word of Mouth Supergenius in Chicago and my head is swimming with creative ideas for improving our viral marketing. The conference providing some simple, hand-on tips for developing and implementing a Word of Mouth marketing strategy in any organization. In the opening session, WOM marketing guru Andy Sernovitz broke it down into five easy steps – he called it the 5 T’s of Word of Mouth Marketing:

1) Talkers – find people who will talk about you (ex: fans, volunteers, customers, bloggers, influencers). Hint: these aren’t always your best customers.

2) Topics – give people a reason to talk (ex: special offer, great service, cool product, silliness, neat ad, new feature). Make sure to create something that is portable, repeatable, and emotional.

3) Tools – help the message spread faster and farther (ex: tell-a-friend form, viral email, blogs, handouts, samples, message boards, online communities).

4) Taking Part – join the conversation by letting your staff surf and reply to comments, post on blogs, join discussions, answer emails, and offer personal service.

5) Tracking – measure and understand what people are saying by searching blogs, reading message boards, listening to feedback, and using advanced measurement tools.

WOM marketing really is about wowing your prospects and customers with something totally fresh and unexpected, something so remarkable that they just can’t help but tell others.

One of the most famous viral marketing campaigns ever is the BlendTec ‘Will it Blend’ marketing campaign where they created a series of videos showcasing the company blending a variety of unusual things – rakes, golf balls, phones, iPods, laser pointers, and really anything else you could think of. The campaign highlighted the power and durability of their blenders, while simultaneously entertaining its viewers. Talk about remarkable.

So, what is unique about your company? How can you create something worth spreading, and what tools will you use to help it spread. Remember, you don’t have to nail it on your first try. Nobody knows what will work. Andy Sernovitz recommends planting 1,000 seeds – he says one of them is bound to bloom. Learn more

Is a web-to-print solution right for your organization?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Jessie

At PrintingForLess.com we serve a variety of small business customers ranging from a one-person shop to companies with hundreds of employees. Some print only a few jobs a year while some larger organizations may place many orders and may reprint the same type of pieces repeatedly with only slight changes to their art. We have found it to be more efficient for some of these larger companies to use our web-to-print solution to save them time and money. I would like to share one company’s story with you.

One of our customers, Frank Guerrieri is the President and CEO of Preferred Care at home, a growing senior home care franchise company with 38 locations across the country. Since 1984, the company has built a reputation offering quality service at affordable prices, providing the extra care needed to maintain independence and dignity in the comfort and security of home.

As Frank’s business grew he found was spending more and more time acting as a print coordinator rather than managing his business. Each franchisee would go through him to order marketing materials like brochures and business cards. It just wasn’t efficient to have Frank stuck in the middle of this administrative nightmare, yet he wanted to make sure he had consistency of trademarks and messaging in Preferred Care At Home’s materials.

Our web-to print solution, or Private Print Shop, turned out to be the right solution for Frank. Frank manages the development of the content and art for his materials. Then the design templates are placed online on a Preferred Care At Home custom website where franchisees can easily choose, customize and order exactly what they need. According to Frank, PFL “freed us up to do what we need to do; run our business and build a franchise organization.”

We have built custom web-to-print solutions for a wide range of business from franchises to manufacturing to chains of clinics. Their needs may be slightly different but in all cases they share the need to easily accesses, customize, and order printed material on a frequent basis in the most efficient way possible. Besides Preferred Care At Home, we have profiled five other companies that are reaping the benefits of custom-web-to-print solutions. To read their brief success stories click here.

Are you a printing procrastinator?

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Kerie

Okay, I’m coming clean. I have a problem – I am a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator. While I’m not yet ready to join Procrastinators Anonymous, I am publicly attesting to the extra stress, late fees, embarrassment and remorse it has caused me over the years. Fortunately, though, there are some areas of my life where this insidious habit has been easier to control. Personal procrastination is indeed painful, but I’ve learned that putting things off in marketing your business is a sure-fire way to go out of business.

Years back, I was at a weekend exhibition that a friend had organized in the health and wellness arena. He was so confident about the event that he borrowed more than $30,000 from credit cards and friends to put it on. He did manage to recruit a decent amount of exhibitors and arrange a packed schedule of speakers and workshops. What he didn’t get were attendees. About 200 hundred people showed up all weekend, for a type of event that normally draws thousands. What went wrong? He waited way too long to get his print and media advertising out. I remember seeing his printed brochures show up the day before first day of the show. Ouch!!

He’s not alone. Nearly every day we squeeze in super-rush print jobs to help our customers out in a time pinch. Yes, I know there are a lot of factors involved in putting a printed piece together, from going back and forth with designers to getting all the content and details worked out. But more often than not, that pesky procrastination game is to blame.

Is it just poor time management or something deeper that underlies our procrastinator’s dilemma? Most of the pundits and researchers will point to psychological causes such as anxiety or fear of making mistakes, or the physiological roots of low activation in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.

In defense, not all procrastination is counterproductive, like when you put off the small stuff to work on the important stuff – such an innovation, building relationships and planning for the future. That’s one of my defenses, along with my attention-deficit tendencies. The problem is, a successful life and business demand timely execution on the small stuff.

What are you putting off? Can that next print project really wait?

Teamwork: The low-cost investment that pays big

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Jessie

I’m a teamwork kind of guy. I’ll readily admit that I really have to work hard to stay focused and on task if I have to work completely alone on a project. Having a group I can trust and seek out to bounce ideas off of keeps my energy up, allows for greater creativity and, it just makes work more fun.

Today, we’re expected to do so much more with less and although technology allows for greater speed and efficiency, there’s nothing like the motivation you get when you have to deliver for your teammates.

Truly interdependent teams take advantage of the strengths, while downplaying the weaknesses, of its members. And, when there is trust among members, asking for help or feedback is never perceived as weakness. Trust allows team members to stay focused on results.

A lot has been said about teamwork. My favorite thought leader on teams and teamwork to date, however, is Patrick Lencioni. His book and subsequent workshop called The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team provide a clear model and attainable set of principles that can work at any level of your organization.

Developing real teams and teamwork is tough and takes a significant ongoing investment of time. However, the pay off in company results, individual effectiveness, and employee satisfaction is well worth it.