“Take It From Me”- Why Testimonials Are So Effective

Marketing is all about giving your customers the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. Everything you do – from the copy you craft to the images you choose – is built around that simple purpose in mind.

But marketing itself has evolved over the years, away from the heavy reliance on the spec sheets of yesteryear. It’s essentially become an open line of communication between you and the people you’re trying to serve. People don’t want to be “sold to” anymore – or at least, not in the way they used to.

This is why customer testimonials are so important. Instead of “taking your word” for it that your product or service is going to impact their lives positively, it lets real customers hear from other real customers why the decision they’re about to make is a good one.

The Power of Testimonials: Facts and Figures

In addition to communicating with your audience, another essential goal of your marketing materials should involve building as much trust and credibility as you can. Your customers don’t just want to know that you can solve their problem – they want to know that you can do it better than anyone else. To that end, customer testimonials are incredibly effective – particularly in the world of print.

Part of the reason why testimonials are so important is that they help create a deeper, more emotional appeal for your branding. Consider the following statistics:

• According to one study, the regular use of customer testimonials can help you generate roughly sixty-two percent more revenue not only from every customer but from every time they visit your brand.
• Ninety-two percent of people said that they read testimonials when considering a purchase.
• A further eighty-eight percent of consumers said that they trusted these reviews just as much as personal recommendations, according to the same study.
• To top it off, seventy-two percent of those who responded to the survey in question said that positive reviews and testimonials helped them trust a business significantly more.

Simply put, customer testimonials create something of a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding your connection with your target audience. Someone enjoys your product or service, so you encourage them to leave a positive review or testimonial. Consumers naturally trust each other more than they trust just marketing collateral, so that testimonial adds more weight to the decision they’re trying to make. Those initial happy customers, therefore, encourage more purchases, which creates more happy customers, etc.

When you combine customer testimonials with other effective marketing tactics – like a heavy reliance on not just print but on print techniques that help your collateral stand out and make a unique impression – suddenly your message is being amplified in the best possible way. You’re giving an opportunity to let regular customers become brand advocates, which does more in terms of building trust, credibility, and emotion than you could ever do on your own. You’re also creating more brand advocates in the process, which is always a good thing.

Why You Should Never Cut Corners in the World of Print Marketing

In business, to say that you should make every dollar count is an understatement. When dealing with uncertain economic times, budgeting decisions matter a great deal. Improving your profit margins and increasing your bottom line is always a top priority, which is why the instinct to try to cut corners to save a few dollars here and there is a natural one.

It’s also an instinct that you would do well to fight, especially when it comes to your print marketing.

Marketing is About Communication and Communication Matters

People who feel like it’s okay to cut corners with their print marketing are probably not understanding what their marketing collateral is supposed to do. If you look at a flyer or another piece of print material as only an information exchange, things like paper stock and print quality probably aren’t going to be high on your list of priorities.

However, those things should make the top of the list because print marketing is about more than just an information exchange. It’s about opening up a line of communication with your audience that will be mutually beneficial to everyone involved. It’s about creating a meaningful experience with a person, one that doesn’t just inform them about your product or service but that also gives you a competitive advantage.

As a “top-of-the-funnel” medium, print is important because it guarantees you the nearly undivided attention of your readers – the same attention they often give to magazine and newspaper content, as per the American Marketing Association. Why, then, would you think it’s a good idea to get someone to focus their attention on something that isn’t the best quality it can be? Is that the impression you really want to make?

That’s precisely the decision you make when you try to cut corners when talking about something as mission-critical as print marketing. If you can only make one first impression, it serves you well to make it the best one you can. Nothing makes a worse first impression than a low quality, easy-to-ignore piece of print marketing making their way into someone’s mailbox (or worse – your store window).

How to Save Money Without Sacrificing Quality

Instead of cutting corners across the proverbial marketing board, consider cutting out certain elements wholesale if you’re trying to stretch your budget as far as it can go. Take a look at your existing marketing channels and see what is working and what isn’t. Cut anything at the bottom of the list and funnel some of those funds back into your marketing so that you can double down on the print materials that are striking a chord with your target audience.

Not only will you still be able to save a little money, but the remaining print collateral that you’re using will come out all the better for it. Even one incredible piece of print collateral is more effective (and more important) than ten low-quality ones.

Investing in Marketing is an Investment in Your Business

A solid piece of print marketing collateral will not just get someone down off the fence and turn them from “potential buyer” to “customer.” Nurturing that line of communication at the right time can turn someone from “one-time customer” into “brand advocate” and beyond, too.

But that’s not going to happen if you cut corners on something this important. According to Quickbooks, inadequate marketing has been proven to stunt your business’ growth. Is that a chance worth taking, all in the name of saving a few bucks in the short-term? We certainly don’t think so.

Ethics: A Virtue You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Although ethical behavior in business is often touted, it can be hard to attain in practice. That’s because ethical behavior has to be practiced by every individual, every day. It’s not the sort of thing that can be decided upon and implemented en masse. Leaders are often under particular pressure to be practical over ethical. The reasoning is often because hard decisions require frequent compromise, and ethics often come across as black-and-white perspectives that don’t match the reality facing a decision-maker.

A Virtue You Can’t Afford to Ignore

However, ignoring ethics can be a dangerous path. Nick Leeson provides a very vivid example of this. His name is well known in financial circles as the man who single-handedly put the Singapore financial markets into a panic and brought down one of Britain’s most famous banks.

Leeson got his start early in banking as a clerk at Barings Bank in 1985. At first, Leeson seemed to be a success. However, he began quickly playing outside the rules, and because he was bringing in big profits, the bank ignored the risks.

By 1992, trades started going bad. Leeson packed the losses into a technical account originally designed as a dummy account for accounting errors. No one noticed, so he continued on his unethical path of hiding losses repeatedly. The tipping point came in January 1995 when Leeson placed a big trade between the Singapore and Japanese markets. Not expecting a major earthquake in Japan to throw both markets into a tailspin, Leeson realized the gig was up and went into hiding. Barings Bank folded a few weeks later owing £827 million in losses, and eventually, Leeson went to prison.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Interestingly, following good ethics not only avoids situations like Leeson’s, but it also works as a defense for a business leader. The adage, “actions speak louder than words” is true for ethics as well. Ethical behavior not only keeps employees behaving on the right side of the law, but it also gives managers and leaders incentive to work for more than just the bottom line. Ethics can incorporate greater goodwill for the community a business operates in, safety protection of employees and customers, market protection from unscrupulous players, and far better interaction with the government and regulators. All of which, in turn, help a company see a larger bottom line.

No question, the ethical path isn’t always the easiest. However, leaders of companies and organizations need to remember that good ethics involve more than just an individual perspective; by the very nature of their role, top managers affect all of the organization and set an example for staff to follow and the community to model after. Good ethics can be far more than just a set of rules; it can be a powerful marketing/communication tool positively setting a business apart in the market from competitors and creating the long-term foundation for customer retention.

Business Cards: Why They’re Still an Important Marketing Tool in the Digital World

With all of the talk about the importance of properly marketing your product or service, it’s important not to overlook the most valuable commodity of all: yourself. As much as that beautiful-looking flyer attracts the right type of attention for your product, a business card is designed to do the same for both your professional image and your career as a whole.

But do business cards still have a place in a digital world? In an era where finding someone is easier than ever thanks to tools like social media, do people still need to go through designing, printing, and handing out a business card? The answer is one that might surprise you.

Business Cards: By the Numbers

Just going off of statistics, it’s easy to see that the answer to the question “are business cards still an important tool in a digital world?” is a resounding YES. According to one study, there are about 10 billion(!) business cards printed in the United States each year – or roughly 27 million each day.

But diving deeper, it’s clear that business cards perform a function that goes far beyond just handing out contact information. They actually serve an important role in your business at large, too. For every 2,000 business cards that you pass out, you can expect your sales to increase by an average of 2.5%. Business cards do everything from show someone you’re serious to increase personal brand recognition and awareness.

One of the major strengths of print marketing and the use of business card is that they’re physical. They’re something tangible that people can hold in their hand and, most importantly, share with friends and other family members. In an era where people are getting bombarded by more digital messages than ever and emails can be deleted in seconds (and people can be muted on social networking sites like Twitter), never underestimate how essential this simple fact really is.

The Power of the First Impression

Just because business cards still serve a purpose does not mean that all business cards are created equally. There are a number of design tips that you can use to make the RIGHT kind of first impression the next time you hand out your card to a customer or at that next big networking event.

StatisticBrain estimates that prospective clients will hold onto a color-filled business card a full ten times longer than they will a standard white card. Color also increases the impact of engagement on a person’s ability to follow simple directions; this is an advantage too powerful to ignore.

Approximately seventy-two percent of people say that they judge the company or brand that a person works for based on the quality of their business card. Likewise, thirty-nine percent of those who responded to a survey said that they would choose NOT to do business with someone if they had a “cheap-looking” business card.

Business cards are still essential in a digital world, and that means you need to devote the time to doing them well.

Avoid These Common Print Marketing Mistakes for Visually Compelling Content

Compelling images are the perfect way to attract attention and create an emotional connection with your customers and prospects. Avoid these common mistakes as you design newer and richer content moving forward.

Mistake #1: You Didn’t Keep It Simple

Why do you think audiences have gravitated towards visual print marketing content over the last few years? If you thought “because people are bombarded with information these days from nearly every angle,” you’d be right! From the moment people wake up in the morning, their smartphones are sending them emails and push notifications. They’re wading through dozens of blog posts. They’re reading massive reports at work all day long. Information is everywhere, and it can often feel overwhelming.

Solution: Make your print marketing visually impactful, and easy to read and interpret.

Visual print marketing is an excellent way to relieve people from these stresses – or at least; it’s supposed to be. It can allow you to take your message and wrap it up in a way that is easy to understand and a refreshing change of pace from everything else.

Think about it in terms of infographics. Infographics are an incredibly popular form of visual content because they take complicated ideas and break them down to just what you need to know and nothing more. Apply this same concept to your print marketing designs.

Mistake #2: You Failed to Account For Light

When you’re leaning so heavily on your visuals, you MUST account for the number one factor that can destroy the feeling you were going for – light.

How that gorgeous new flyer or banner you’re creating looks on a computer screen and how it looks in a store window in your neighborhood can be very, very different depending on the lighting quality of the area, the direction of the sun, and more.

Solution: Ask yourself how light will affect every decision you make, from the richness of the colors you’re choosing to the specific type of paper (and finish) you’ll be using.

Accounting for these simple mistakes will put you ahead of the game and on your way to stunning and compelling visual print marketing.

It’s Okay to go Niche: How One Unusual Brand is Turning Trash into Specialty Surf Bags

Sometimes, we stumble across an answer to a problem that we did not know existed. Alec and Aric Avedissian are solving two problems at once with their business Rareform. Rareform’s customers get durable, one-of-a-kind surfbags while the company helps reroute some of the thousands of pounds of billboard material that is discarded in the U.S. every day.

The average billboard goes up for four to eight weeks, then is discarded. While there are no firm figures on how many billboards exist in the United States, the number is high. The Los Angeles area alone is host to over 6,000 boards. Since billboard material does not decompose, that is a lot of waste.

Inspiration in the Strangest Place

Avedissian stumbled on the idea of surfbags from billboard vinyl after spending time volunteering with a fishing cooperative in El Salvador. While there, he saw people using discarded billboards to make roofing. The sight was a revelation. He’d previously never considered the material and had thought that billboards were made from paper. The discovery that this durable material was being discarded every week spurred his innovative idea.

While the bags offered a durable product at a reasonable price, the company was having a hard time finding their footing. They’d had $1.1 million in sales over three years, but saw that sales were slipping. Had they reached saturation? They decided to go on Shark Tank to see if they could find the funds that would bring them growth. Two out of the three judges did not bite; they were concerned not just with the falling sales, but with the complexity of the concept of Rareform’s product. However, Kevin O’Leary was not dissuaded and made an offer. And, it turned out that the best benefit for the product was appearing on the show.

Before their Shark Tank appearance, Rareform would recycle anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of vinyl each month. With the added visibility provided by the show, they’ve increased their monthly recycling to 50,000 pounds.

When It’s Okay to Go Niche

Surfbags are already a niche item, appealing only to the approximately 23 million surfers worldwide. By adding the factor of the recycled bags and their one-of-a-kind nature, they become even more niche. However, faith in their product and a willingness to seek out new opportunities to get their wares in front of the audience worked out.

Small businesses should never shy away from a niche product as long as it has a few things going for it. The questions you should ask:

• Is there an audience? Rareform built their early success with the help of dedicated hobbyists.
• Do you have a platform that can get you attention? Their appearance on Shark Tank was just what was needed.
• Do you have reasons for making your product the way you do? Rareform’s founders said they were committed to the cause of recycling. While this was a turn-off for some investors, it is what makes their product appealing and unique.

In today’s highly connected world, there is room for every well-made product, even if your audience is small. By focusing on what you bring to the table, you can find your audience and build success for your brand.

The Conduit Theory in Practice – Speaker Willie Brown

Willie Brown, the former speaker of the California Assembly, never intended to have a political career when he was born. Brown was raised in a backwater town named Mineola, Texas, in 1934, a time when Texas and the South were not particularly conducive to the career dreams of African Americans. To find a better path, his family packed Brown on a train from Texas all the way to California. There, with the help of a professor, Brown found his calling at a state University and earned a law degree from the prestigious U.C. Hastings. However, he was yet to prove his greatest accomplishment.

In 1964, after a second try, Brown gained a seat in the California Assembly. There, he learned simply being unique didn’t get him much. He had to learn how to be a useful broker. In that respect, Brown quietly learned from his legislative tutors like Jesse Unruh and Philip Burton how to become a pivot point, a conduit between the many who want something and those with power. Positioning through legislative committees, Brown went from being a name in the Assembly to eventually to becoming its Speaker, one of the top five positions in state government. Brown held that chair for fifteen years, only to then retire and become the mayor of San Francisco in his later years.

Becoming A Conduit Point

For a business, Willie Brown’s story is an illustrative one; you don’t have to be biggest, most powerful player on the market to become instrumental. Brown, as an African American politician in the 1960s, was clearly not in the position to leapfrog right away to leadership or the Governor’s office. However, he did find a position that everyone needed and had to go through to get something. By identifying how and becoming a conduit point, Brown secured his future, which is what successful businesses do in their market.

A conduit point isn’t just limited to being between end retail customers and suppliers. Conduit businesses can easily do the same in the business-to-business market as well, often producing far greater revenues than they would on the retail side of things. However, positioning can be a challenge. One needs to see the entire market, not just a segment of it. Getting to the forest level instead of the weeds allows a business player to identify all the connection points and where being a conduit has the greatest potential for producing revenue. It also shows what is needed to be successful in that particular position. Sometimes some potential conduits are too challenging, and others may offer too little in reward for the effort. Picking the right market position takes some experience, which means a business needs to research well and study peers, suppliers, buyers, competitors, and middlemen. No one in a given market should be left out.

Willie Brown was an intensive study of his legislative peers, which is why he was able to position himself so well. He also took lessons from those more powerful than him rather than fighting them, using that knowledge to become one of the powerful ones himself. A growing business can learn a thing or two from his life example.

Spring Cleaning Tips For The Office

When you think about it, you spend more time at your office than in your own home, not counting sleeping hours of course. Consequently, the atmosphere of your office, whether it be neat or disorganized, will greatly affect you and your employees in a myriad of ways. Therefore, learning how to keep your office clean is important. Before getting to the cleaning tips, though, let’s look at why a clean office is imperative.

A Disorganized/Dirty Office Is:

• Unprofessional: If your office is cluttered, dusty, or generally disorganized, you will instantly appear less professional to clients/customers. You might say, “I’m too busy working to clean up after myself.” Well, consider the appearance of your office as you would your own. Would you come to work in your bathrobe simply because it took more time to get dressed?
• Less Productive: Running a successful business is all about productivity. Getting things accomplished is the end goal. If you spend an hour looking for a particular folder under piles of other files and perhaps old take-out cups, is that a productive way to do business? Of course, it isn’t. By not having a place for everything and keeping everything in its place you are actually wasting billable hours.
• Can Make You Sick: A dusty, dirty office can also cause sickness in a person who has a sensitivity to dust or allergens. Therefore, as a business owner, you might lose a part of your team to sickness simply because your work environment isn’t healthy. This reduces productivity simply by cutting down manpower.

 

Spring Cleaning Tips

Benjamin Disraeli, an author who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 1800s, said the following about the importance of and commitment to cleanliness in all aspects of life:

“Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.”

This quote exemplifies the importance of cleanliness perfectly. It also reminds us that cleaning isn’t always instinctual. That’s why a checklist of sorts is as worthwhile as a guide on whipping your office into shape this spring.

 

Primary Focus Areas

There are three basic areas you should focus on when cleaning your office. These include your workspace, your paperwork, and your technology. There are, of course, more areas to think about, such as the floors, bathrooms, and such, but just getting these three basic areas organized will go a long way towards creating a more productive working environment.

1) Organize Your Workspace

This is relatively easy; it just takes time. Simply go through your desk and throw away the trash. It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how many people don’t do this basic step. Get rid of/recycle old water bottles, carry-out cartons, and drinks. Also, donate or throw away anything you don’t use or that doesn’t work. Why keep a calculator that doesn’t function properly or hang on to a pencil that’s too small to write with? Simply getting rid of all the stuff you don’t need or use on and around your desk will help immensely.

2) Reduce Paper Work

As you know, paperwork is never ending, and if you don’t have a great file/shred system in place, it can really get out of hand. Part of cleaning off your workspace should include going through and shredding documents you no longer need. If you do need to keep something, create an easy-to-follow filing system to get these files off your desk.

3) Clean Your Technology

This tip should be taken literally, as in taking your computer apart and dusting it with the proper tools, as well as metaphorically. Clean the inside of your computer by deleting old emails and archiving those you need to keep.It’s also a great time to back up your server if you have one or update old software.

If you commit to putting things away at the end of every day, your office will never get as unorganized as it was. You might have to allow a few days for cleaning, but the increased production, as well as the creation of a more professional workspace, is well worth the time investment.

What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Mix Modeling Portal

We’ve written extensively in the past about how when it comes to digital and print marketing, you’re not looking at an either/or proposition. Often, businesses of all sizes are finding great success embracing the best of both worlds – reaching out to the customers who are most receptive to print channels via traditional methods and using digital resources when they’re most appropriate. We’ve even written about how you can take the lessons learned online and use them to make your print strategies even stronger.

We’re not the only people who share this opinion; it would seem. Facebook has recently launched a mixed marketing portal designed to make it easier than ever for businesses to compare Facebook-based advertisements to television, print, and other types of collateral. While this does mean big things for people using Facebook as an advertising platform, what it means for print marketers is even more interesting.

What Facebook is Doing

The social networking giant’s mix modeling portal for marketers is a significant extension of an existing partnership. Over the course of the past few years, Facebook has teamed with Nielsen (the people who tell you how many people watch the Super Bowl each year, among other things), comScore (the people who focus on digital, TV and movie analytics), DoubleVerify (a company that aims to “authenticate the quality of each digital media impression”), and others. This has all been done to provide clear metrics on how far a Facebook ad reaches, how many impressions it gets, its ultimate performance, and more.

For advertisers that rely heavily on Facebook, this means that they now have access to twenty-four different third party measurement partners to track the performance of their ads around the world, see how their ads are comparing against similar ads running in the world of print and more.

For print-based marketers, this also thankfully means that the reverse is true, too.

What This Means For You

Even if you don’t heavily advertise on Facebook, this new model is still something to pay close attention to because of the metrics at play. It’s another example of the ever-important concept of “pay attention to what is working online and use it to strengthen the foundation of your print campaigns.” Thanks to Facebook, this just got a whole lot easier.

By giving advertisers the ability to compare a successful Facebook ad to other elements of their campaign like print, people who DO happen to be heavy print advertisers can essentially come in from the opposite angle and learn just as much. It’s all a matter of perspective – the marketing mix modeling portal can be used to look at one of your successful print ads, compare it to ads that are running on Facebook and use that actionable information to feed back into the print campaign to help achieve your desired outcomes.

Print and digital advertising have historically been measured in very different ways, but thanks to Facebook we just took a big leap closer to a uniform standard that can be used in both situations. You can use the Facebook MMM Portal to see how impressions reach and other metrics translate into the real world and back again.

Are You Measuring Marketing Success Based on these Core Metrics?

The ultimate success of your marketing campaigns comes down to a whole lot more than just how many total sales you’ve made, or how much revenue you’re bringing in each year. Remember, that one small move in one part of your campaign will have a ripple effect that adjusts everything around it. If you want to see how your campaigns are doing, there are a few core metrics you can employ that will tell you exactly that.

Qualified Leads

If you’re only measuring the success of your campaign based on the number of leads you’re bringing in, you’re missing the target but hitting the tree, so to speak. Leads are one thing – qualified leads are something else entirely. Anyone can bring in a lead, but that doesn’t mean the lead will ever make a sale. Generally speaking, the most successful campaigns may not bring in a massive number of leads, but they’ll have a higher percentage of qualified leads than you’ll get from the old “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” method.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Also commonly referred to as CAC, customer acquisition cost is one of those core metrics that will never go out of style. In essence, it tells you how much money you’re spending to bring in one new customer. This metric takes into account not only the cost of your campaign materials and distribution, but also things like salaries, overhead, and more. Let’s say it costs you $1000 to bring in one new customer. That may not be a lot, but if the average value of each customer is only $800, you have a problem. For the best results, your CAC should always be lower than another important metric, your CLV or “customer lifetime value.”

Website Metrics

In 2017, and in the future, the chances are high that regardless of how you’re executing your marketing campaign, your website will play a big role in it. As a digital calling card for your business, it will be many people’s first point of contact – even if they eventually carry out the rest of their relationship over the phone or in person. Because of this, the two core metrics you’ll want to look at to determine how your campaign is doing are “time spent on site” and “bounce rate.”

“Time spent on site” will show you how valuable people think your website is. Essentially, it will clue you in on whether people feel that your website has something of value to offer based on the promise they received from your marketing collateral. If “time spent on site” is low, chances are there’s a discrepancy between what you say you offer and what you actually do.

Bounce rate is similar – if someone gets to your homepage and leaves a few seconds later, there is a problem somewhere that needs to be corrected as soon as possible.

These are just a few of the core metrics that you can use to judge the overall success of your marketing campaign. Also remember that if you make a change to your marketing efforts, regardless of how big or how small, these numbers should react accordingly. As a result, they can be a great way to track in real-time how well that great new idea you had worked – or how much work is still left to be done, depending on the situation. These are all numbers you need to keep an active eye on moving forward, both in short and long-term intervals.