Generate User Reviews

If you are doing any kind of Social Media Marketing, no matter what size your company is, you should know how important it is to leverage reviews in both online and offline marketing efforts. Some studies are showing that 72% of consumers trust online customer reviews as much as a personal recommendations. Who’d have guessed, huh? Obviously any reviews no matter how or where it comes from can help to get customers to make buying decision.

There are of course a few areas that can make you get a little worried about reviews. There is of course the fear of negative feedback. Then there is the fear of time needed to develop and implement a successful reviewing tool while obtaining trustworthy, relevant reviews.

To help you, here are a few ways to help you get user reviews without really trying too hard.

1. ASK YOUR FANS: 

It’s not against the rules to ask. Really, just ask the 3 F’s (family, friends, fans) to make their love of you and your services known to the world, via a formal review. After all if you can’t as your 3 F’s who can you ask?

2. FOLLOW UP A POST-SERVICE/PURCHASE:

There’s a key time frame to follow up with a customer who has purchase a product or service from you to allow you to ask for a review. I cannot tell you what that is because it is different for every kind of company category, but one exists. You might need to test different time lengths to find what the optimal follow-up period for your business is but then you will know and you will never have to miss an opportunity to send a follow-up email, letter or phone call asking how a customer’s experience was.

3. ESTABLISH A PRESENCE ON MAJOR REVIEW SITES:

Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Storeboard, Citysearch, etc. are all good trusted sites to get and posts reviews. Or at least they want you to think so. Now I’m not argue so go get your company listed with a profile, then keep it updated and respond to all user comments both good and bad. These review sites also impact SEO, so by establishing a profile, your company can gain greater visibility, attract more hits and, hopefully, more reviews.

4. MAKE IT MULTI CHANNEL FRIENDLY:

As those in the online space are well aware, mobile and tablet usage is gaining traction. To ensure that customers visiting your site, regardless of the kind of device they are using, can easily access and enter their reviews, you need to make it multi channel friendly. Need help with this, call us and we can make it happen.

5. CREATE USER PROFILES:

As ego-driven people, we tend to act or as the case may be, write differently if we know someone is watching. By not allowing anonymous reviews, customers are not only likely to give more accurate reviews, but also more helpful ones because their name is on it (literally). In the B2B world, user profiles can also create an opportunity for user promotion, as a reviewer they can enter their company name as the user name and get a company plug.

6. PUBLISH REVIEWS FOR THE PUBLIC:

There’s no sense asking for reviews, if other people cannot see them. Additionally, those who previously read reviews that encouraged them to make a purchase, are more likely to come back and review their own experience.

7. OFFER DIFFERENT WAYS TO REVIEW A PRODUCT/SERVICE:

Not all of us are great writers. So the problem is if a customer , who isn’t great writer, could give you are great review you might want to offer them an option of multiple choice questions in order to rate your product or service on a scale of 1-10, this way all those non-writers will be able to leave an favorable opinion.

9. OFFER TRIAL PERIODS:

If you want reviews, but don’t have any customers, to leave them, one tactic is to offer trial period for your service. Do not make the condition that they have to review your service in the end, but offer the service and hope your quality offering and your follow-ups brings them back to give you a positive review.

10. WORK WITH A REVIEW AGGREGATOR:

There are companies out there that help companies generate reviews through referral engines (like us). They help to take the guess work out of the process by sending follow-up emails on your behalf, working with your social media profiles and offering customers a follow-up options to your business.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Social media can be made to be better. It just takes a little work. Now you know a few more tricks of the trade.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Ways Lead Generation Works

If you can’t keep your sales pipeline full of fresh new leads you will fail. NO matter what out of any list of 100 names there are only a certain number of new customers. So every time you take 1 out of the list be it a yes or a no, you don’t lose 1 real lead, you lose that 1 and maybe 20 more that were never going to buy but are still in your data base.

1) Using The Wrong People – For every lead generation program, you need to be sure that the employees be it inside telemarketer or outside rep making the sales calls have the appropriate background and knowledge. I would say you want to be finding a mature adult who knows how to think on their feet. A college education back ground doesn’t hurt and any kind of selling experience. If you can get any familiarity with the client, product or service is you got a real winner.

2) Defining The Lead – How will sales reps or telemarketer know when they have a lead or suspect if they have no clue what a good lead looks like in the first place? What does a customer look like? If you can’t define it don’t expect anyone else to be able to do it for you. A business can qualify a lead by industry, company size, revenue, location, and be taking the prospect to a closed sale faster by confirming the more advanced information like budget, authority and timeline.

3) Poor Messaging – A message that does not resonate with prospects or that is difficult to understand, or one that is difficult for sales reps or telemarketers to say and deliver is going to slow down any kind of lead generation campaign. Your company must have a clear, pointed, directed message that speaks to the needs, the pains or the joys for your product or service from your company for the prospect to generate results.

4) Wrong target – If you have the wrong list the message does not make any difference. This happens when you do not properly build or acquiring a list of prospects based on your company’s perfect customer or if you focus too much on the influencer and not the ones making the buying decisions. Remember the perfect demographics when making or getting your list, industry, company size, revenue, and location.

5) Poor Lead Handoff – This sometimes means a lead was not properly qualified, or it took too long for a good lead to the sales people too late, well after the prospect has forgotten about the conversation or bought from another vendor. It done right and seamlessly a proper lead handoff can help businesses avoid both of these situations.

Larson Notes & Satire:  I have always said the better the Lead List the better the Lead Generation process. If you are hitting on the right people and the right companies they well need what you are selling day in and day out.

There are ways to do this. Secrets if you want to call them that to make the process better. I call it experience.

So how will your company grow in 2013? Share with us your thoughts. What has worked in your organization in lead generation and what are mistakes you have learned from in the past?

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The Mindset of a Communication Services Provider

Get your head out of the sand. If you can start thinking of more than just a shift in technology or product line, becoming a Communication Services Provider is at least to start with, a shift of mindset. As a CSP, you’ll still be a Printer or a Print

Services Provider (PSP) but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real change is in your head, it is one of your overall perspectives of your business and your company.

Here are four ways to adopt and implement yourself as a Communication Services Provider

1^st Start by talking to your customers. Really when was the last time you talked to your key accounts on what they need, not just in the way of printing but about their entire communication needs and process.

2^nd Selling a product or service is only one step of what you need to be doing. Selling printing makes you a commodity. Selling a communication service makes you a total service filling out a full need, not a part. If you do it right, this interacting with customers should of course be a constant back and forth process for the entire life cycle of the customer. As a Communication Services Provider you need to learn about the reason behind the products and services they buy. With each service and transaction you make, you need to know and ask “What is that client’s ultimate goal and reason for doing this.”

As there Communication Services Provider your mind needs to be project based, not product based. You are solving a problem not a requirement of that problem. You’re starting a communication partnership, instead of just being a print vendor. If you understand your customer’s print marketing goals and how those align with their overall marketing goals you start to become valued partner. If all you do is pick up the phone, take the order and then hang up and do the job, become noting more than a commodity.

3^rd Start Selling Solutions. Shifting from PSP to CSP means you’ll have to sell yourself in terms of total solutions instead of just products. The print part of a project is just that, only part of the solution. Now you need to communicate the benefits of print in the context of the total communication and marketing system.

The brochure you print, the flier you produced, your direct mail offering you have going out isn’t important because it’s just a piece of paper or a nicely typeset invitation to purchase your client’s product. All of those things mean nothing really. You can go out and buy them anywhere. The direct mail pieces, the flier, the brochure, are nothing without knowledge of the entire process. You need to be selling the solution not the product.

4^th the all important Follow Up. If you have listened to and understand your client’s business goals and communication and marketing objectives, you’re finally in a position to follow up with them and offer them true value. Your printing company is already part of the communication and marketing process. Now, take those isolated printed pieces and make it a communication campaign with all the other parts of the channels of marketing and communication.

As a Communication Services Provider, you can sell clients on creating complete projects both on and off line, which allow you to track campaign result and engagement. You can further automate the process to report to your clients on exactly how the mail performed–who went to the personalized webpage, how long they stayed and whether they acted truly interested. In other words, you can become a total marketing partner, actively delivering leads, reporting marketing effectiveness and using measurement tools to make future campaigns more effective for them

Just remember becoming a Communication Services Provider means changing your perspective, then match that with your product and service offerings. You aren’t just selling a new product: you’re partnering with a client to help them find total communication solutions not just print solutions that solve their problems.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So how will your company grow in 2013? Only in one way? Print if you’re a printer? Signs if you’re a sign shop? Yet you could be more, so much more. If there was a way for you to become a complete communication company for your key accounts at no cost to you, would you?

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Growth Synergies for the Printer

I know it goes against every bone in your ink stained body but to grow in 2013 might require a new way of thinking. Are the old strategies still working for you? I’m guessing no. I’m guessing you are getting hammered from the right and from the left from online, to do it on my copy machine to paperless.

So what do you do? If you play ostrich and put your head in the sand you’re done for. The only word that comes to mind is Synergy. You need to find people in related fields that can add to your company’s service base. Surround yourself with a team of experts to engage in a successful hands off partnership.

If the railroads had see how airline companies were going to come in and dominate passenger traffic they might have gotten into the business of flying or bought them out when they were small and buyable.

If you’re a commercial printer, this is especially a wise strategy to consider. You can buy your way in. But that takes money which is in short supply.

We all know that in a flat economy, sales are hard to come by. And I call 2% growth pretty flat. That’s why you can’t just think of adding more sales people, or cutting your costs. After the last few years or cost cutting are there any more places to cut costs? Probably not. And as for qualified salespeople the good ones are not moving and the bad ones, well you don’t want them.

To do what I am suggesting you may have to reconsider the basic structure of your business. Parts of your business that are drags on your business. What would happen if you stopped or outsourced those parts?

Then there is expansion of services. Could you achieve synergies to make your “printing” company a communication company by teaming with someone else? This is a case where you could work with a competitor or parallel company to achieve a win-win situation.

There are risks, there always are risks.  But the greatest risk a printing owner can make is to be stuck in his or her definition of what the definition of their company and business is and to formulate a growth strategy.

Larson Notes & Satire:  If you want to bust out of the trap of being a printer to one of being a marketing communication company. We have ideas. They might work for your company, they might not. As for why, what we know about web, social media marketing, telemarketing will take you time to catch up to what we know and guess what? By then we will know even more. My point is to form a synergy with an organization like ours who does not want to steal the printing side of your business but work behind the scenes as a partner letting you keep in total control of the customer base might be just what you need to get your company to 2014.

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

White Hat / Black Hat Better Know The Difference

I might know every wrong way to make a website go up on the search engines. You know the ones that get your site booted out of Google and then you need to go on bended knee and beg them to take your web site back and list it.  You might think oh that’s bad. But let me tell you it’s very very good.

When it comes to social media marketing, there is a long list of best practices and worst practices that you the marketing manager or business owner needs to be aware of.

Sometimes this line of good and bad get all messy, and even though you might be innocently just trying to improve your hits and followers or metrics, BAM! The web marshal goes and puts your site in web jail. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 new followers! Yes you could be crossing the line and being accused of using “black hat tactics”.

Black hat tactics go against both the written and unwritten rules of social media. Yes we are at war, but these kinds of tactics bait the system in order to achieve better results. Now some black hat tactics are clearly underhanded and I mean sneaky bad, and easy to identify, others are not so bad and are leveraged by thousands of marketers and companies on a daily basis, sometimes on purpose and many times totally unintentionally. Below I have given you 5 black hat strategies, along with ways to clean up your act.

Black Hat 1: Buying your Audience
This is such an obvious black hat practice, and it really makes no sense to do. While there are many services that make it simple for someone to purchase fans or followers, this tactic has little-to-no value. The popularity is nice and we all wanted to be Homecoming King or Queen in High School, but you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Not only can you totally damage your company’s reputation with your real 3F’s friends, family and followers, but chances are that these mysterious new audience fans don’t care much about what your company has to say. Then again, purchased fans and followers could hide spammers and hackers, which have the potential to really cause a whole lot of problems for you.

White Hat 1: Growing your Audience
The best way to grow your audience is with engaging content. This includes great posts, insightful content, images, videos, promotions, polls and any other type of interactive ideas and update that grabs you attention. Once you start posting content on a regular basis and promote it on your SM page even more people can see, find and comment on it. This should be done on both Facebook and Twitter. As you do this you (nicely) get the word about your company’s social profiles, which helps increase real fan and follower.

Black Hat 2: Running Facebook Promotions Directly on a Page
This is an example of where the lines between black hat and white hat get blurry. Although many companies run promotions on Facebook on a regular basis, only companies who are running these promotions within Apps on Facebook.com are actually complying with the Facebook Pages Terms.

White Hat 2: Running Legit Promotions
The Facebook Pages Terms make it totally clear that promotions must be administered within Apps, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. However, social marketing managers should also note some of the network’s other promotion rules, like acknowledging that promotions are not endorsed or sponsored by Facebook, disclosing who is collecting participants’ information, as well as not using Facebook functions (such as likes, comments or check-ins) as valid actions for entries into a contest or promotion.

Black Hat 3: Spamming for Traffic
Another obvious black hat tactic is spamming for traffic. Most of us have seen the social spammers, who tend to comment on popular posts and tweets with a random message in addition to some strange link. While most of you reading this article know better than to click on these suspect links, others don’t, which is why this shady tactic continues.

White Hat 3: Posting for Traffic
The best way to fight against spammers is to report them, but this doesn’t solve the problem of how you can obtain more web traffic via the social media. Aside from posting good engaging content, another way companies can boost their visibility (and therefore web site traffic) is by participating in conversations on topics, which is most easily done on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Black Hat 4: Corrupt Cover Photos
Facebook cover photos are meant to be a representation of your company, but some companies leverage this area to promote sales. The Facebook Page Terms, however, clearly labels these tactics as prohibited. In fact, covers images cannot be made up of more than 20 percent text, include price or purchase information, contain website, email or mailing addresses, have references to Facebook actions or other call-to-actions.

White Hat 5: Innovative Cover Photos
If you are determined to use your cover photo to promote a new service or product, try to use some imagination in order to not breach the Facebook Pages Terms. While a cover photo car get to the point or a new product or service you need it to also comply with cover photo guidelines by not including too much text, a call-to-action or pricing information.

Black Hat 5: Sneaky Automation
Using automated services for social media campaigns is another place where the lines between black and white hats get blurry. While these services can make life much easier for you, they can also be major annoyances when done the wrong way. An example of a bad use of automation is when company’s send out generic messages to new followers and fans thanking them for becoming a follower. While you might not think this is “bad”, some companies take the thank you message a step further by asking their new fans to take an immediate action in engaging with them by adding a link to their website, a product or additional social profile within the message. While this might not bother some people, it can turn others away.

White Hat 5: Automation to Help Save Time
Automation tools should be used to help you make the posting process done in less time. A service like IFTTT can make some social media management tasks easier, you should remember that interactions with fans and followers should come off as authentic, and not from a robot. Use it but be careful. It is social and sooner or later you need to interact.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So are you I hot water? Are you a Black Hat, White Hat, Gray Hat or a Hat Of Many Colors, or do you just not know?

Take it from a guy who knows all the Black Hat ways to do web promotion. The dirty little truth is these 5 Hats are just the tip of the iceberg as to what you should be working through. And, what you don’t know can hurt you.

So you might want to think about your next step. We put it all together with a powerful knowledge and experience base.

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Should You Be Mobile?

Was doing some reading this morning at the kitchen table.
>Expect 63% more people to be shopping on mobile devices during the next couple years
>Already 51% of people feel very comfortable making purchases from their mobile devices
>To people with mobile devices say the most important app features are:
>36% access coupons
>35% comparison shopping
>31% customer reviews
>28% make purchases
>26% track shipping

This leads me into asking should your company be doing mobile? B2B has been wondering about this I know but let’s take a closer look.

Mobile site and email traffic continues to skyrocket. In May alone, GigaOm reported that there are 5.5 devices per household, and they see that increasing to as many as 8 by 2016.

A recent study by Foolproof reported nearly half of consumers would not engage with a company if they had a poor mobile Web experience! And nearly 60% said they viewed a company as "being in touch" with them after having a positive mobile experience. Think about yourself. Look at your own thoughts and behavior, how likely are you to revisit a site after having a frustrating mobile experience with them, like “how dare they waste my time!”

You are facing a huge challenge. Your customers are becoming more savvy about marketing then you are. Their lives are a blur of offline and online interactions with friends, fans, family and favorite brands. Now we are going to increase the challenge with people on their smart phones and tablets and they expect to do the exact same things on those devices that they are doing on their desktop, but with very different constraints. When you don't make it easy for consumers to complete an action guess what? They won't. Marketers are leaving impressions, clicks, conversions, sales on the table, lost somewhere in cyber space when they don't create a seamless mobile experience for them.

By planning and designing the mobile experience, you can improve all your versions of your content including your desktop version. To do so, you the marketer need to understand the constraints smart phones and tablets put in place and really align your marketing strategies to their behavior.

Let’s be honest here, every, yes EVERY channel has constraints. In email, you have rules for each mail client. In direct mail, you need to work in a more traditional structure to print what you want or do you, think variable data.

Mobile, which is what we are talking about, makes viewing your web site and content to conform to a new set of limitations, rules and opportunities. By embracing these constraints, you can find explosive ways to talk to customers. In a network there are a substantial number of phones that are able to get on the 4G LTE network and amazing as it might seem, a mobile network is even faster at loading Web pages than some desktop computers. Most phones, however, are still on a 3G network, so they have slower loading times. And then (death warmed over) there are certain places (like that dead spot in the corner of house) where they just don't get service.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Ok so you have a printing company. Maybe you have a small copy shop. Think of all those Brides out there shopping for Save-the-Date and Wedding announcements.

You have a large web shop printing 100 page catalogs. That worried buyer, you know the person who graduated from college 3 years ago, is worried about getting them on time and tracks his shipment.

Should I go on? That CFO who gets lost on his way to the press check?

So you might want to think about your next step. We put it all together with a powerful knowledge and experience base.

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
|http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Improve Marketing Effectiveness

Improve Marketing Effectiveness

Did you know that you can economize on your print marketing and increase your marketing effectiveness simultaneously?

You might equate saving money with choosing less expensive paper or printing less, but it is about targeting and optimization. Here are ways you can save marketing dollars while actually improving your results.

1) Clean your database. Yes, get rid of all those dead end names, out of business companies, people who have lost or left their jobs. Throw them out. Then try to make sure all the addresses are correct both email and physical addresses. There is no sense spending the time emailing something to someone that has no chance of getting there. Even an email blast has a cost. As for mail? Mail, even if you print it yourself has a cost to print and mail it out but the name is not quite as important because it might go to the new person who took your old prospects place. When your mail gets to the place you want it to go, your response rates go up!

What percentage of a direct mailing you do actually gets delivered? Do you have any idea? According to the United States Postal Service, 30% of all bulk mail never gets to its location because the addresses are undeliverable.

So work hard to keep your mailing list up to date if you are going to use it, it is money you don’t waist. The USPS can and wants to help you. They don’t like all that junk mail they can’t deliver either. So they have a service called the United States Postal Service CASS certification to confirm that addresses in your list are deliverable. Run your list through the NCOA (National Change of Address) every six months and keep that list scrubbed.

Next best thing you can do with your list is to break it down into segments. Not all prospects are created equal or should get the same message. Break down your database to pin point accuracy by targeting your message to different demographic groups within your larger target audience. This will not just decrease your print runs and postage but because your message is more relevant you will increase your response rates.

2) Divide in to target markets. By dividing your audience in to groups, you can speak to each more specifically. You might tailor your message by sic code. You might offer different products to businesses falling in to different levels of number of employees or sales. You might send different offers and incentives to current customers versus your past customers.

If you don't have demographics that you can pull out of in your database, and they do really help, demographic direction is very cost-effective. Talk to us about adding different variables into your market segment that will help to increase the pointed direction you want your marketing to attack or be directed to. The tighter your direction and offer the better your return on investment (ROI) will be.

Then think about your overall push. Be it direct mail, email blast or a telemarketing campaign, if you are still printing and mailing bulk if your email mail is not pointed if your telemarketing secret is one size fits all just to economize, it might be time to rethink. Get off the merry-go-round of marketing nonsense. Today's channels no matter what you are working in from Social Media Marketing to Direct Mail can be tailor made to fit your target. Offset and digital technologies let you print on demand (POD) and/or in time (JIT) so why not use that mentality in the rest of your marketing. As you do, your marketing gets stronger, your return goes up, you get more leads and you make more money.

3) Print on demand. A recent article, Target Marketing suggested evaluating the cost-effectiveness of POD models in the following categories:

Generic documents with annual usage of less than 5,000 pieces
More complex documents with annual usage of less than 1,000 pieces
New pieces for which no shelf life or usage history has been established
Items that change often
Materials about to enter back-order status

These are simple steps, but they can have profound results. Even in case you are in the rare minority of those not looking to economize on print marketing, keeping your database up to date, segmenting and targeting your marketing messages, and moving to a real-time stock and print management model ought to be part of the best practices of every company's marketing program.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Clean database, dividing up your list to its proper demographics, then use it. Yes use it, run it hard and run it fast.

That, if nothing else is what we do best. We use what you got and do it day in day out consistently.

Now if there was a number 4 to that list that would be to be consistent. Outsource your marketing lead generation work to a company like ours and that is what you get. Day in day out consistency. We don’t get too busy. We don't  to run out on an appointment or any of the distractions that get in the way of self marketing or self prospecting so we don’t have time to do the work. We don’t get to busy to mail sort your direct mail piece and get it out. We get it done.

Then 5. We know how to use the tools and the systems that make them work. We don’t have to learn on your time and your dollar. That college kid who works for an hour? You think he knows how to work social media and SEO for business? We already know what they only dream of knowing.

So you might want to think about your next step. We put it all together with a powerful knowledge and experience base.

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Printers, Time To Do Or Die!

In my career, of some 4 decades in the printing and communication industry, I worked long hours that would cause weaker men do drop. Had the pleasure of winning an award or 2 for my work. Yet I need to ask you, that is if you’re in any area of printing, advertising or communications what the heck are you doing?

It use to be everyone was or wanted to be an art director. We use to say if we do it; the cost will be $30.00 per hour, if you watch $40.00, if you direct $50.00, and if you help $60.00. Now as if that was not bad enough everyone now owns their own computer which has some kind of graphic program on it so that designer who knows and understand how things get printed is no longer needed. Bad layout here we come. No typography needed so here come the rivers in the copy, poor character kerning, no ligatures, too much bold type and hyphenations on every other line.

It started back in the 80’s with the birth of “the Mac” as in Apple not McDonald’s but with more widespread use of window based PC’s now everyone (thinks) they can design their own brochures, create their own websites, write great copy and a hard hitting headline. Printing and the graphic industry continues to change but in the wrong direction. The owners of a small business no longer care if the design of their printed piece is of high quality, if the stock is picked out to fit the need, if the images scanned come out all pixilated. 20# thank you! They created it so they will accept what they never would have if you did if for them. Now they are running it out of their very own office copier. High end quality work?  Disappearing. And if it does make it to a printer how many times does it need to be redesigned so that the poor quality of customer supplied “art” or should we say files are made to work. And can the printer charge for this extra work? No way. Nope the file fixing charges disappear. It happened to typesetters when they became service bureaus now its the printers that are getting wacked.

Today you are earning less and working harder. It’s the truth and you know it! If you have been in the print industry as long as I have, then you know that the support staff has dwindled down to nothing. No more layout men, no more copy writers, no more proofreaders, no more NOTHING. We, you, me, your competitor are expected to know and be able to do everything at a high level. No more strippers, no more typesetters, the production schedulers, no more proofers. There is no money in the projects to have any of these specialists.  And that $20-$50 dollar an hour salaries you were able to pay out have gone too as low as $10-$15. It is no longer about working smarter it’s all about working harder and longer. To have any hope for profitability you and what staff you have managed to keep need to be multitasking your butts off because the idea of hiring any additional employees is just not going to happen. Everyone is doing the work of 4 or 5 no just people but different kinds of people and expected to not make any dumb stupid mistakes.

Shall we ever talk about the competition which is driving both your gross earnings and profits down the abyss? So what is happening? Company "A" gives a price break to get a printing job for 20% less than your company is charging. So what do you do? You go down 25% and so the cycle continues. Then there is the graphic artist who is straight out of school working in their parent’s house with the Mac that there parents bought them not even thinking about equipment break down and the need to upgrade as they work are to try to get into the industry and is willing to work for $10.00 per hour. Kiss that work goodbye. And think of the poor sales person. If you are a commissioned sales person, you just lost 30% to 40% of your commission or more if your commission is based on job profit not overall cost. There is no profit! Then the fact that your printing company might have to lower the quality of work to get any profit at all. Quality has no bearing on a job, now it is all about getting project out as cost effectively, and as efficiently as possible.

The Print Industry is dying or at least some parts of it are but it does not have to for you. It’s unfortunate but some parts of our industry are going to disappear and disappear very quickly like the typesetting industry 20 years ago in just a matter of 2-4 years. Even now look at the CD/DVD replication part of the industry. Half of what it was just 5 years ago and dying a slow painful death. We get a lot of our information online, no more books and pamphlets. Hello Nook! When is the last time you picked up a phone book to look for a telephone number? I still do but my sons and daughter hardly know what a phone book is. And 1st class mail? Email that letter! Then there is the push for a "paperless" office.

No the print industry is not going to die out completely, many once profitable companies are going completely under or companies that I thought would never consider a merger are coming together. Read anything coming out of the industry associations and although they might not say it outwardly they are worried. State wide associations are moving to regional associations to keep enough of a membership going.

So what are you gong to do?

Larson Notes & Satire:  Is there an answer? I think so. But the answer might not lie in print but a more board based idea of a Marketing and Communication company.

As I see it, the one biggest move you can be making for your company is to become that total communication company that your key accounts want. They need it and they know it and what's more if you don’t provide it they will find it from the guy down the street.

To do that you have 1 of 2 choices, You can go and hire the talent to do it yourself and I am sure that a number of you reading this will do that just that. That is the mentality of the printer and believe me I don't mean that in a bad way. We are individualists!

But there is a second choice and that is to join with a synergistic company like ours with all the talent you need who will provide it at not exposure financially to you and wrap it up in a private label service package. And that my friend is the good news!

If you want your business to be more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Time To Add Services That Work

Adding Services That Work

It use to be that all a good printing company had to do was continually invest in their people and their equipment. That was about all it took to stay competitive and increase productivity and quality. Even now companies should be making sure that they are continually investing in these important skill sets of:

Technical skills
Sales skills
Customer management skills
Purchasing skills
Negotiation skills
Social media skills

Yet as good as having all these skills sets are they are no good without the right services in place. Skills without the services are worthless. You will not be able to push the envelope, to make things work and have a trained staff in place to hit the ground running and get superior results if you can’t put everything in place and ready to roll in perfection. Customers are not going to let you learn things on their dime. Customers are not going to let you train yourself and staff with the very lifeblood of their companies marketing at stake.

The world does not have time to stop while you learn the new communication and marketing techniques.

To change for the future printing companies need, yes I said need, not think about, adding services. Now that might not sound like something you want to be doing but to achieve sales growth and market share it is not an option. It is no longer enough to just put ink on paper. To roll off the perfect printed piece and smile. To have the perfect press check as you sip a cup of coffee with your client in the customer lounge. Print companies have to sell a complete value added services. You cannot sit back and do one part of the marketing/advertising package. More now than prerecession it is do it all or die a slow painful death. As a Printing company you had better be considering what your customers need. They understand the challenges that they face and you had better start. If you can’t, don’t or won’t produce solutions to overcome their marketing challenges they will go shopping for a supplier that will.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So what’s a printing company to do?

1st you can begin by looking at some new services and try to decide what areas you can move into (with the least amount of pain). If you can’t do it alone you need to find a synergistic partner who will not steal your customers.

2nd, review your key accounts, you know the 2 or 3 that make up 60% of your companies business. The ones that if you lose your company goes out of business. As ask them what other services they would want you to be offering them in a more holistic marketing attack.

3rd review your sales message. You need to be more inclusive of the all areas of the communication process to get your customers the kind or results they need in a way they expect.

If it were my shop, I’d be looking at picking a synergistic partner with a history of blood and ink running though my veins that matches my values.

So where does that leave us? I have been around the block a few times. Been full time with my own company since 1975 as well as having grown up in the business working for my father’s company starting in 1966. Walking in to the smell of ink, the sound of the feeder grabbing each sheet of paper, the pounding of our Gordon as it die cut card stock. Yes I have a history, and what I hope is a more glorious future.

If you want your business to be more call us for an appointment.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Don't Change, Expand

No one wants to change.  Change is hard. Change is difficult. Change is scary. Changing is really one big pain in the neck for you and every one in your company.

But then so is losing 10% of your business a year. Do that long enough and your entire company is no more. I read a blog this week but some printing “expert” that he thinks 20% of printing business are going to go under this year. I say NO!

Why do I say no? Not just with some magic wand waving but because my company has a synergistic plan for you to use to white label expansion services your current key accounts need.

So let’s not talk about change, even though that is what we are talking about, let’s talk about expansion. Expansion is fun, its exciting, it inspires the imagination

Expansion will beat changing almost every day of the week. So instead of changing, let’s expand.

The process of expansion is like building a bridge. Changing might make you think of a detour on a road but expansion is and becomes a structure we are building a new road to success.  We’re expanding the means for a greater influx of goods and ideas.  We’re expanding a way for people to engage you easier, faster and more completely.

Change makes people get sweaty palms as they wonder where do I fit in.  But start to talk about expanding and they get excited. Everyone in the company gets up and moving in the same direction. Expansion is job security in an uncertain world. It’s company and market share growth.It is the possibility of a raise after a few years of nothing.

So if you want to improve your printing business and your organization, don’t put yourself and your company in a position of change but one of expansion.  Make yourself the builder and savior of your company!  Talk about how you’re going to build, grow and expand on the strengths of your company's past and a new and exciting future as you move forward.

Larson Notes & Satire:  No one has a crystal ball and can product the future. I have a guarded optimism for the United States and the World at large. I see commercial printing growing over the next 3 years at 2%-3% which will at the end still leave the industry at a -12% pre-recession level. That is not good enough for you or me!

You need to take the time and address your customer’s entire communication problems, not just print. That takes time, talent and yes money. Or does it?

That is the entire key to our white label services. We can offer you a complete behind the scenes communication and marketing system that you can sell and stay in control of.  Time yes, you still need to put in the time, but talent? We have it. Money? It is pretty much plug and play. We have your back covered. Everything is in place for you to, hitch your wagon up to.

If you are going to survive in 2013 and the next year as well you need to have a deep relationship with your key accounts. You need to more into a deeper sense of consultative and team selling.

Use us for what we can do that you don’t. We have a strategy for printers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, sign shops and other people in the graphic and creative community that takes them out of commodity selling mode.

By using us with our white label services you become more that just a printer. You move away from being asked “can you sharpen your pencil” to a real problem solver.

If you are stuck in stagnant sales growth, rising costs, price pressure maybe a little expansion is in your future for 2013.

If you want your business to be more call us for an appointment.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates\
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
|http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

What’s A Small Printing Company To Do?

The government classifies a small business as a company in the $20 million dollar range.  For a printing company that is not a very good, accurate or even fair figure. It might be the governments but it is not reality in graphics. But then the government just goes and looks at raw numbers, then crunches them down without a thought to the real world and not what makes a certain industry or company. Have these guys in Washington ever done a day’s work in their collective lives?

While the government may never come to understand the difference between small and midsize or even large you need to if you have not already done it.  The most critical difference is that different-sized businesses, in their industry need to approach working and competition in totally different ways.

Up until 2006, many small printing business owners where fat and sassy. Life was good.  They could sit back crunch off impressions and produce $3 to $5 million of revenue.  The demand WAS there.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying it wasn’t competitive but those times just don’t match the pressures and climate of today.

Today, the printing sector as a whole is in total dismay.  Technologies are pulling us in multiple directions, we are rethinking our marketing approach, our equipment purchases are directionless, as are the people we hire and the product and service we sell.

Then there is the very idea on being competitive.  And that’s where the big difference between the little guys and the bigger “little” guys becomes apparent.

If you have a big $200 million company maybe you can have a few strategists and business development on staff, people who can sit back and think about things on how the world of business works (or should work), people who can help guide a transitional paradigm shift, and there is a big paradigm shift going on for printers and related services. If you have this kind of person, these teams of experts are continuously looking for ways to streamline, refine and generate new business.

The small printing business doesn’t have that luxury.  That might be a good thing or not. I mean really, since when has a small business person been afraid of hard work. You’re on your own. It’s your life’s work on the line and all those hours you spent working? You’re out there working your butt off just to keep your doors open. Then here I come along saying you need to be putting in more time to focus on redefining your company, and plotting a course for new and strategic growth.

I see you having two options.  You can do all this plotting and positioning into a brave new world all on your own, and redefining your company by yourself.  Or, you can surround yourself with the kind of strategists (or better ones I would hope) that you’d find in a larger company.  People who can help you plot a new course.

You’re not the same as a $200 million company.  But if you want to succeed in today’s more competitive marketplace, you need to find a way to act like one.

Larson Notes & Satire:  We here at Larson & Associates have a new proposal for you.

We have taken the time and effort to put a strategy together for printers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, sign shops and other people in the graphic and creative community that takes them out of commodity selling and become a value added communication marketer for your clients and customers.

With a book of advisors to broaden your vision that can white label services that only the big guys can even start to think of for your accounts letting you become more that just a printer.

We bring
> New thoughts
> New ideas
> New perspectives
> New services
> New markets

If you are stuck in stagnant sales growth, rising costs, price pressure on margins and you think you can exist on what is expected in growth for 2013 at 2.4% do what you have always done.

But if you want more out of your business call us for an appointment.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Looking In From The Outside

It is a luxury when you can look at things from 10 miles away. You are able to see things that when you’re right on top to them, in the thick of battle, you are not able to see, the old “can’t see the forest for the trees thing.” With that distance comes the possible of a realist look. When you are removed you can “tell it like it is.” Since 70% of my business comes out of printing and the graphic field I’ll be directing this right at YOU!

> Printing has fallen 24.2% during the recession
> 2007 thru 2010 sales have stabilized but have not been sustainable with peaks and valleys, surges and stops like city traffic.
> Despite rising costs of nearly 60% prices in the industry are at or below year earlier costs.
> The NAPL expects total commercial printing to increase in 2012 for the 1st time since 2007 at about .0.05% to 1.5% but that is still at over 20% of prerecession levels. And at even 1.5% grow we are losing.

Printing and the printing business is not a pretty picture right now. Having grown up and been in and around the industry for my entire life, I’m sad, really sad about the present state of the industry.  People and friends have built up good, or what looks like good rock solid business, and in the blink of an eye, poof they are gone. Yes really it can happen that fast. Do you have 1 key account with over 25% of your business? Think about it. I have seen it in being a Typographer and then have seen it again in the CD/DVD multimedia industry. Now it is Printing Companies fighting the commodity service and online print shop battle.

It gets played out over and over, and always in the same way. Just look at your financial reports. Read the numbers. I did too late before we realized things bad things were going back in 1990. We were losing money in accounts receivable. Sales were dropping as were profit margins. Sales staff was out of control, directionless and clueless. We were looking for something to grab onto but where clueless to what that was with no real long-term direction.

You can be doing everything you can within your expertise, experience and ability but there comes a time when you need to step out of the box.

So what is the problem? For each of you it can be different and played out differently. But it is there and it is quite real.

If you stand pant and try to work your way out of this mess you will lose or at least most of you will. Why? Because it is a different world out there. Evolve with it or die. You can try to take control of what is happening but you cannot stop it. Do you feel the need to exert more control than you are now?  Adapt or die.

It is very hard for a print shop or graphic studio owner. Most of you have built your businesses from the ground up, making all decisions and running the whole show.  Some of you are 2nd or 3rd generation printers and never saw this coming.

So now ask what happens if you’re not in there, daily hands-on and running the show?  What if your people screw up?  Your company, your livelihood, your family’s livelihood, your employees’ livelihood – are all on the line.

Times have indeed changed and now this kind of action might in reality be holding you and your business back.

Do you really know what’s best in today’s “global economy?  Are you stuck in the thought pattern that you know what is right, are you shutting out other possibilities and other great opportunities?

You’re in “control-mode” at the moment. I did it 22 years ago and I’ll bet you are in the same mind set as I was.

Right now in this period of fast change / high stress, your peripheral vision literally disappears.  You lose sight of quite a bit of the world around you, and you have trouble remembering exactly what is happening. Maybe you’re not this bad, but I suspect that your problem-solving ability has shrunk as your open mindless to new ideas.

Once you let go a bigger wider picture of what you and your company can become starts to evolve.

The more you push the farther away you get pushed away.

If you are able to become receptive to this new world we have in front of us and see the potential in it as to what you can do with what you now have, you will be amazed.

I feel bad for printers and graphic artists.  I invite you to take a step back and look at some of our solutions to the way we see the reality of printing, communication and advertising.  I hope you will start to understand that you are welcome to join us in a printer and graphic friendly world, one where the Larson team will support you at every turn.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Yes I feel your pain. I have been there. I have lived it. I (really) don’t want you to go through it.

2012 found me building a special alliance of a group of advisors to broadening the scope of a printing company. This team is bringing to the table new thoughts, new ideas, new perspectives and new markets to some of my current clients and the graphic community at large.  This wave of potential energy we have put together is something you need to hear about. There is an exciting buzz of calmness. There are areas I am not an expert, but in the power of the team, we are.  I let them do their thing using to their expertise so I can excel better in mine. It gives me the kind of flexibility I need to take a step back.

Want to know more? Call us for an appointment.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.