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Why Print Marketing Still Works for Business Growth

By: Stone Glass 9/1/2021

When building a marketing strategy making sure that your business is covering all of its bases is crucial to success.  And while some may think that because of the prevalence of the internet in our modern lives that digital marketing is the only way to reach potential customers, and while no one can deny the importance of digital marketing to success, print marketing is still a viable and far reaching strategy for businesses to remember.


Print Is Physical

One of the most successful aspects of print marketing is that it is a physical object that your customers can hold in their hands.  When you pick something up and look at it, it is more easily stored in the memory than something that is seen in a fleeting moment on a computer screen.  When it comes to something like direct mail the fact that a customer can hold the mailer in their hand creates an emotional connection, and since everyone likes receiving a great looking postcard it's very likely to be seen and looked at quickly when being pulled out of the mailbox.  Physical objects also obviously last much longer than a simple email or ad on social media.  It is possible that your potential customer will set down your postcard or flyer and read it much later on which leaves the possibility for a long impact.

Print Can Be Personalized

Personalizing an offer to a customer is a great way to ensure that they see and read your print marketing material.  Through a process called variable data printing print marketing can be customized to have unique names, offers or more on each individual piece.  Research has shown that people are more likely to read something that has their name on it, rather than a generic identifier, and it goes without saying that someone being more likely to read your marketing materials is someone who is more likely to be converted into a customer.
Print Marketing may be a more traditional form of business marketing, but traditional doesn't mean that it's outdated.  Using print marketing is key to any business's marketing strategy, and in combination with digital marketing methods will lead to success as they both compliment each other to form a total package.  Choosing a reliable print marketing company will also be important, as the best will handle everything from graphic design, to labeling and shipping.


How to Find a Kitting & Fulfillment Partner for Your Business

By: Stone Glass 6/28/2021

In general, proper kitting and fulfillment is too big an undertaking for a business to tackle on its own, especially small and medium-sized businesses. One misstep can result in disaster: inventory lost, unhappy customers, money down the drain. With so many moving parts and high stakes, a professional service is your best bet to protect your business and your bottom line.

 

A kitting & fulfillment company's job is to protect your peace of mind and your profits. They will handle the process from start to finish, bundling and packaging products, managing inventory, fulfilling orders, etc. They provide a clean, safe, secure place for all your components, then make sure the final product reaches your clients on time and looks great when it arrives.

 

They can work with you to create unique unboxing experiences for your customers, featuring personalized branded items and packaging. That includes subscription boxes, which are kitted, packed and shipped in-house at full-service kitting and fulfillment companies.  You should look for a company that is equipped to handle any inventory volume and a wide range of products and order types.

When it comes to storage, you’ll only pay for the warehouse space you use.  Looking for a company that provides Shopify Ecommerce Warehousing will also be extremely important for any business who is primarily making their sales online via Shopify or other shop hosting sites.  All storage solutions are designed to make inventory and fulfillment processes completely seamless, and include a team of experts who keep your inventory ready for delivery at all times.

Inventory tracking is also an extremely important service to look for when selecting your Kitting & Fulfillment company.  Knowing exactly what you have and where it is in transit is extremely crucial to building confidence with customers, as they'll know that you are always on top of their orders and treating them with the respect that they deserve.  This will also prevent you from ever overselling a product because you will have properly tracked the amount that your kitting company has to send out.

 

While Kitting & Fulfillment can seem overwhelming when first starting your business, or while your business is growing very quickly.  Finding the proper partner in the field will help you to succeed greatly while also taking the pressure of warehousing and shipping orders off of you to help you focus on other important aspects of running your business.

 

 

Direct Mail Marketing for Businesses

By: Stone Glass 5/27/2021

Direct Mail Marketing is a type of marketing that is delivered directly to a prospect either through the United States Postal Service or any other delivery service.  A colorful, creative piece of direct mail is a great way to catch a potential customer's eye and can be a fantastic way to drive business.


While most think of today's business world as mostly digital, when done correctly direct mail is a fantastic way to reach a whole different group of prospects.

 

 

What is Direct Mail Marketing?

Any physical mailer (whether that is a postcard, flyer, coupon book, etc.) that you send to customers to try to get them to patronize your business can be considered direct mail.
The most important things to include on any potential piece of direct mail is something to identify your business, a logo works great, a call to action and a way for customers to reach you with any questions.  Other than these you can be as creative or minimal as you wish, anything that you feel will help your business to stand out to customers when seeing your mailer.

How Does Direct Mailing Work?

It is Memorable

Getting a letter in the mail gives the person who received it the positive feelings associated with receiving a letter from a family member or friend in the mail.  And adding a personalized touch to your direct mailing like a handwritten signature can evoke theses feelings even more.  Small touches can make your mailer even more memorable, and a beautiful design will help to stand out from the crowd as well.

It is Interactive

Because your potential customers are actually physically handling your piece when going through their mail, there is no chance that your message can get lost in a crowded email inbox or sent to a spam folder.  Including a promotional offer such as a coupon or exclusive sales that require engagement with the mailer makes them even more memorable and makes it much more likely that your prospect will keep and engage with them.

Better Response Rate

Because of the physical nature of direct mail postcards and other mailers, they become much more memorable to customers which makes them more likely to engage with your brand.  In fact recent studies have shown that direct mailers can get as much as 30x the amount of response as the main form of digital marketing through direct email marketing.

It Can Have a Wider Reach

If your target demographic is less likely to use the internet, direct mail marketing is actually the best way to reach these types of customers.  While digital ads would have missed them entirely, you are sending them a memorable, informative piece of mail that will be seen the minute the person goes to their mailbox.
Though direct mail marketing is one of the oldest forms of advertising to potential customers, it is still one of the most effective ways for businesses to communicate with the people in their area.  It is also a fantastic way to stand out from the competition, and with a well thought out and executed direct mail campaign is one of the best ways to shake up your company's marketing efforts.

 

How to Start A Business Online

By: Stone Glass 4/6/2021

While starting an online business may seem like a daunting task, there are proven steps that one can take to have the best chance of success.  And while the internet has made it more easy to start a business for everyone, doesn't mean that you can just rush in without a solid plan.

The steps below should provide you with a good footing to begin your online business, and while they don't have to be completed in any particular order, they are all important on your path to success.

1. Decide on a Product

While this step might seem obvious, it's important to not only know what you want to provide to customers, but also if that product or service will make for a viable business.  Doing research on the market before jumping in head first is crucial to making sure that you are going to be successful long-term.  Even with a completely flawless business plan, if your product or service has no market, your business will fail.

2. Decide on a Business Plan

After deciding on your product and the viability of it, it's time to build your business plan.  A business plan will fully determine your businesses' purpose and product, build your business model and identify your target market.  This is also the perfect time to test out your business idea by talking to industry professionals, other entrepreneurs and potential customers to get a more accurate picture on the future success of your business.

3. Decide on a Name

This step might seem as obvious as the product you are going to sell, but there is more to think of when coming up with a name for your business than it may seem on the surface.  Since this business will primarily be online, you will need to check if the name is available to be used as a:
If your name isn't available on all of these channels, then it is either time to decide on another name that will be available, or to decide on different versions of that name.

4. Build Your Website

It is important to remember that for an online-only business, the website is as important as the storefront is to physical businesses.  And the look and feel of a website should have the same amount of care put into it as your would to a building that you were going to lease to run a business from.
When looking to build your website, there are many different options.  There are services available to help you make your own site, but for many online businesses hiring an experienced web development company to help will make much more business sense.

5. Market Your Business Pre-Launch

Before launching your website, it is important to promote your new business and the products and services that it will be providing to customers.  It is also important to remember to be slowly building anticipation for a future launch date during each of the above steps as well, so that when the pre-launch phase comes you have as many future customers excited about your store as possible.
Building your business plan will dictate the best way for you to promote your business, as well as your promotion budget, and will differ for each company.  Some great ideas that have worked for other businesses include, connecting to guests through paid social media posts, paid search on search engines or through email marketing.

6. Launch!

Even though you won't be having a traditional physical store-opening, launching your website and allowing guests to shop for your products is still an exciting time for a business!  Make sure that you send out an announcement to the people you have connected with through your pre-launch marketing, and continue to promote your business to other future clients using the same techniques you did to gain traction before you launched.

After launching the work is just beginning, but by using the above steps you will have a solid foundation for your new online business that you can use to guide you to success for many years to come!

The Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

By: Stone Glass 4/5/2021

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. The more relevant your website becomes to a search query, the more your site would come up when a user of a search engine is looking for certain keywords.  By effectively using SEO, a website can continue to rise in the search engine rankings and continue to grow it's relevancy.

Hence SEO is very necessary to an online business.  But what exactly is the impact of a SEO strategy on your site?

Generation of Traffic

The most important benefit of SEO is that you can generate traffic to your site.  Not just any traffic but targeted traffic by people actively searching for your keywords.  These are not random surfers, these are people who are actively searching for a product or service and a place to buy it.  The higher up the list of a search your website is, the higher chance that someone searching for your product will choose your site to buy it.

Since over 90% of traffic to a given search term is focused on the first page of search results, it goes without saying that the higher your site ranks for a given term the better.

SEO Improves User Experience

While trying to make your site easier for search engines to navigate, you will also be making your site easier for visitors to navigate as well.  A very crucial part of an SEO strategy is rearranging a site and it's links to make pages within the website easier to find.  This has an added benefit of not only making the site easy for search engines to read, but for potential customers and other visitors to easily find any information they are looking for on your site.

Reduced Cost of Promotion

With the greater increase in traffic that successful SEO can bring, the amount of active promotion you will need to spend money on is reduced.  So once you have created a page that search engines rate highly, the page will continue to bring in visitors for a long time to come.  While doing research and writing content for SEO may take time if you choose to do it yourself, or an investment if you hire a digital marketing agency, your very valuable spot on the search engine rankings can never be bought out from under you by a competitor.

A Long-Term Success Strategy

While it's always great to have SEO strategies on any website, if they aren't being evaluated and updated over time they will reach a point where they are no longer as effective as they once were.  So being proactive and watching for any major changes in the Google algorithm or your page ranking is crucial to maintaining your spot and not being overtaken by your competitors.  A successful SEO strategy will have an impact that can last for several years, and continuing to commit to SEO best practices will increase that impact.

 

All brands and companies can benefit from implementing an effective SEO strategy.  It is critical for any business to maintain their ranking on search engines to keep ahead of competitors, and to find the customers that are actively searching for their products.