Beyond the Press: Marketing Solutions for Printers

welcome everybody I’ll say it a few times um we are super excited to have this webinar we’ve got a lot of

marketing brain power here and uh I’m G to give it a couple seconds and sort of stretch out my intro till we uh fill the

room up we had a lot of excitement the last 24 48 hours for this

um I think it’s a great panel and I can’t wait to introduce you but I’ll start with myself and I’m going to let

the other guys introduce themselves all right because nobody can introduce their own expertness better than themselves so I’m

Brad Kugler a co-founder and CEO of direct mail 2.0 we are marketing automation platform that Services the

direct mail industry uh basically we have a suite of digital technologies

that lifts the effectiveness of direct mail usually by about 50% or more we’ve

been doing this for about seven years and one of the things we love to do is kind of keep ourselves on The Cutting

Edge of any marketing Tech it doesn’t to be digital Tech but if somebody’s got something that works or they’ve found

successful I want to bring it to not just our customers our prospects but I like to learn and I hope you guys do too

so without further Ado I first want to thank our four panelists here and I’m G

to let them each introduce themselves I’m G to start with Joanne who some of you probably know Joanne give us your 30

seconds thank you Brad um I will take that to heart H glad to see everybody here thank you for inviting me um I am

Joanne Gore I’m the president of Joan Gore Communications we are a fullservice B2B virtual agency I like to say we feed

the entire food chain of the print industry from the manufacturers all the way down to the print service providers

will help you stretch your marketing dollars pinpoint your quickest time to money attract a new generation of

business and go from cold calling to warm conversations and at the end of the

day I am a B2B marketer who’s passionate about print and I love sharing the power to anybody

who will listen and coming to us from Canada right yes I am just north of the

city of Toronto where it is a beautifully gray hazy rainy typical

April day and you speak pretty fluent French from what I recall don’t you well

unless you’re French and can recognize it’s not quite as fluent but I I can understand French

um yes I’m technically fluent but you know it’s it’s gotten a little rusty over the years all right well hopefully

uh we won’t have the need to speak any french here because I speak nothing well then I then I can wow your

socks off all right Alyssa tell us about who you are and what you do yes I’m so

excited to be here I’m excited that for everyone that’s on the call uh Alyssa Summers I’m the CEO of print base which

is a digital marketing platform made specifically for the print industry so really the ultimate goal is to help

printers get leads in sales there’s a platform with a ton of assets and courses teaching you how to Market

yourself online give you the tools to do it um in addition to that we also have a service where we can help you do it um

without you having to lift a finger so um kind of The Best of Both Worlds we’ve kind of paired do it- yourself with uh

doing it for you um and so we’re just really hoping to help printers Market themselves more and more every day and

uh I’ve been in the space for over eight years in the industry and I love it I’m just really excited to be here with all

of you to talk more about marketing thank you listen where where did you say you’re hailing from right now I’m in

Iowa oh wow s okay great all right I’m in Florida in case I didn’t mention it

um next up Hans who I I’ve actually known for gosh I’m gonna say almost 40

years he is a wellestablished technocrat and is is one of the more brilliant guys

that I’ve come across and just is one of these guys that just get get into something and just figures it out and uh

I think he has an amazing story here and I wanted him to share what he has learned over the years um Hans take it

away yeah Brad thanks for having me here and yes you just made me feel a little bit older but I’m just gonna let that go

uh so um yeah so I um I’m a marketing consultant um I have a very specific uh

problem I solve which is that most business owners struggle to communicate clearly about what they do uh I’m I’m a

certified story brand guide uh to solve that problem which means that I take the

seven uh engag The Seven Elements of every engaging story whether it’s a movie or a book and I work them into

your business message so that all of the noise gets Stripped Away and what’s left is just signal you know it’s just

exactly you know who you are who you serve the problem that you solve for that customer um and you know how you do

that and it’s just a very clear methodology for for write really writing

words that help your business grow that’s kind of the bottom line so we we we’ve known about this for thousands of

years you know this is how we’ve told stories forever and for some reason when it comes to business we all just forget

about it and we start getting real clever and using like whizbang words and acronyms and stuff like that so so my

purpose is just to make any marketing message Crystal Clear hopefully I made my marketing message Crystal Clear just

there but uh we’ll have a chance to talk Tom in a little bit thanks excellent thank you Hans and last but

not least we have Alysa or I’m sorry Jules I’m sorry we already did Alysa where are you located first and then

tell us your marketing story you bet so Jules vanan s i hail from the uh Great

Pacific Northwest in uh Portland Oregon I uh am the inspirational officer and

partner in bubble and hatch we’re Communications firm that help your message pop and deliver my business

partner Jill and I have been in the paper print packaging and Association

Industries for many years um and we uh are here to help print service providers

and all of the ancillary companies around paper oems nonprofits to be able

to tell their story and also remind them that their story matters and that they

need to listen and curate and then deliver uh also use the

Technologies they have um often times again diving way into digital because

that’s where everyone is but we forget especially a lot of the people on this call today who are male 2.0 users use

that technology to tell your own story what a great case study so um that’s

what we’re here to do we’re here to inspire we’re here to bring our experience and get people to uh listen

and think a little differently thank you very much juules so again

thank you to the panel a couple housekeeping notes we are recording the session so it will be available I know

we get a lot of requests in the chat so we can reduce some of that traffic I’m producing myself today so I will manage

the chat I will interject your questions as we go through the questions that I

have already prepared for this team and and I just want to say one of one of the benefits of having a diverse group group

of experts here is that you get multiple viewpoints and you know something may resonate with somebody but not somebody

else and I guarantee with this group here you’re going to find something you can take away at least that’s my hope

here is something here will help you improve what you’re doing in your business to Market it better and

hopefully grow so that being said to kick off our conversation what I wanted to do was open it with a couple of uh

bullet points to kind of stimulate the conversation here so hopefully you can

see the slide these are things I I I picked up actually this morning from uh

Google Gemini I’m a big believer I love these AI tools uh I think it’s the

definitely the next generation of search but here here’s here’s the general

consensus of these stats and I won’t necessarily read each one of them to you but the point is in marketing

anything there are a lot of messages out there all right every single person in the United States is getting between 4

and 10,000 marketing messages a day all right so I don’t know about you but I

get way more than the 121 emails there my count goes about 350 honestly I’ll be

of which maybe 10 to 15% that I actually have to take some action on the rest are

basically marketing messages you know uh so I’m getting 8 to 10,000 ads I’m

getting two to 300 marketing messages online you know I’m bombarded just like

the rest of you how does one cut through that all right and I’m not here to

preach Direct Mail as I think I believe in it mainly because you go to that

mailbox of yours and there’s about three pieces per day for most people in there all right you’re not getting a 100

emails or 100 pieces of mail in your mailbox you have three so look at the competition for the eyeballs or the

attention that mailbox is almost like an Undiscovered

Bastion of marketing that people don’t rely on or they don’t even think about now we’ve all heard the objections it’s

not cheap it’s expensive but it delivers so most of the people on here have

something to do with prints so they’re already Believers in this but it’s important that we disseminate that

outside of this group so that others know that as well so getting back to the

Omni Channel or all the different marketing things you can do you have to do something to rise above the noise so

I’m hoping with this esteem group here that over the next 40 minutes or so

they’re going to come up with some ideas some clarity some action items that you

can do to rise above that noise so the first thing I’m G to do is I’m gonna pose this first question to the entire

group and I’ll I’ll give each one of them you know a minute hopefully or less to sort of respond to this so everybody

sort of feels that print is a legacy business or print is is dead it’s old school everything is digital you know

trees and environment it’s all bad why or how would somebody who’s in the print

business or doing some kind of ink on paper advertising what can they do to

Rise Above This and convince people that they should be doing this despite the

current wave of Technology saying it’s not the thing to do all right and since

uh Jules spoke last I’ll let her speak first to the Point awesome hey thanks so

I heard a couple things out of that question uh first of all I think it’s really important to utilize as I said

before the technology you have you’re trying to promote and sell your capabilities your services your

technology use it use it in your marketing make sure that you are telling your story in multiple places as we talk

about Omni Channel you need to get it out there you need to seminate that information

um and one of the ways you can do that um again in telling a sustainability

story if that’s a pushback I happen to also be the um executive director of two sides North America which advocates for

paper print paper based packaging and mail and um use the stats tell the story

about print and paper and use some of the research that we have and parlay

that into what you’re doing doing in your own location to exemplify the

environmental benefit there’s a lot of um bad press That’s not um it’s not

research backed a lot of the digital technology which we all have and we all love and we’re not going to get rid of

is um not great for the environment so elevate your own story and make sure

you’re telling it everywhere on your website in your social media and in that direct mail piece if that’s what your

clients are looking for then tell them that very good thank you Joanne how do

people get their print business on the crest of the marketing wave I like that

that sounded good didn’t it yeah it did it did um so I’m gonna sort of piggy

back on to a bit of what juel said and and really for us what we like to help

our our clients and the people that I speak to really understand who is is who are you going after first and foremost

do you know what the DNA is of an ideal lead because otherwise I’ve said it once

I’ll say it a million times if you don’t know who you help if you don’t know how you help and if you don’t know why it

matters then you’re wasting your marketing dollars you’re wasting your resources you’re wasting your time

because you’re never going to know what’s right and what’s wrong so first and foremost you need to be able to answer those questions then from there I

agree you need to sort of eat your own pudding you need to use Direct Mail you

need to be have an open house you can do lunch and learns you can create content

that helps your buyer make print buying decisions the bottom line is in order to

sell more print in my opinion you actually have to stop selling print and you actually have to start selling and

sharing the experiences that happen when you use print and to H hans’s point it’s

not we’re not selling anymore we’re telling stories that’s what people will remember long after that sales pitch is

gone and the only way to differentiate yourself I’m also a firm believer in social media and the power of LinkedIn

to especially if you are a B2B business if you’re in software um or if you’re trying to go after some of those L

larger Enterprise accounts and really um amping up your own personal profile

being seen as the subject matter expert for whatever it is your business um um

whatever problem you’re solving because again as we all know it’s hard enough to

scroll through the digital noise add to that the fact that nobody really wants to talk to a salesperson until they have

to talk to a salesperson if they can do it themselves and get all the way from beginning to end they will so in order

to be able to insert yourself into the conversation you need to be where they

are and whether it’s LinkedIn whether it’s Instagram Facebook T it doesn’t matter it all comes back to knowing who

do you help how do you help and why does it matter thank you I I I’ve always been a

Believer and you know start listening and stop selling sometimes it’s key and

and because your message sort of uh is complimentary to I know what Hans is going to say I’ll let him go next Hans

you want to take from there on that yeah I’ve just passed you the Baton yeah exactly yeah I’ll try and catch it while

I’m running um so uh well yeah just to play off a little bit on what both Jules and Joanne said I mean um knowing and

forgive me in advance if I cross who said what uh in which case but um but

you know from my point of view the number one thing that I see small business small mediumsized business

owners kind of skip over is the definition of their customer right so

most marketers have heard these terms like Avatar and ideal customer profile and so forth but but what is that really

it’s it’s really a definition it’s a box you’re putting around uh characteristics

right and they’re usually demographic like gender you know um location and

stuff like that but there also should be psychographic right which really means what influences them what do they like

to talk about what do they do with their free time you know whatever you can possibly learn um by usually just aiming

at your most of you probably already have customers right so you go back through and just voraciously try and put

a box around these people and then see who who are in common boxes you know if that makes sense and that is such an

important thing to do but it’s a lot of work it’s rolling up sleeves and really

getting into the mud and you know that’s why I think a lot of business owners kind of skip it because it is hard but

it pays off and Spades and and you know it’s a little bit like that old you know

finding a needle on a Hy stack boy you’ll never find the needle if you don’t know what a needle looks like and

that’s what we’re talking about here we’re talking about like who exactly are you going after to the degree that you

can figure that out and sometimes you just have to kind of like you know at first and guess but you have to

continuously improve on that profile and you should literally have a piece of paper on the wall that has everything

you’ve learned about your ideal customer give her give him or her a name find a picture you know uh that represents more

or less you know as close as you can and and then just put it front and center and keep keep updating that and I think

that the reason um that might seem like I went a little bit off on a tangent but the reason that this is important to this

question is because um when you speak to

that profile you inv invite that profile in

and that’s how you stand out you know um nothing is less or or more mundane or

less um unique uh and and and um less um you

know the opposite of noisy right uh than not knowing who you’re speaking to because you just won’t be calling that

person out as soon as you speak the way they like to be spoken to they will appear to you right it’s it’s it’s

pretty magical so that’s one way to just really stick out is to speak to your people the way they want to be spoken to

and to do that you have to really get this profile going and dial it in so awesome awesome all right so Alyssa you

get to wrap it up and put a bow on it and we’ll move on oh I I love that I’m so honored uh I think this is kind of a

perfect wrapup because we’re talking about all the the the digital channels and all the noise that’s out there and

um since we work a lot in the digital marketing side of things um I think the

the best way to do it is to join it in a way so you take everything that um everyone was talking about here on

messaging and getting to know your customer and you you’re you’re visible online you’re posting yourself to social

um Joanne was talking about LinkedIn and using that as a personal profile using your personal profile to do that but you

have to Market your business as well and so we’ve seen over the years a lot of companies don’t aren’t even active on

social and even if it’s just as simple as a post a week that’s um talking about

the process the printing process or talking about behind the scenes the fun company work the um case study success

stories that kind of thing just being visible uh is going to help you sell print so if you if if you can’t beat

them join them it’s kind of where where I’m how I’m gonna tie this this section up good good well then we’re gonna start

with you on the next question here and and I want to kind of limit this to one specific thing if you guys maybe you’ll

come up with the same thing it’s okay we’ll we’ll let a Lista start what’s the number one mistake print companies or

actually it doesn’t matter any company makes when they start marketing what do you think is the number one thing that

puts them on the road to either a failure or a lack of

results I will first answer that with a throwaway answer which is um not

actually starting I was speaking to that with social but um a more specific

mistake or common issue that we see is a lot of companies um trying to over

complicate maybe the messaging um a lot of our Focus um when we work with um

companies and the content that we’re putting out is focused on problem solution so um kind of like Hans was

talking about understanding what how to communicate with them uh you know the issues that they’re facing and you are

the solution to that so if if H how do you how do you do it you start and you

speak to exactly what they’re experiencing and how you solve that and they’re going to come talking to you I

think that’s great it’s great Jules you want to be next up on that same question what is the number one mistake you see

companies make when they start to Market oh you’re on mute you’re on

mute there we go there I am yes that they’re not consistent again to Alyssa’s

point that they kind of fits and starts the worst thing is we all research when

we go to buy right so we’re intrigued with something we go to research we go on your social and you haven’t been

there for nine months um you know that tells me that maybe you’re not engaged

you’re not using technology at the level that it should be used and I’m going to question whether or not you’re going to

be able to be a good partner for me as a buyer and so um definitely that

consistency and that consistency of a message across board not having that on your website not having on your mail not

having that um on your social that’s the biggest mistake agree 100% Joanne what

have you got on that point and don’t forget you’re muted too uh what are the

number one mistakes you see guys make when they start to Market um I I at the end of the day it’s

all going to come back to the DNA of a lead you need to know who are you

targeting what message resonates with them and how are you going to get them to where you want them to go next so it

really is what how do you want them to behave how do you want them to feel when they encounter your brand when they

encounter your message is it the same across every platform and again I’m

probably going to sound like a broken record by the end of this but you truly truly need to be able to answer those

questions who do you help how do you help why does it matter and you can find that out easily by going through your

CRM by understanding where you’re making the most amount of money in the Le least amount of time from the most amount of

people and then figure out how did we do that can we replicate it to me that’s

the first step towards positive marketing look at what worked try and replicate it if you can keep replicating

it if you can’t figure out what’s wrong tweak it and then go try again it’s

marketing is all about trial and error and honestly as a marketer and most people shudder at the thought but

failing is probably the best thing that can happen because that’s when we really refine and tweak and get better if we’re

constantly hitting home runs at some point we’re going to burn out so you you always need to be

challenged thank you I I couldn’t agree more Hans you got uh something to say here too uh yeah I got a couple things

um so first of all totally agree with what Alyssa was saying um uh you know the

problem um in in any story the hook is the problem right but whose

problem a lot of times as business owners we get kind of caught up in our own problems and because we’re living a story too right but the number one thing

you can forget is that the hero of the story that you’re involved in is the

customer right like if it’s Star Wars it’s Luke Skywalker right and Luke Skywalker has a problem it’s Darth Vader

because Darth Vader’s killing everybody well um so the hero needs a little help

though so the hero of that story we’ll just stick with Luke for a second then I’ll bring it back he’s weak if you

remember the beginning of Star Wars and I apologize if you’re one of the three people on Earth who haven’t seen that

story but but um you know and there are some people out there by the way it’s funny but um but anyway uh he’s weak

Luke is actually weak in the beginning of the story and the reason you watch that whole story is because you get to

see him transform into Super you know badass Jedi right so um so and the

reason he can transform is because he has a guide he has Obi-Wan Kenobi right that helps him go from weak to strong

well I got to tell you this when I tell people this I I me talk to a lot of business owners and I ask them I go to

full stop and I say who’s the hero of your business story what do you think

80% of those people say they go I think I am you know and why because they do

heroic things for their customer you know always Pat them on the back for that that’s awesome right but the truth is there you have they have to

shift they aren’t the hero the customer is always the hero because the customer is always the one with the problem right

they’re the one with the Darth Vader and what are they asking they’re asking are you the guide I’m looking for are you

the are you the person that’s going to help me transform into a badass in whatever that context is right so so all

that to say that the number one mistake I see business owners make 80% of the time is they think they’re the hero and

how does that show up they say things like we’re amazing we just won an award we’re so great we’re the best we’re top

blah blah blah blah blah nobody cares nobody cares nobody cares right the customer doesn’t really care the customer has a Darth Vader on his neck

and he’s like how do I get this thing off it’s sucking my will to live right so that’s and your job the good news is

dear printer and every business out there is you get to be Obi-Wan Kenobi

right you get to be the guide that looking for and how do you do that I’ll just wrap it up with these two points by

showing empathy and Authority those are the two things that make a guide positioned as a guy when Obi-Wan showed

up you saw the authority he was just like cool as a cucumber like Darth Vader please you know uh you know so and then

you put your arm around that customer hero with a problem and you say brother or sister I’ve got you back we’re gonna

solve this together I know how to do this I’ve done it before so so that’s really just remember customer is the

hero customer is the hero talk to them like that empathy and authority and you’ll be golden brilliant such great

advice and you guys did such a good job I feel like I want to comment on this question myself if you don’t mind so you

know I I’ve been doing this kind of stuff for a few years now and and I’ve noticed something repeatedly in dealing

in the marketing world is everyone has had failures on

marketing everybody has wasted money thinking that they’re going to hit it out the park and it falls flat on their

face it’s happened to me more times than I care to admit the biggest thing that

you have to do is persist all right you you have to test different things that

means fail fast and fail often which is what Joanne said you can’t sit there and

be I’m afraid to spend this money because I might lose it well guess what you probably will but you know what make

some more and try something else especially when it comes to print marketing you know you’ve got to keep

trying so for everyone out there that has had one two 20 a 100 losses in

marketing efforts and lost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars keep going all right and I’m not

trying to do this to suck money out of you I don’t care where you spend it just keep marketing all right that’s my two

sets so we’ll move on from that to the next question here um what objectives

are her I’m sorry objections are heard most often when you implore companies to

Market themselves and how do you overcome that so I know everybody’s gonna say money money money money money

we all know that that’s an objection it’s very expensive you can comment on that if you like but um I’m gonna I’m

gonna go with Jules on this how do you what objections have you heard to

marketing and how do you get your clients or customers to overcome them so

to Market effectively as we’ve talked about buyer personas and being able to tell your story um not having data is a

big deal and it’s like well we don’t have a good CRM our database is the accounting staff that’s who we email

with the salespeople own all the other data so um that’s a huge one it’s like

you know we’d like to create a funnel for you we’d like to go out and create social you know communities on your

platform but we need to know who your your companies are who the individuals are

that you’re working with so we can start engagement and a lot of companies are like how do I get going on that but

they’re very much selling personalized direct mail and

other marketing materials that are datadriven right and so that is one of

the biggest things it’s like that’s an overwhelming task for them that is not in their comfort zone to create crms to

start looking at tagging some of their clients by industry by

geography um to your point again trying to identify who those are step and

repeat and build on that data is really queen I’m going to say instead of King

and um that seems to be a real um that seems to be like it’s hard to get

started so and and we try to step in and support that and build those for those

clients if we can but again they have to be able to pull that data so perfect thank you Jules

Alyssa what objections have you heard to getting your clients to Market and how have you overcome

them uh the biggest one we hear is where to start um especially some of the

smaller companies that don’t have the Big Marketing budgets or maybe don’t even have like a marketing a designated

marketing team or person in house so they’re they have no idea where to start

um and a lot of it can be overwhelming especially if you get too heavy into a lot of the technical marketing elements

like SEO and um that type of thing so uh how we overcome it is simply say start

somewhere and usually that is social I know I already talked about social um or email marketing there’s you you had

started the um presentation off by saying how many emails you get but that’s a really easy budget friendly

place to start is just by marketing yourself to your existing customers trying to U maybe sell them on a new

product you have or a new service you’re offering um and you could be doing the same thing on social but um almost 95%

of the time we get the question is I have no idea where to start um so we say

start somewhere in a really easy place is um social media thank you I actually want to take one step deeper you’re

you’re obviously Well everybody’s a big proponent of social um let me quantify

or qualify a deeper look at that question of social most everybody that’s on here is a B2B marketer print

companies or marketing other companies uh you know if it’s a pure B2B busines

to business play that’s a different animal on social how does one do that

effectively and and I’ll let you answer that Alyssa since you’ve been carrying the flag for social how do you

differentiate B2B social versus B Toc social um I think a lot of it is kind of

what uh we were speaking to earlier is um the content the messaging you’re putting out which is problem solution

because um cons consumers have a problem they have a need they have a want they have a

desire um but it usually isn’t as deeply rooted like a like another business a business owner may have um so you really

have to speak to that problem solution so I think the part first part is messaging and the second part is um how

you’re utilizing social um Joanne was talking about LinkedIn um there’s LinkedIn ads is a really really really

powerful place to be and I know that that kind of goes against the money as aspect of this um because it’s it it’s

ad dollars but um you can get really really specific in who you’re getting in front of if you’re running LinkedIn ads

you can Target Industries and job titles and that kind of stuff so um I’m not going to go all I’m not going to geek

out on the digital ad side of things here I’ll save every one of that but um that is really really powerful link

LinkedIn ads is really powerful for B2B so specifically the print industry because you can get in front of those exact people fair enough fair enough

Joan are you wanting to com M on on this thing about overcoming marketing objections I I see you chomping at the

bit how could you tell um so I agree yes cost is always going to be a factor I I

try not to even use the word cost I change I use the word investment because

it is an investment in the success of your of uh your company time is a big

one especially we work with a lot of companies that either have no marketing department or maybe it’s one person

wearing 27 hats and I’ve sat in that chair and been that one person so I can

relate really well and very quickly understand okay here’s what you’re struggling with let’s take it off your

plate Let’s help you but at the end of the day I think the Crux of it truly is

fear and for a lot of printers specifically they just don’t understand

marketing today they they they understand um print advertising they

understand picking up the phone they understand you know cold calling and and and sort of the sales aspect of it but

when it comes to the marketing it’s it’s they don’t know and and Alyssa you said they don’t know where to start they

don’t know what they don’t know and fear is what’s holding them back and because it’s fear they don’t know to admit it so

they’ll come up with every argument that they can throw into the mix but let’s face it if they’re going to in invest

six figures into a press then they should be able to invest four figures into marketing so that that’s just sort

of the ground level but again Alyssa you said it Hans you said it I think Jules

you said it it all starts with messaging and what we really try and do is say okay how can we help you be efficient

and effective start with that Playbook what are the problems and solutions who are

your ideal audiences what are the messages when you have that messaging Playbook then every single person in the

company can use it the way they need to if you’re onboarding new staff if you’re

hiring new salespeople if you’re creating presentations if you’re replying to rfps you don’t have people

running around saying oh I need to say it in a hundred words or oh no I need it in 25 words like just stop like too many

people are wasting valuable time and invest in a solid messaging

Playbook or brand BR Playbook or whatever you need to get running quickly and then learn how to use it learn how

to create Evergreen content for social media learn how to take that Playbook and turn it into blogs or ebooks or

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that fear starts to go away and you said it exactly Hans we’re here to help you

we’re here to show you how to do it we can do it for you or we can do it with

you but the goal is to just not to quote Nike just do it just do it

analysa I’ll give you the last word on this one yeah I mean it’s going to be hard to uh to add to what the ladies

just covered because they’re all hitting the nail right on the head but so I think I’m gonna go back to something you said Brad because I have some really

strong thoughts about this which is the number one objection I run into probably aside from cost is is there is failure

or like um uh you know uh you’re the fourth marketing person blah blah blah

right implying that you know this probably won’t work too or whatever you

know I can’t quite get into their head on it but but um something you said I think is I have a little acronym for it

which is um um HTR it’s h hypothesize test repeat right and it’s just

something I tell myself which is like what do you think’s going to work that’s the hypothesis thing right like um which

might actually be five different images for the same ad in LinkedIn let’s say

right same words different images or sometimes it’s the same image different words right and you’re just spending

five bucks a day you know just gonna see what what do they click on because there’s no accounting for human you know

stuff right like we’re all gonna we all make weird choices so you just throw it out there um and I’m GNA tell you a

funny story about this in a second but and then you just um you know uh try it

out and you get clicks great double down on the one that got the most clicks keep going until it Peters out a lot of times

these things just kind of like Peter out and we’re all like dang it we almost made money you know so you just got to

kind of hypothesize test repeat and you just do it over and over now I’m G to tell you I have to leave out um a name

but there’s a super super super well-known uh marketer you’ll probably

figure it out if I I tell you a couple things but basically you see this guy everywhere on LinkedIn he’s got a whole

team he’s massive he’s got a marketing media Empire the guy is just like it’s really easy on the ears fun to listen to

and everything okay now he’s his number one guy who got him so famous on the

interwebs and everything was in a mastermind with a friend of mine eight people in the room uh phones and bags

nobody’s allowed to say anything okay I mean you know on electronics or record anything

and you know these guys you would think they’ve got their stuff together like they probably know everything about

everything is how it seems because they’re this dude is every everywhere right anyway the funny part was is Media

guy leans in and says yeah we don’t know what we’re doing right and everybody’s

like what you know and so and then he elaborates and says this is what we do we throw stuff against the wall and a

lot of different places like they might post the same message on 60 different channels right uh in different slightly

different ways and stuff like that and he goes every day at four o’clock we look at the stats and we see what happened and that’s it that’s their

whole business model right so do with that as you will not everybody can you know take the time to post in 65

different channels I’m lucky if I post in two in fact while Joanne was talking I was thinking I prob we go post something on Instagram real quick right

but you know the point is like do what you can definitely start and then watch the stats and then by just please don’t

quit you know just stick with it and keep trying stuff and and it’ll work out you know do more of that I love it I

love it so at this point we’re going to take a little digestif you know a little lemon ch so we’re going to jump to the

other side of things because we’ve all heard of the things you mentioned you throw something at the wall and see what

sticks and I’m going to start and kick this off with my own non-conventional marketing story and then I’m sure you

guys all have one of these and I add them here because they’re fun and sometimes they work and sometimes they

don’t so a few weeks ago or a few months ago I got a a FedEx or envelope a little

package I open it up and it has a little game in it where you roll a ball around

and through a maze and on the other side there’s this $50 bill United States real

currency and if you roll the ball and figure out the puzzle it unlocks the currency and out comes a $50 bill I was

like it was not easy okay I I messed with this thing for 20 minutes and I was ready to take a hammer to it at that at

some point but I was just amazed that some guy found me put a $50 bill in

there knowing I was going to get $50 bill whether I finish fixed you know got the puzzle or not I’m $50 richer for

this but you know being the the inquisitive marketing and business guy I am I called him up and I said listen I I

gotta hand it to you you sent me a $50 bill you had no idea if anything was going to happen I will give you 15 20

minutes of my time so you can explain this where this idea came from and uh

pitch me your product all right whatever I I’ll it it caught my attention so

everybody’s probably had an experience like that that you go wow what a bright idea you know how how how fun would that

be so I’d love to hear if you guys have had an interaction or a story like that

that worked out and and share it with the rest of us all right uh Jules you want to kick this one off well I was

thinking about um a gift box a influencer type box that came a few

years ago from a printing company and it had a little pouch of tequila and it had

a little shot glass and it had some really clever messaging with a with a recipe and a little mixer and um as a

buyer uh that was one of those things that showed me multiple different aspects of what they can do and I very

memorable great tequila and I you know and and it made me want to talk to them

and say hey how’d you make this how did you do this and I feel pretty special

that I got one of these I mean it’s not something that you’re going to see every day so um that um maybe it was to

Tequila speaking but that’s okay too but um that to me was thinking

outside the box I hate that term but it’s kind of what it is but also um

showing off what your capabilities are so to me that was pretty fun great all

right Alyssa you got one of those too yeah first thing that comes to mind it’s not necessarily like a like a tangible

thing you guys both have really cool examples no tequila came to my door but um I was thinking more about messaging

just to kind of I guess tie it all together not to be a total nerd here but um I I feel like I’ve been seeing more

and more companies having these like crazy guarantees where it’s like

guarantee you’ll 5x your sales or else we’ll pay to send your whole family to

Bali for two weeks or something crazy like that which sounds so outrageous but when I see it if it’s a product or

company that I’m have some sort of interest in I’m like there’s no way and it makes me want to like test out the

theory to see if if it would work you know and I mean as as a business owner

I’m like well shoot of you got to have a lot of confidence that your product is going to give them that result or else

you wouldn’t offer it so but but as a consumer it’s really enticing for my end so again not a tangible thing but um

messaging it could be really valuable to really any company perfect and again the reason we’re talking about these is we

talked about in the beginning Rising above the noise level of those 10,000 messages a day these are some ideas that

again I’m not saying it’s scalable or repeatable but they do tend to work at

least on a smaller scale of when they’re done so Joanne I’m sure you’ve got one of these two yeah so mine’s a little

different um as well I I also didn’t get any tequila I’m sorry to say I’m I guess

I don’t know maybe maybe because I’m Canadian who knows um but what I’ve been noticing recently is the shift away from

sort of gated content but really sort of the free not free and and I was looking

there was a post in my feed this morning that I was just reading about it and I I tried to find it and I can’t but one

example is you know people sign up for webinars all the time but they don’t attend in fact I don’t know about you

but I’m notorious for I’ll sign up for a webinar just because I know I’m going to be able to watch the replay whenever I

can yep what I saw recently was yep same thing sign up for the webinar freebie

blah blah but if you want access to the replay then you have to pay $27 or

whatever it was and it was a full Summit it was like an eight hour a like it wasn’t just a one-h hour thing but it’s

an interesting way from like a virtual conference perspective or if you’re doing you know

a a some sort of event online and you want to get the repeat

people back right the people that watch the recordings what an I saw that I was

like oh my God that’s genius how did I never think of the fact that we know

people’s behavior so let’s let’s monetize that I mean let’s let’s be real

that’s what we’re trying to do here I think that anybody who’s doing webinars that you’re going to start to see more

of that or freak content but if you want access to whatever you have to pay more

so it’s not about being gated anymore it’s about that added value of what you

will get if you provide my name uh your name and get on what we ultimately know

will be the marketing list fabulous yeah I I I think that that’s a valuable

message too it’s not always the gift in the mail or something there’s other things that you can do to get attention

um uh Hans tell us your your non-conventional marketing story uh well speaking of gifts in the

mail though I just somebody Kelsey Davis posted in the chat that I thought was just awesome they sent um remote control

helicopters to viable leads but without the remote I think that’s amazing because

then you you want that remote man I want to fly this helicopter anyway I think that’s really cool um mine is um uh I

one time I received a letter and it literally looked like a handwritten letter but when I upon closer inspection

I could see that it was uh actually um was handwritten but then mass-produced but but on so let me describe it it was

like on the legal yellow pad and it um

uh I don’t remember what the opening was I don’t think it had my name so you know I minus two points there but but

basically uh it was written and not even an attempt to be it looked like the

first draft it had scratches out and you know and it was a sales letter it was definitely like to get me to go in and

buy a suit at a place you know and so it was directed to me as a someone who might want to buy suits and it was

written uh like you know hey I’m on the plane I was writing this writing you this note and then I really you know and it’s all like Messy as heck but you

could read it and I thought you know that’s pretty crafty because um you know it looked pretty close to like a friend

wrote me a note and didn’t have time to clean it up right and I just think okay what are you trying to do with this stuff you’re trying to get attention so

it got my attention because it looked like a personal letter so I opened it and then you’re trying to keep my attention and it did that because I was

like well this is pretty novel now I have to read it you know so I think that’s really the story with all of these right it’s just sort of how do you

get attention and how do you hook it usually with some kind of problem thing or whatever and then how do you keep

them uh you only get like five seconds over and over and over right like it’s they’re not going to get go like oh well

you won my first five seconds now I’m going to give you five minutes no it’s like it’s just a repeat of like well here’s another 5 seconds and you better

just keep them going you know so as long I think as long as it does that you probably um you know have a chance you

know yeah I mean it’s true you got about two seconds to get somebody’s attention and then maybe you get another few seconds but that’s it we got about two

seconds all right excellent so now I’m gonna take it to a question that I am pretty sure that we’re not all gonna

agree on here um it’s it’s been asked many times and I’ve seen the answers in

one of two ways there’s only two answers to this and I’m hoping that you you stay with one of these two and I’m going to

ask you with regards to marketing today what is more important the quality of

the message or the quantity of the people you’re getting it in front of if you had to go for a wide it could be

targeted audience but a bigger audience or a higher quality message whether it’s creative or whatever what is more

important quality or quantity let’s start let’s start with Joanne what do you

think I know it depends on what your Market I get to choose I I think as long

as you’re consistent I mean quality is always

going to be more important than quantity because if you have the wrong message

going out it doesn’t matter how many people you’re sending it to you’re going to be sending you’re either going to be

sending the wrong message to the right people let’s say the message the right message to the wrong people yeah so you

have to get the message right and then you can start small do a test and then

grow bigger and bigger and bigger with each success you can you can open up the

gates a little bit more and see how much can you push this before you reach that

point of diminishing returns and then you you go after the next one so yeah if

I had to choose I’d say quality over quantity fair enough Alissa what do you

like quality or quantity I mean I feel like I’m gonna and I don’t know if this

is a surprise after talking for the last 50 minutes I think I’m gonna go quantity I think uh every I mean if no one wants

to make a decision but um I’m just goingon to leave it at quantity just getting in front of that is just repeat

awareness recall recognition good fair enough Hans where do you fall in this scale I think since most companies um at

least the small folks if you will uh don’t often know the qu quality of their

customer the qual enough qualities about their customer I’m going to go with alista and say Quantity like I said just

you know get out the freaking spam gun and start firing until you get people sort of like yeah that’s me you know

what I mean and then you can kind of retool and refine and get a little bit more um selective and stuff like that

but in the end you want that quality right because then you can just really dial things in but yeah just just get

out there and also comes back to like just start just do it get off your couch go go go do it you know right Jules

where do you fall you can you can either make it a tie or really put it what to

do what to do I pulled this quote that said the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand we

listen to reply and uh that was Stephen cvy and um

and you know I think getting back to that you know see what sticks keep on trying I as much as we do both for our

clients I would probably go quality and then keep tweaking I would use the

analytics keep testing and grow that as you start to understand what resonates

but that we need to listen we need to be solving this problem instead of just

looking for a reaction we we need to be more thoughtful so quality helps us be more thoughtful in our messaging and get

better response I think so then I will wear the job of tiebreaker I will wear the hat of

tiebreaker and I’m going to go with quantity I’m going to say that you can afford more mistakes in messaging if you

reach more people you know and again it’s there’s there’s a lot of qualifiers to what type of quality and what type of

quantity you know but I I would lean towards the the quantity side of the scale so quantity wins today not always

but today it wins so good job for qu quantity people all right well we’ll

move on to the next one which sort of Segways into this so in a marketing

strategy when do you advise a pivot or when do you advise to stay the course

what is and we’re gonna have to keep this quick because I think we do have a question or two

what where where do you pivot and when do you say hey let’s let’s push this message or this method or this channel a

little longer and and you know what let’s start with uh let’s start with Hans on that one he hasn’t gone first

for a while I don’t think I’ve gone first yet quite frankly um okay so um I I guess I’m G to

take the safe road here which is that um one pivot that should always be made is

away from uh cleverness and towards Clarity I see way too many people trying

to be clever with their words and you know you end up sacrificing Clarity

almost every time uh I’ll give you an example it’s hard might be hard to describe in words but I saw this header

on a website one time and it said something something like come on in we’re awesome right big word awesome

like okay that’s clever and all nice colors but like what does it mean you know like I don’t are you my people are

you my guide I don’t know so anytime you can kind of remove words um and just

blur it out I would don’t you remember how we used to have generic beer cans and it literally just said beer in Black

letters right like I would almost have you pivot towards that then come up with

the ultimate logo and we’re special because we’re that nobody else yeah just

less is more and with that I will end good all right Joan tell me about your

advice on when to Pivot or stay the course so there’s an expression

everybody’s heard ver variations on it but my my favorite version of it is if

you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got if you want if you’re not happy with the

results you’re getting whether it’s not enough leads or too many leads of the wrong quality whatever it is if the

results are not matching your initial goal kpis change something one thing just

change one thing and see if that makes a difference it’s like when when you when you have a a baby and you’re introducing

solids you do one at a time because you not you want to make sure that you don’t have an allergic reaction it’s the exact

same thing with your marketing if if you try too many things at once you won’t know what worked and what didn’t you’ve

got to you’ve got to be very intentional with what you’re doing and again if it’s working keep keep doing it until it’s

not anymore and you might hit that wall and that doesn’t mean it’s you no longer

go after that market it means okay here’s the threshold now what’s the

threshold for the next one and the next one but honestly if if you’re looking at it and you’re not happy with the results

if there’s something inside you saying I don’t know it’s not working anymore it’s not working the way it was

then change it yes I agree something called marketing fatigue something may have been working amazingly for months

years even decades and all the sudden it’s not pulling like it used to you have saturated the audience they’re

tired of the message people are fickle there is such thing as marketing fatigue so I I agree with that so all right

Alysa you tell us Mark when to Pivot and when to stay the course I think it depends on what your goals

are um in the digital sense is it um to be generating more leads or is it just

overall visibility awareness because those are two different um kpis that you could be looking at so if you’re not

getting leads pivot maybe it’s the message maybe it’s um all the other things we’ve talked about but you might

be getting a ton of visibility and maybe you your goals could change throughout your marketing strategy as well you may

the goal may be leads and you you might not be seeing those but getting a ton of traffic to your site you’re getting a

lot of phone calls that you didn’t expect or you’re getting a lot of referrals um so I think it really just depends on your goals um on when you

need to just keep on keeping on or if it’s time to try something

different Perfect all right Jules you’ve got to have a comment on when to Pivot

sure so I think you know we’re talking to um an audience that invest a lot in Capital Equipment and um they stay the

course they learn how to continuously improve their process on a regular basis

so that they make more money so they’re more efficient they reach um you know

they they can put more throughput through the through the company um increase their profit so apply that same

thing to your marketing uh you really have to continue and not stop you don’t

turn that machine off because I’m just not happy with you know how efficient it’s working you work on it and so you

work on your marketing and if it’s not getting you those kpis and that’s

something a lot of people don’t um create in this space are what those

measurements are to be able to come back and go yes we reached it no we didn’t and some of and and in my experience

it’s also getting that feedback from the client if we don’t have a direct line to

the CRM and all the information it’s very hard for us to justify that it’s

working because we don’t have purview and we’re not getting that feedback so I think making sure that’s in place so

that then you can intelligently pivot as opposed to putting the brakes on it and

just say it’s not working you wouldn’t do that with your equipment and your staff internally don’t do it with your

marketing makes a 100% sense thank you for that I want to get to one question but i’ I put up slides for each of you

so that if our uh audience would like to contact you guys reach out here more I want them to be able to get your contact

information but I will read a question from Kurt here and then uh we’ll take the last minute to see if we can give

him satisfactory answer he says one of the weakest links in marketing is getting the sales team and

infrastructure to leverage these valuable efforts and air cover how do

you recommend to require sales reps to leverage and share these efforts to clients and Prospects how do you hold

these reps accountable well as a longtime manager I’ll answer first is

there’s really only two ways you either rule by decree and you force it down their throats which I don’t know that that works these days and nobody likes

to be just rammed ideology of marketing or anything down their throat or you can

get them to understand why this is beneficial and how you completely believe in these actions and if they did

them they would see success too that’s my two cents I I’m open to any of the audience here and then we’ll be

respectful of the rest of the audience his time I’m sorry my panelist do you have an answer for Kurt that may help

him speak out again I think that you have to have leadership that is excited

about it I think if you can get your sales reps to be part of that process give input in the development of that

marketing plan you have a lot better chance of them being engaged and then also you know this make those

deliverables realistic people don’t like to some people don’t like to be on social don’t expect them to S to share

social but they may be able to you know follow up on Direct Mail give them give

them kpis that are reasonable and effective to follow up on and then

celebrate those that’s I I just move the needle slowly you can’t force them thank

you Jules I I will call it a day at this point I will encourage anybody in the audience that would like to hear more

from these esteemed panelists to please contact them there’s a wealth of knowledge there I want to thank you

myself and I’ve really enjoyed it I think that was a very insightful commentary and uh thank you very much

for everyone who attended here and we’ll do it again