Jacqueline Maher Archives - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

Have you ever heard of “Bacon’s Law” or “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? This popular trivia game is based on the idea of six degrees of separation, or in other words, that “any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart.” After 30+ years in business, six degrees of separation for me has become more like two degrees of separation, where friends (or contacts of friends) have become clients, and customers have become friends. This two-degree network has never been as noticeable to me as it is now in my local area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though the population of Pittsburgh and the surrounding metro area reaches over 2.3 million people, every day I get to foster the connections that earn me the label “local printer.” The Mixing of Business and Personal After many years of building these relationships, I’ve begun to notice personal and business getting closer together and harder to differentiate. But, in my opinion, that is a good thing! It makes our professional lives as printers more enjoyable when our customers become our friends, and the people from our lives outside of work begin to ask us to help with their printing needs. Here’s

Print marketing, goal planning, marketing

As small business owners, we wear a lot of hats, making it nearly impossible to give our complete focus to every role. That’s usually why when it comes to the marketing and selling for our print companies, we often rely on what we’ve always done simply because it’s comfortable. After all, it’s easier to focus on other pressing responsibilities. Over time, though, a lack of fresh ideas can leave your sales and marketing efforts on an unpleasant plateau and cause you to fall behind in an industry that is continuously moving forward. Those strategies that worked in the past may still have a place in the future, but it’s critical to take a step back every so often to take an inventory of what’s working and what’s not. When you reassess your objectives for the year and explore how these objectives will align with your marketing strategies, you’ll be able to look at your printing company through a fresh lens. Here are four steps to help you get started: 1. Examine What Worked, What Didn’t, and What is “SO Last Year.” Every year (at least!), these are the types of questions you should be asking yourself to ensure your business