Shandys, Selfies & A Mustache: Traveler Beer Does Integrated Marketing Right!

What is more fun than a stick-on mustache?!

…well, taking a selfie with your mustache to share with the world AND enjoying a new European twist on delicious beer at the same time. That combo has helped prove Traveler Beer Company a pro at integrated marketing. Combining a great product and marketing design with social media buzz is one step. But in Traveler’s current campaign, the vital link between the products and the online excitement is good, old-fashioned print and promotional products! It is exciting to see these traditional marketing tools put to their best use in combination with the latest in digital communications.

Traveler is “introducing” to the American market the European tradition of “shandys” – quality craft brews combined with carbonated citrus or fruit flavors. The four Traveler flavors use lemon and lime (“Curious Traveler“), grapefruit (“Illusive Traveler“), strawberry (“Time Traveler“), and pumpkin (“Jack-O Traveler“). With such a unique product, Traveler is wisely shaping their marketing around the adventure of a new experience. By using a turn-of-the-LAST-century flavor to the graphics, they are reinforcing the idea that these flavors have been around a long while in Europe and proven a favorite. With the current public preference for all things hipster, the classic Victorian handlebar mustache works as the perfect representative of the product, and the perfect way to involve consumers in becoming a part of the marketing itself.

Traveler’s mission was to involve the public through social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, primarily. To achieve that, they created a great variety of bar swag and promotional products to put the Traveler brand into consumer’s hands. Online, and in retail outlets, bars and restaurants, you can find branded t-shirts, backpacks, glassware, bar taps, and on and on. The key to actually involving folks in the marketing game is a set of stick-on mustaches attached to printed cards. The card for each style mustache directs the user to stick on the mustache, take a photo, and post it online with the hashtag #TRVLR. The result has been that elusive social media buzz and virality that makes a marketing campaign successful.

The payoff for the consumer? Primarily, the fun of seeing their mustachioed selfies online! The Traveler website has a page called TRVLR GLRY with Mustache and Traveler of the Week photos, and shots from parties and events hosted around the Traveler products. Search for the hashtag #TRVLR on Twitter or Instagram to see all the folks joining in the fun.

The greatest part of this type of marketing? It can be done on a large scale like Traveler has shown us, or on a small scale for a local business with a lot less money and time to invest. Print and promotional products can be designed to encourage the recipient to actually market for the brand – post a photo, wear the logo, visit a webpage, or share the experience on social media of using the product. The reward for doing that can be a coupon or discount, a contest prize, or it can just be the kick of seeing one’s very own selfie on a website. When done right, adding the social media component to a standard print marketing campaign only amplifies the impact of the original idea but with very little, if any, added investment. For the consumer, it enhances your brand image and their enjoyment.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

August 21, 2014

Why Great Customer Service Is a Powerful Small Business Marketing Tool

With the power of the Internet and the multitude of review sites, it’s difficult to avoid honest opinions about your company. Those reviews, both positive and negative, are just a Google search away, and whether the complaint or review is valid or not, people may still take it as gospel.

According to Fonolo, 68 percent of businesses plan to increase the amount of money they invest in customer management because the customer experience is so important. Additionally, positive feedback can be very useful for marketing purposes, especially when customers share how their issues were resolved efficiently.

Companies can use that testimonial information to develop customer service strategies, and show their customers that they’re appreciated. This in turn creates new and repeat business. Here are some ways to turn customer referrals and testimonials into increased business:

Take Care of Your Customers

The best type of marketing is word-of-mouth by your customers. The best way to create a positive buzz about your company is to provide great customer service. People will remember how you solved their problems and helped them find whatever they needed. Not only will they return to your company but they also will tell their friends about their positive experience. This is the easiest way to market your company because you let your customers do the work for you.

Reflect Your Caring for Customers

Taking care of customers is a vital marketing issue, perhaps even more so than buying billboards or advertising. When customers feel cared for, many are quick to share that experience, reflecting the hard work of your company. Every customer is a gatekeeper to evangelize your brand. Showing your appreciation and generosity for loyal customers builds solid support for your business.

Marketing customer service requires long-term vision “to move the needle on customer service operations, in order to keep customers satisfied and loyal to your brand,” states Kate Leggett in an article on Forrester.

Loyal customers deserve your attention. Those who receive a top-to-bottom customer support experience could become repeat buyers. Your company can go above and beyond the typical customer service requirements by showing appreciation to loyal customers. When you reach out and thank them, it comes across as a genuine attempt to make them feel special. One way to do this is to send something like a gift basket and a hand-written thank you note. You can brand any number of useful and desirable products with your logo and colors to use as giveaways – the promotional products field has items at all price levels ready to be imprinted, engraved, embroidered or branded with your company logo and message. Also, print wear is a great idea – loyal customers will be happy to receive and wear a quality clothing item screen printed or embroidered with the attractive logo of a company they appreciate.

Locate Testimonials

If your company pops up in Internet searches next to negative terms, then that gives people an early reason to look elsewhere for comparable products or merchandise. But, if your business connects to positive search results, it gives people a reason to trust you.

With customer review sites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor, people can see what others said about you, and, luckily, you can use positive reviews to your advantage. Figure out who your most sustained, loyal customers are, and ask them to honestly share their experience in a video testimonial for your company’s website. Wistia offers advise and tips for creating video testimonials for your business such as being prepared but not scripted. If you don’t like videos, then you also can ask repeat customers to go onto Yelp, Angie’s List or other review sites to honestly talk about their experiences.

In your advertising, emphasize the real-world experience of your most honest customers, and more people will get a sense of what you’re all about.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

August 20, 2014

Hard to Hide: Disabling an Overactive Welcome Screen in Illustrator CC 2014

When the Welcome gets worn out…

With each new software upgrade, organizing your workspace and learning the new tools and interface changes can take a little time. Creative Cloud software generally launches by default a Welcome screen with helpful info on “What’s New” in the latest release. For the first few days, these are helpful; after that they begin to feel intrusive. With Illustrator CC 2014, the “Welcome” screen is pretty persistent in trying to keep on welcoming. The fix is a simple one – albeit not as simple as it could be!

In previous version of Illustrator, the Welcome screen appeared with each launch, but the checkbox to hide the screen on future launches was always located at the bottom in plain view. With InDesign CC 2014, it is still there and easy to access. With PhotoShop CC 2014, there is no “Welcome” screen – it just lives under the Help menu and will take you to an Adobe webpage when chosen. But Illustrator expanded the Welcome screen for CC 2014, putting in four tabs to access different information. I wonder if Adobe is pushing a little harder to introduce PhotoShop and InDesign users to Illustrator? The expanded screen can be useful, but it seems Adobe went a little further in trying to make you work to hide it.

The “Create” tab, which is the default screen on my installation and includes the easy access to open recent docs or new projects, does not include the box to hide the Welcome screen. I have no idea why. For some reason, only three of the four Welcome screen tabs have the check-able option to hide the window in the future. And, even on those three tabs, the bottom of the window is not visible until you scroll down to find the check box.

The Welcome screen info always lives under the Help menu, so if you find it annoying like I do, just click on any of the three tabs other than “Create” and scroll to the bottom of the window. There you can access the SLIGHTLY more elusive than normal “Don’t Show Welcome Screen Again” box.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

August 12, 2014

3 Ideas to Promote Your Small Business Online

A small business does not need a large corporate budget to carve out a niche online. A study conducted by advertising research firm Communicus found that 60 percent of those multi-million dollar Super Bowl ads do not make potential customers any more likely to buy the corresponding product or service. Researchers asked 1,000 consumers about their buying intentions before and after the 2012 and 2013 big games, and most were unmoved by the big-ticket ads they saw.

There are very inexpensive ways to promote your small business online—even free approaches that are very effective. Here are three methods to consider.

Sell T-Shirts & Other Custom Branded Merchandise

Jason Sadler had a wild idea of approaching companies and offering to wear T-shirts bearing their slogans, logos, and phone number for a nominal fee. Six years later, iwearyourshirt.com earns him $500,000 per year with no signs of slowing down, according to Business Insider. Advertising executives are willing to pay a guy to wear shirts because they know it works.

There are plenty of options for small business owners to purchase T-shirts in bulk and sell them via their website or even give them away when customers spend a certain amount. A 15-20 percent markup on the price you paid to have them made will earn you some revenue, but it’s the free advertising that you’re after. But don’t limit your thoughts just to clothing. You can put your logo and brand on virtually anything! It’s great marketing and even a profit center.

While you can use a free logo design platform online to keep overhead low on the entire project, consult your local printer on options for a brand refresh – or, if it’s time, a complete logo and brand makeover. Make sure your logo is consistent across all your social media channels.

Start a Blog

The saying goes “content is king” for marketing, and that is especially the case for small companies building a customer base. Companies that blog had 55 percent more website visitors, 97 percent more inbound links, and 434 percent more indexed pages, according to an informal 2009 study of Hubspot customers.

The key to blogging, however, is to produce compelling content that will drive people to your website who were not necessarily looking for your product. A hair restoration doctor, for instance, could produce content about celebrity men and women in the news who have had procedures done to enhance their locks. A health food firm could write about all the bad things associated with genetically-modified foods. Consider hiring a freelance writer with a proven track record of producing content that is subsequently shared on social media. There are more than 150 million blogs on the web, so the only thing that will make yours stand out is good content. Hiring a professional writer may be money well spent.

Facebook Paid Ads

You already have a Facebook business page, so why not give their promoted post feature a try. The idea is that Facebook will put your posts in the timelines of people who are most likely to read, like, and share it. The best part of Facebook advertising is that you can test it out with a small initial budget. If it’s working for you, increase your budget and put posts in front of more Facebook users.

There are mixed opinions about Facebook promoted ads. A small case study by eConsultancy found that the traffic to promoted posts was definitely higher, but there was no way of telling whether it was because it was paid for or if the traffic was organic. Others believe that the affordability makes it a no-brainer option for low-budget firms.

Technology of the 21st century has made promoting a small business simple for anyone. Now it’s just a matter of finding the right combination of channels to reach your fiscal goals.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.