Pull Back the Curtain: Providing a Backstage Glimpse of Your Company

One of the primary objectives of any marketing campaign you run has nothing to do with selling your product or service. While these will always be important, equally necessary is your ability to sell yourself as a company. People want to know more about the people who work in your business and the values and ideals that you have. They want to be able to look at you as an authority. Pulling back the curtain and providing a "backstage" glimpse into your product or service is one of the single, best ways to accomplish both of these things at the same time.

The Benefits of the Backstage Approach

One of the major benefits of this type of "backstage" approach is that it helps position you as a true authority on a particular topic. It's one thing for you to SAY that a product performs X, Y, and Z functions - it's another thing entirely to prove it by providing an unprecedented look into the design and development process. You can shed insight on your decision-making process, for example, helping them to not only SEE what your product does but WHY.

Taking a "backstage" approach to marketing also helps to strengthen the intimate, organic connection you're able to create with your target audience - thus helping to build brand loyalty. Think about it from the perspective of the entertainment industry, as celebrities, in particular, are masters at this. DVDs are filled with hours of special features outlining how a scene was shot, how a script was written, how a special effect was pulled off and more. This instantly makes something that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make seem smaller and more intimate, while letting audiences take their experience to a whole new level at the same time. Providing a similar look into your own operation will have the same effect for you, too.

Pulling Back the Curtain

Unless you're launching a product that is shrouded in complete secrecy, you can start pulling back the curtain pretty much right away. Even if it's something as simple as updating a weekly blog post with sketches, schematics, and other materials from the research and development phase, this will go a long way towards increasing transparency across the board. Have employees talk about the specific work they're doing on a daily basis and how even though they're all working separately, they're all contributing to a larger whole.

This startlingly simple approach helps to close the gap in between business and customer, making a customer actually feel like they're a natural part of the process. When you combine this with all of your other marketing techniques, you're looking at a striking amount of loyalty built just from publicizing activities that were already going on behind closed doors anyway.


These are just a few of the many reasons why providing a "backstage" glimpse can help bring your product or service to life. Not only does it help provide a valuable context to the particular product or service that you're trying to sell, but it also helps build a strong, positive impression of your company. People will stop seeing you as a faceless entity and will start looking at you more like the living, breathing, hardworking people that you really are. This will only deepen the connection that you have with your target audience and make interaction more meaningful in the future.

And if you want a glimpse backstage at Plum Grove – a tour of our manufacturing plant to see printing, mailing, signage all in production, just call me at 847.882.4020, and we’ll give you a peek behind our curtain.

Peter "The Printer" Lineal
Founder/CEO
Plum Grove
2160 Stonington Avenue
Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
Ph: 847.882.4020 Ext: 133
www.PlumGrovePrinters.com
PeterL@PlumGrovePrinters.com


Printing, Marketing & Promotional Products with Powerful Execution.

Make Your Marketing Content Flexible

Too many marketers look at the content they're creating as "one and done." You spend all this time and money creating the right print mailer, send it to your targeted list, and then put it in your sample folder, right? Wrong.

The content of that mailer is still relevant; it hasn't been diminished because you sent it out into the world once. Don't write off good content so quickly, especially when you can use a few simple techniques to increase your return on that investment (ROI) of time, money, and creativity. Heed these tips to get maximum mileage out of your marketing content.

 

Repurpose Whatever You Can

Creating a piece of high-quality, original content from scratch is expensive and time-consuming, but it's worth it. You don't need to make every last piece of information wholly original from the top down. Sometimes repurposing a piece of good content is a great way to stretch that content, and it can also help fill gaps in your editorial strategy, among other things.

For example, say you hosted a webinar that went off without a hitch. Those ideas and audience questions don't have to die the minute the last viewer logs off. Here are four ways to stretch the content:

1. Take the notes from the webinar and turn them into a slide-show for your website.

2. Video stream/record the webinar and post it to your YouTube page; send out links to it.

3. Use the slides as the basis for a direct-mail flyer for a mailer or a leave-behind piece. 

4. Turn the notes into a white paper that can be downloaded from your website.

You get the benefit of building upon something instead of creating from scratch, plus you increase the ROI of that original content at the same time.

Redistribution: Using Changes to Your Advantage

When using existing content, consider how things may have changed since that original piece went out into the world. Maybe you designed a post for Facebook that was hugely successful but now you learn a new target audience is big on Twitter. A few key adjustments could make the Facebook piece ready for a brand new audience.

The same can be said of taking something from the print world and bringing it into the digital realm, and vice versa. Take that informative print flyer you sent out a few weeks ago and use it as the framework for a blog post. You get the benefit of increasing the longevity (and the ROI) of that original content, and you get it in front of a whole new crop of people at the same time.

While many people think of content marketing as "disposable," it does not have to be that way. A good piece of content is a good piece of content - period. By carefully practicing techniques like redistribution and repurposing, you can stretch the value of that content and improve your marketing ROI.

Peter "The Printer" Lineal
Founder/CEO
Plum Grove
2160 Stonington Avenue
Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
Ph: 847.882.4020 Ext: 133
www.PlumGrovePrinters.com
PeterL@PlumGrovePrinters.com


Printing, Marketing & Promotional Products with Powerful Execution.

Anticipation is Your Friend: The Art of Teasing a Product or Service Before a Proper Launch

All of your print marketing materials should be designed to evoke an emotional response. Most of the time when you're marketing a product or service, your goal is to convince people to spend money on what it is that you have to offer AFTER the fact. This is time consuming and isn't always successful, especially in a crowded sea of competitors. But what if there was a way for you to start your print marketing momentum well in advance of the actual product or service's release? What if there was a way to build so much momentum leading up to that day that all of the hard work from a marketing perspective had already been done for you?

Luckily, there is a way to accomplish all of this and more. By spending your marketing dollars pre-emptively and teasing the launch of your product or service well in advance, you can build the type of hype that will continue to pay dividends for a lifetime.

The Most Efficient Marketing Engine on the Planet - Disney

Perhaps the most powerful marketing machine in existence belongs to The Walt Disney Company - and this isn't just because they seem to have unlimited financial resources at their disposal. Consider the masterful way that they built anticipation for "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens." Starting a full year out from the premiere of the movie, a teaser trailer was released to build anticipation. Since that opening salvo, we were bombarded with a steady stream of marketing content, from tie-in comic books to a toy launch event that was treated as a national holiday, and more. Anticipation for a new "Star Wars" film could not have been higher going into its release, but what did all of that marketing really tell us about the film itself?

The answer is "not much." People knew what it was called, knew who was in it, knew it had the words "Star Wars" in the title and very little else. So, why was the hype going into the release of the film so massive if people actually knew next to nothing about it, let alone whether or not it would be good? Because of the power of "anticipation" in action.

Little By Little

When building anticipation for a product or service ahead of its release, the key is to understand just how powerful saying very little can actually be. You don't want a print marketing material to literally say "this is what this does and this is why you want it." Doing so removes the air of mystery from the proceedings, which is one of the key ingredients when building anticipation. You need to focus on core images or small facts that only hint at a much larger whole. You want people to say to themselves "I NEED to know more about what this is," because at that point you've got their attention. Once you have their attention, the actual product or service itself can help make sure that you never let go.

Focus On the Problem, Not the Solution

Say you had a product or service that made it easier for stay-at-home moms to get the kids off to school in the morning. If you wanted to build anticipation in your print marketing materials, you might focus on that particular problem above all else. The different waves of your campaign would be devoted to essentially confirming what they already know - "kids tend to not be cooperative in the morning, if only you had more hours in a day, it's difficult to manage your own schedule and theirs at the same time, etc." Then, you might tease with a bold statement like, "We're about to change all that. Stay tuned for more information," and continue to hit them with additional marketing materials in the run-up to the actual launch.

Not only have you appealed to their sentiments and hinted at how you're about to change their lives in an emotional way, but you've also begun to build anticipation at the same time. The great thing about anticipation is that it tends to snowball - if you can get a customer excited today, your focus can then become on KEEPING them excited, which is significantly easier and less time consuming than getting their attention in the first place.


Anticipation is one of the single best assets that you have in your quest to connect with your target audience in new and meaningful ways. If you can play the "anticipation game" in the right way, you won't have to worry about convincing people to engage with your product or service when it launches. They'll come directly to you - they practically won't be able to help themselves.

Peter "The Printer" Lineal
Founder/CEO
Plum Grove
2160 Stonington Avenue
Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
Ph: 847.882.4020 Ext: 133
www.PlumGrovePrinters.com
PeterL@PlumGrovePrinters.com


Printing, Marketing & Promotional Products with Powerful Execution.

Brand Awareness: Becoming Another Kleenex

In today's world of marketing, if you are not marketing online, you are missing a very big boat. Marketing is now a science with logistics and parameters that were largely unheard of just a few years ago. However, that is not the case with the notion of brand awareness. The auto industry was probably the biggest contributor to the idea that brand loyalty could be utilized to sell more products. That industry is over 120 years old, and brand awareness became a fashionable tool in marketing automobiles by the early 1900s.

Brand awareness, of course, is the extent to which a name, label, logo, catch phrase, jingle, or another identifier that is associated with a brand, a specific product, or a company is easily recognized by customers. Brand awareness may be old news, but the Internet has taken the concept to new heights, becoming far more measurable and quantifiable as part of an overall marketing strategy. 

There are many examples of successful brand awareness implementation. It has always been primarily produced by effective advertising. The most dramatically successful advertising campaign is the one where your product becomes synonymous with the product category. For many years now, a facial tissue has been called a Kleenex regardless of what actual brand was used. This is the same result we see when some people refer to any sport-utility vehicle as a Jeep and any cola drink as a Coke.

The objective in advertising or any brand awareness marketing endeavor is not simply to get your product name or image in front of the consumer. It is to get the image into the mind of that consumer, so when the buying customer wants a product, he or she wants your product before that of any competitors. Repetitious advertising creates a memory trace that remains and is reinforced with every additional occurrence. Think of mayonnaise, hot dogs, ketchup, beer, and coffee. The odds are pretty good that in each case you thought of a specific brand. It is no coincidence that the biggest selling brands are also among those most heavily advertised in various media.

While a successful advertising campaign can create solid brand awareness, a limiting or cessation of advertising can erase the gains in a remarkably short time. Forty years ago, a steel wool soap pad was known as a Brillo Pad. Today, SOS brand is the big seller. Brillo sometimes doesn't even get any shelf space, and we must ask when was the last time you saw an ad for Brillo scouring pads? The manufacturer failed to maintain the brand awareness level they had established. A massive advertising campaign by the manufacturers of SOS soap pads was the driving force that changed the landscape.

Advertising remains key to this process, and today the most critical medium for reaching the customer is the Internet. No other medium offers such widespread advantages in both reach and monitoring capacity. With the Internet, you can track how many times your ad has been viewed and how many times it has been clicked on. 

Furthermore, social media and blogging have opened up new avenues for tracking your brand's impact. Programs exist that can tell you how many times your brand has been searched for by a search engine. Others can reveal how many times it has been mentioned in a blog anywhere on the World Wide Web. These "mentions" can be even more critical to brand awareness than page views or clicks because each one may represent an impartial testimony to your product. Even negative discussion tends to reinforce brand awareness. The old saying applies: There is no such thing as bad publicity.  

Establish it, reinforce it, and nurture it. Brand awareness can make the difference for you in becoming another brand like Kleenex.

Peter "The Printer" Lineal
Founder/CEO
Plum Grove
2160 Stonington Avenue
Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
Ph: 847.882.4020 Ext: 133
www.PlumGrovePrinters.com
PeterL@PlumGrovePrinters.com


Printing, Marketing & Promotional Products with Powerful Execution.