Searles Media - Advertising http://www.searles.media/blog/category/18/Advertising en-US http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3755/Direct-Mail-Still-Works-The-Messengers-Podcast Direct Mail Still Works - The Messengers Podcast There are some myths about “snail mail” as a marketing medium floating around that it’s outdated, too expensive, and ineffective. While direct mail definitely became over-saturated in the ‘90s when printing technology improved dramatically making direct mail more affordable and accessible than ever, the tech boom of the ‘00s and ‘10s has left the physical mailbox empty and the digital inbox jammed with more junk than we ever used to get in the mail.


The truth is, for many marketers, direct mail is still the highest performing direct response medium available.


Since the amount of mail people get to their homes has been steadily on the decline, your direct mail piece has less competition. A lot of that spam has moved to email, which leaves a prime opportunity to redirect some of that marketing effort towards physical mail once more.


In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss the benefits that direct mail marketing can bring to a business and how they’ve managed to use direct mail to make a difference for their own clients.


They discuss the various ways you can get a mailing piece to your target audience, how to build or acquire your mailing list, and how to deal with post office regulations (we know it can be hard). They also touch on the actual design of your direct mail marketing, and how to maximize the effectiveness of your direct mail piece through creative and intelligent design.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3750/Making-SEO-Work-for-You-The-Messengers-Podcast Making SEO Work for You - The Messengers Podcast Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a tricky beast to master, even in writing this blog post we’re constantly considering what words to use to boost our own Google ranking for when business owners are searching for ways to improve their own SEO.


Google’s (and other, lesser-used search engine’s) algorithm that determines what results will show for a given web search is constantly changing and many of the specifics of that algorithm are closely held trade secrets.


Modern SEO is built upon decades of learning and iterative advancements in serving the optimal result for any given user search.


Throw in Google’s new focus on prioritizing paid advertising over organic results, it gets even trickier to figure out what works best.


In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss what SEO is really all about, debunk some of the myths that seem to permeate small businesses about search engine optimization, and provide best practices that they implement for their own clients.


They discuss balancing search advertising and organic search results, what you can do to boost your own rankings, understanding what your potential customers are actually searching for and how to beat the competition. They also explain how a consistent content stream, relevant to your searchers’ interests is the most important way to set yourself apart from everybody else.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3738/Making-the-Most-Out-of-Your-Facebook-Ads-The-Messengers Making the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads - The Messengers To beginning businesses, digital advertising might seem like the greatest blessing marketing has ever seen. The ability to advertise on a platform populated by billions of users is the marketing pitch of the century from Facebook’s end.


Unfortunately, nearly everybody who hasn’t already experienced it underestimates just how difficult getting people to see and engage with your Facebook advertising can be, or what they will need to spend to get the results they really want.


It’s never as simple as “post and you’re done.” Marketing on Facebook is a tricky mix of targeting the right people, growing your online audience, determining and managing the budget dedicated for your campaign, and curating your content so that users actually engage with it.


In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert talk about the common issues that they’ve seen many first time Facebook marketers have to work through and how to optimize your Facebook ads to deliver real results.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3735/Promotional-Materials-That-Work-The-Messengers-Podcast Promotional Materials That Work - The Messengers Podcast Promotional items can be largely hit-or-miss.


On one hand, your t-shirts, pens, and notepads could do a great job at keeping your company name in your customers’ minds, hitting the most important marketing element there is: Frequency.


But on the other hand, you might just end up wasting your money on stuff that nobody actually wants. You could end up spending thousands just to have these items go right into the garbage.


While giving a free t-shirt with your logo on it to every customer might seem like cheap and easy advertising, it doesn’t mean anything if that customer never wears it.


In this episode of The Messengers Podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert explore different promotional materials to give away and why different items work better for different businesses.


They discuss what giveaways they’ve seen work and what they’ve seen that’s just fallen flat. They also break down how cost factors in, and give advice on why cutting corners and why cutting corners and going cheap is just a waste of money.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3709/You-Cant-Out-Walmart-Walmart-The-Messengers You Can’t Out-Walmart Walmart - The Messengers Many small businesses feel that their biggest threat is competition.

While competition can be a huge factor in the success or failure of many businesses, as the mega-corporations can always beat you on price, it’s not actually the biggest threat most businesses will face.

The true greatest threat to a business is time. Many businesses fail to innovate, change with the times, and keep up with advancements in technology and consumer preferences. They end up having to call it quits even without a Walmart moving into town.

A lack of foresight into the developments that can make a small business obsolete is a greater threat than any competitor could ever be.

In this episode, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert share their thoughts on why many businesses are either in the wrong business to begin with, or fail to change with the times and end up with a failing long-term strategy.

The duo shares some of the experiences that they’ve seen in their own business as well as in the businesses that their clients run. They also look at some local businesses who were looking at the wrong factors as threats and ultimately ended up having the close down, even without that threat actually manifesting itself.

Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3699/Balancing-Creativity-and-Clarity-in-Your-Marketing-Advertising-The-Messengers Balancing Creativity and Clarity in Your Marketing & Advertising - The Messengers The modern consumer has never been more bombarded by constant advertising at any point in history. So when crafting your company’s messaging, it’s more important than ever to carefully design your marketing and advertising to stand out in a consumer’s mind.

The perfect advertising campaign is a well-balanced mix of creativity and clarity, making sure the viewer doesn’t have to think too hard to get the message, while also being funny or clever enough to leave a lasting impression.

Often, marketers or businesses lean too far to one side of that formula, which means that their advertising is too dull or crowded to grab attention, or too complex to understand exactly what they’re trying to sell.

In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss some of the problems and obstacles that they’ve seen and faced in crafting advertising campaigns for themselves and their clients.

The hosts go over their own struggles to balance memorable advertising with a clear message and discuss some world-class examples of great ad design coming from companies like Geico and Absolut Vodka.

Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3679/Text-Marketing-Delivers-Big-Results-The-Messengers Text Marketing Delivers Big Results - The Messengers The hardest challenge any business can have is making sure their message reaches all of their customers who would be interested in what they offer, as well as reaches any potential new customers. Whether it’s an event, a sale, a new product or an inventory restock, it’s impossible to reach 100 percent of the audience that would be interested in what you have to say.


But you can certainly get close with text message marketing. Boasting open rates that approach 100% and action rates nearly 20x higher than email, texting your base is a much more efficient way to communicate with highly engaged customers and prospects. And since customers have to sign up, with the option to opt-out at any time, it never feels like spam the way email often does.


In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss the success they’ve seen implementing text message marketing for their own clients. They go over what makes this service so much more successful than a traditional email list, some of the initial skepticism their clients had and how the service ended up exceeding their expectations.


Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3669/Marketing-is-Meaningless-if-Youre-Not-Measuring-Your-Results-The-Messengers Marketing is Meaningless if You’re Not Measuring Your Results - The Messengers In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert address the issue of measuring whether or not you’re getting a return out of the investment you’re making in your marketing.


Setting up a marketing plan is only half of the battle. Without a detailed method for measuring the results of your efforts, it’s impossible to make the appropriate adjustments necessary for long-term success..


Chris and Rob discuss the most important things you need to know when setting up your marketing strategy and how to make sure you’re getting maximum value out of your marketing investment. This episode covers topics like:


- Testing multiple marketing techniques
- The differences between brand marketing and direct marketing
- Understanding the many sources of your leads
- Matching your marketing budget against your profit derived from new customers
- Methods to test direct marketing

Use the links below to watch or listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to get more from The Messengers on your favorite device or streaming service!


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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3551/Derek-The-Mannequin Derek & The Mannequin Rob's mannequin disappears during a product photo shoot and Derek is nowhere to be found.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3403/5-Holiday-Promotion-Ideas-for-Your-Business 5 Holiday Promotion Ideas for Your Business It’s the beginning of November, which means conversations about Christmas haven’t just started, they’ve been going on for weeks.

My local Lowe’s started rolling out the Christmas decorations in October.

Christmas Creep

While I can’t stand how early the holiday season starts these days, for your business it’s essential that you plan ahead to ensure you get maximum value out of a season that makes up a huge portion of many businesses' annual revenue.

Here are some ways you can do that for your business.

1. Use Facebook to Remarket Holiday Specials to Existing Customers

You do keep an active email list of your clients, don’t you?

If not, forget the New Year’s resolution and start building one now so you have it to use next year.

If so, it’s time to use it.

One of the most powerful advertising features on Facebook is the ability to create custom audiences.

Facebook Custom Audiences

Facebook custom audiences allow you to import your email list and serve ads to anyone on the list that has a Facebook account using the same email address.

Create a custom audience on Facebook

(This particular feature is far more useful for B2C companies as most B2B organizations likely have databases filled with work email addresses and not the personal emails that would be attached to someone’s Facebook account.)

 Custom Facebook audience from file

Once you've created your custom audience, create your ad targeting the new list of customers you just uploaded.

Now you're only paying to show your ad to users who you know are interested in purchasing what you sell.

2. Then Do the Same Thing On Google!

Google offers the same ability to target users based on their email address.

These don’t have to only be Gmail addresses or accounts, Google will try their best to match any email addresses you upload (and they do a pretty good job).

To create one, click on the "Shared Library" option on the left hand side of your AdWords account, then click "Audiences" -> "+ Remarketing List" -> "Customer emails" to upload your list.

AdWords Custom Audiences

After you've created your list, create your ad targeting the new audience you just created.

3. Take Advantage of “The Big Four”

The four big events to prepare for are Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday for non-profits.

All of them occur within a 5-day window so this is where planning ahead goes a long way.

Black Friday doesn’t have to apply only to large businesses.

People simply expect a great deal, but there’s nothing that says the smallest of businesses can’t find a way to offer those and take advantage of massive amounts of buyer traffic.

The key is not to give anything away for free.

Businesses exist to make a profit, so if you’re going to cut prices to the bone, you need to make sure you get something in return.

Remember the discussion of an email list earlier?

Maybe your Black Friday deals are only available to those who are on your email list.

Just be sure you have a way to allow them to sign up in the store!

You could do the same thing targeting only those who check in to your store on Facebook, like your page, write a review on Google or Yelp!, etc.

Like our page to save

Your other option is to only offer deals on loss-leaders or other items that encourage or require repeat business.

If you sell a product that requires individuals to regularly purchase supplies or services from you to continue using the product they bought (think the Swiffer Sweeper, Diaper Genie, DIRECTV, etc.), it’s pretty easy to justify selling these things at cost one day a year and make up for it on the repeat business from everyone that got such an amazing deal.

You can execute your Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday deals in much the same way.

Just be sure to get word out about the great deals you’re going to be offering ahead of time.

Use social media, use your email list, hang up flyers, send out postcards, advertise in the paper, and definitely advertise in the local discount circular where buyers are already hunting for great deals!

Black Friday Deals

For Giving Tuesday, set up a campaign with a goal to try to achieve throughout the day. Engage your followers and fans in helping you reach your goal.

Make sure you ask them to share the campaign with everyone they know, providing all of the creative and material they need to engage their own contacts.

Work with one or more of your larger or more regular donors to set the campaign up as a matching campaign.

People are much more likely to give with the knowledge that their dollars are going twice as far, and they're more likely to share if there's a consequence to not achieving the goal (i.e. you won't get the matching funds).

4. Develop a Holiday Buying Guide

Get together with a few other local (but not competitive) shops and pool your resources to develop a small (10 items or so) buyer’s guide with unique gift ideas for different people on your list.

Pet gift guide

Have each business pick something they sell in their store to feature as a gift idea for a specific persona (e.g. “For the New Mom” or “Great Gifts for Dad”) and work with a designer to put together a small catalog featuring the items, the price, and, of course, where they can purchase it!

Pool your mailing lists, use the USPS’s EDDM (Every-Door Direct Mail) service, and/or buy a new list of targeted prospects.

Develop a digital version with links to your website(s) and distribute it to all of the participating stores to put on their own websites and share on social media too.

5. Take Advantage of Post-Holiday Deals

The holiday madness is over? Great!

Almost everything is cheaper after the holidays when retailers are either looking to make room for new inventory or are simply trying to generate some revenue after everyone blew their paychecks in December.

One of the best (and least publicized) deals you can pick up is cheap advertising.

Just about every advertising outlet will offer deals in January.

Radio stations need to fill airtime, magazines and newspapers have excess inventory, as do websites and social media platforms.

For the traditional outlets, it’s important to have an idea of what the rates are the rest of the year so you can decide if you should negotiate further or jump on the deal of a lifetime before it goes away.

On digital outlets, as long as your campaigns are still running you should get better deals almost by default since most digital inventory is sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Less bidders generally means lower prices; just be sure to adjust your bids on all of your campaigns after the holidays to ensure you get the best rates possible!

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3390/Marketing-and-Advertising-Channels-Ranked-by-Value Marketing and Advertising Channels Ranked by Value While it might sound hypocritical coming from a company that routinely separates digital marketing as a service from things like printing, graphic design, and direct mail, treating digital marketing as this separate "thing" that’s unrelated to the rest of your marketing activities is a huge mistake.

Yes, we present those services to you in different and deliberate ways, but when we make decisions about how to deliver those messages, it’s all about picking something that works, regardless of the medium.

Separation of service offerings from Searles Graphics

I don’t care if I sell digital marketing via a direct mail piece, direct mail via email marketing, or printing via social media.

The truth is, all of those mediums work, and marketing in today’s world is about utilizing every tool at your disposal to reach the consumer wherever you’re most likely to influence a purchasing decision.

Read: How to Make Pokemon Go Work for Your Business

Marketing is marketing. It doesn’t matter what medium you use, the goal is still the same.

There are far too many people out there selling "digital marketing" as the end-all-be-all of marketing solutions in the modern business world.

Take Neil Patel, for instance. While I respect Neil's digital marketing chops immensely, and have even recommended his writing to you in the past, he's absolutely wrong about the future of digital vs print in the near term (even if he's right about self-driving cars as I'll discuss later).

Neil Patel quote

Most digital marketers don’t consider other options because they don’t understand them, don’t know how to buy them, don’t know how to measure them properly, or they just know that digital marketing is simply an easier sell right now.

It turns out, this is great news for smart marketers! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, great small business marketing takes advantages of inefficient markets, wherever they appear.

Print still works. And while that might change tomorrow, it's a fact today.

See: 10 Completely Free Ways to Promote Your Business

So, even if print media is on it's way out for good, that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of it before it goes away.

Here’s a good breakdown for small business owners on marketing and advertising opportunities that are currently over- and under-valued:

Overvalued

  • Television Ads

    Do you really still watch commercials? The one major exception to this is Super Bowl ads which are absolutely undervalued. Yes, $5 million for a 30-second spot at the Super Bowl is a steal … as long as you can afford it in the first place.

  • Banner Ads

    If it's not native, nobody cares, and ad-blockers are everywhere. Yes, I still buy these, but in a very specific way (which I'll cover in a future article so follow me for updates!).

  • Mobile Ads

    Seen as more of a nuisance than anything else; it’s rare to find a good implementation of mobile ads that deliver real value, not just accidental clicks that cost you money for no reason.

  • Snapchat Stories Ads

    This was just the wrong play and I can’t see any value here yet. Too easy to skip, too disruptive, I just don’t see these delivering the value Snapchat or their advertisers are hoping for.

  • Instagram Ads

    My own tests have yet to deliver equivalent value out of Instagram’s ad platform. Instagram definitely sees this which is why they’re beginning to force brands to switch to “Business accounts” which will allow them to curate feeds more like Facebook, forcing brands to pay to play in the future.

  • Twitter Ads

    Twitter is in trouble, and it remains to be seen if they can pull themselves out of it. Recent moves like buying the streaming rights to NFL games might help but as of yet, Twitter is simply too noisy for your ad to have a big enough impact to justify the cost for most small businesses. Mobile app downloads are probably the biggest caveat here.

Correctly Priced

  • Magazine Ads

    People still like reading and holding magazines. Millenials are increasingly looking for breaks from technology and a paid circulation is a paid circulation. Value is easy to calculate.

  • Newspaper Ads

    Depending on the newspaper and the type of business you run, some of the best advertising results I see today come from Newspaper ads.

  • Radio Ads

    It's hard to get people to pay for something they're used to getting for free, and the ad-supported model of local radio is still beating services like XM, Sirius, Spotify Premium, and Pandora, especially until more mobile data plans come with unlimited streaming options and/or self-driving cars cause a shift in drive-time habits from radio to streaming video (it will happen sooner than you think, trust me).

  • Trade Shows

    Assuming you pick the right shows for your business, it’s difficult to get in front of that many targeted buyers for a face-to-face interaction via any other medium.

  • Billboards

    Billboards still work provided you pick the right location and you're selling the right product.

Undervalued

  • Facebook Ads

    They're starting to catch up to being valued properly but Facebook ads still offer one of the greatest advertising options that has ever existed, period.

  • Snapchat Geofilters

    This was a genius way for Snapchat to monetize and there’s still a ton of unrealized value to be had for early adopters here.

  • Google AdWords

    You're inserting a link to your website in front of a person that’s specifically looking for the product or service you offer, does it really get any easier than that?

  • Email

    Email services like MailChimp offer free tiers for small businesses, and extremely inexpensive options as you scale up. Worth every penny if you provide useful content that your subscribers really want to see in their inbox.

  • Direct Mail

    Surprised? That’s why this is a great buy. As baseball great Willie Keeler famously put it, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t!” Better advice for marketing has never been given. If your competitors aren’t doing it, that means the door’s wide open to be the only one like you at the party. Sounds like value to me.

  • Content Marketing

    If you’re reading this right now, it’s because content marketing works, and it works well. It’s a beast, but it’s worth every minute and penny you have to put into making it successful.

  • Signage

    Great signage extends well beyond just your name on a building and can mean the difference between a customer entering your store or walking right by.

  • YouTube / Facebook Video

    Pre-roll video ads on YouTube are one of the only ways to actually get a user a view a video ad these days (see "overvalued TV ads" above). But even better is making the content of the video so good that people actually WANT to watch and share it.

  • Influencer Marketing

    Influencer marketing is the modern equivalent of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing a game of HORSE for a Big Mac and fries. It works and there's more opportunity than ever.

This is not an exhaustive list but it's a good start and should get you thinking about ways to capitalize on undervalued opportunities, regardless of where they exist.

So stop thinking about your marketing in terms of digital vs traditional, because those terms simply don't apply anymore.

I don't care how I reach you, as long as I reach you, and I’ll continue to do that via digital, print, in person networking, or anything else I can for as long as those efforts produce results.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3367/Do-You-Really-Need-to-Advertise Do You Really Need to Advertise? I'm always amazed at the number of people I meet that are starting a business without any money allocated to an advertising budget.

That being said, there are some amazing ways to market your business without breaking the bank. In fact, it's something that Searles Graphics specializes in.

But are they enough? Isn't that what the title "Growth Hacker" is all about?

There are two different types of businesses that believe they don't need to advertise: Those that are currently doing just fine (and are satisfied with that) and those that will soon be out of business.

On the other hand, if you want your business to be here for a long time and if you want growth, you simply can't get away with not advertising.

Let's examine some of the most popular reasons why individuals believe they don't need to advertise.

1. I get all my customers by word-of-mouth.

Great! But what happens when you have a customer that's just not blown away enough to recommend you?

Maybe they want to recommend you but they don't remember the name of your business or any of your contact information when it's most important.

How about when a new competitor enters your space, undercuts you on price, and promotes themselves everywhere?

Word-of-mouth is great because it amplifies your business exponentially when things are going well.

The more customers you have, the more that talk about you, which turns into more customers and more referrals.

On the flip side, this principle also means the biggest problem with relying solely on word-of-mouth advertising is that when things go bad, they go REALLY bad.

Losing one customer doesn't mean losing just that one customer, but everybody in the chain that would have come after them.

Without any other engine driving referrals or new business, you're in serious trouble.

2. I use social media, and that's free!

Awesome! You SHOULD be marketing yourself on social media.

But what happened when Facebook changed their algorithm and that group of fans you worked so hard and spent so much time building up stopped seeing all of your posts?

What about Twitter's recent changes to do the same? And Instagram's?

Twitter and Instagram curated feeds

What if they all decided tomorrow that they were going to charge you just to keep your account active? Think it can't happen?

Why not? You don't own anything on any of those platforms (except maybe the content you put up there, but even that has been called into question on multiple occassions).

If you spent 5 years building an awesome following of 20,000 fans on Facebook, would you really not pay $100 / month or so to keep it?

Most would. For everyone else, it wouldn't de-value the platform at all for the user-base.

It's a much more likely scenario than you think. Honestly, it's pretty much already happened.

Is there really a difference between charging you to access the account vs charging you to reach the people who follow your page?

Facebook advertising reach to page fans

The latter is simply Facebook's way of price-scaling access based on the size of their customer - i.e. bigger customers / companies have bigger followings, bigger pockets, and consequently pay more to reach all of their fans.

3. I get a lot of press coverage.

Fantastic! But what happens when the coverage dies down (it always does)?

PR is amazing and should be a highly sought after weapon in your marketing arsenal, but it's fickle and unpredictable.

As soon as you're not new or interesting, your press coverage will disappear and you're left without anything feeding your pipeline.

4. I'm a great digital marketer.

Congratulations! Digital marketing is easy to be mediocre at but quite difficult to be great at (like most things), so you're doing well on that front.

First, a clarification for those of you who are asking, "How is digital marketing different from social media?"

Digital marketing does encompass social media, but expands beyond that to include things like email marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization, which comes with it's own list of sub-categories like inbound link building, on-page optimization, etc.

So you're a great digital marketer, but what about prospects that don't use the platforms you're marketing on?

You've seen Facebook's TV ads, right? Yes, that's right, Facebook advertises on television. (The video below should strike a particular chord with Pied Piper fans ... )

Similarly, I get direct mail advertisements from Google constantly.

Yes, you also heard that right; I get direct mail from Google regularly advertising their digital advertising products and services. Here's a variable data direct-mail piece Google recently sent me (NextStop Magazine is one of our publications):

Google variable data print ad

Why? Because people that still are not on Facebook are likely the same people who still watch live TV (commercials and all, gasp!), and people that don't already advertise with Google likely spend less time online and more time with traditional media.

It's also important to remember that the time to start advertising is not when things slow down.

Advertising takes time to work, it's not like turning a faucet on and off. So if you're not getting the word out consistently, you're going to be in trouble until you get your campaigns built, fine-tuned, and start generating and converting leads.

So do you really HAVE to advertise? No, you don't really HAVE to do anything, but if you want to see real results and real growth, you'll start.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3347/Direct-Mail-Outperforms-Email-for-Purchase-Decisions Direct Mail Outperforms Email for Purchase Decisions In a recent study conducted by Temple University comparing the relative effectiveness of digital advertising vs direct mail advertising, researchers concluded that direct mail had a deeper and longer-lasting impact than email advertising.

Researchers showed test subjects a variety of 40 email and postcard advertisements and measured the subjects' responses in a variety of ways in an effort to determine whether one medium showed a significant advantage over the other for marketers. Eye tracking technology was used to visual attention in reaction to predetermined areas of interest. Biometric sensors measured heart rate, sweat levels, motion, and respiration to monitor the level of emotional engagement with the ad. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to pinpoint deep brain activity to measure more brain activity that's thought to influence purchase behavior more than surface activity (e.g. empathy and reward).

The results of the study showed the physical, direct mail ads outperformed or equaled their digital counterparts in all but one of the nine areas measured. The direct mail pieces outperformed the email ads in the areas of:

  • Review Time - The amount of time a customer spends with an ad.
  • Stimulation - An emotional reaction to an ad.
  • Memory Speed & Confidence - Quickly and confidently remember advertising source and content.
  • Desirability - A subconscious desire for the product or service.
  • Valuation - The subconscious value a participant places on the product or service.

The study found the following three areas performed equivalently for both the direct mail and email marketing pieces:

  • Engagement - The amount of information a customer processes or absorbs from an ad.
  • Memory Retrieval Accuracy - Accurately remembering the advertising source and content.
  • Purchase and Willingness to Pay - Whether and how much the customer is willing to pay for a product.

The digital ads were found to be superior in gaining a subject's focused attention on key parts of the ad for a sustained period of time.

As the study notes, self-reported survey results demonstrated little difference between participants' preferences for digital ads vs phsyical advertisements, however the physical ads had a longer-lasting impact than the digital ads. And while the participants stated similar preferences and willingness to pay for an item regardless of the medium it was presented in, their brain activity indicated a greater subconscious value and desire for products and services advertised in a physical format. It goes on to note, "Previous research indicated that activity in this portion of the brain (the ventral striatum), responsible for valuation and desirability, was a strong predictor of purchases, which merits further research."

There are certainly some caveats to note here. The first is that this is a single study, and although it was conducted independently at Temple University, it was commissioned by the Postal Service Inspector General's Office. It's also a study representing a sample size of 59 people, with 39 of those participating in the follow-up study a week later. This is hardly a significant portion of the population and it would be good to see these results replicated before jumping to any major conclusions. Finally, while 40 different ads should represent a significant variance in content, design, and structure, each of these items can play a huge factor in engagement and response rates which needs to be 

The take away here is not that you should ditch your digital efforts and switch everything back to print, or that the caveats noted above completely negate some legitimate and interesting findings. Both mediums have advantages and disadvantages (as found in this study), and as we've always stressed, it's critical to use a varied marketing mix to reach your customers and prospects in a way that proves to be most effective for your business, industry, product, and individual clients.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3328/What-Are-Ad-Blockers-and-Why-Should-You-Care What Are Ad Blockers and Why Should You Care? If you're not familiar with ad blockers, you're now in the minority. Ad blockers are extensions you can install for your browser that, well, block ads.

The technology has varying degrees of success based on exactly which ads you don't want to see. Although they may not be flawless in their pursuit of an ad-free experience, they are extremely effective. In fact, ad blockers have become so good that for the first time ever Facebook recognized ad blocking technology as a significant risk factor to it's business model in their annual 10-K filing.

Interest in ad blockers was relegated to techies for a long time and remained relatively stagnant from 2005 until mid 2012. However, beginning mid-2012, interest in ad blocking technology has exploded and ad blockers have now gone mainstream.

If you read my stuff regularly and atually listen to my advice, you should only be mildly concerned about the affect this may have on your business. Why? Because I am constantly urging you to create original, compelling content, increase your organic search results, think of your business as a media company regardless of what you sell, and to continue (or begin) to invest in print marketing.

By creating unique, compelling content, you're giving people something they want to see rather than annoying them with an ad they want to block.

Optimizing your website for organic search to increase your search engine rankings means you're oging to be found when someone is looking for you, whether or not they have an ad blocker installed.

Investing in print means giving a client or prospect something they don't have the ability not to see. There's no such thing as an ad filter for the United States Postal Service, and if you're using print effectively, you should be sending something your recipient wants to see anyway.

Thinking of your business as a media company means learning how to be an amazing storyteller (or hiring someone to help). By telling a story instead of pushing a product, you can continually reinforce who you are and what your brand stands for. And by doing it extremely well, you're entertaining instead of annoying, and hopefully creating something people want to talk about and share.

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3326/If-Youre-Not-Testing-Youre-Failing If You're Not Testing You're Failing I love to snow ski but here on Long Island, getting to the mountains isn't the easiest of trips. This tends to leave large gap in ability between those who ski once or twice a year and those who are lucky and dedicated enough to spend more time on the moutain.

The result is an interesting phenomenon where a large number of beginner or intermediate snow skiers inevitably steer the conversation toward how frequently they or you fall while on the mountain. It's their litmus test to decide how good a skier somebody is. Someone who doesn't fall much is a good skier, and vice versa.

I'm a good skier. I may not be the best but I can hang with anybody and ski anything (shy of what you see in the movies - my cliff-hucking days are long behind me, if they ever existed at all), and I fall often. In fact, the best skiers I know are those that fall the most often, not the least. So when this topic comes up, my response is always the same, "if you're not falling, you're not learning."

The point is that it's easy to do the same things every day and get better at those things over time. But while you're trying not to fail, others are leap-frogging you because they're pushing their limits, trying new things, falling, getting back up, trying something else, and improving exponentially with every iteration. You may end up with a few bumps and bruises along the way, and it might hurt a little in the short-term, but the long-term rewards are well worth the short-term sacrifices.

Which brings us to our topic: Testing.

It's tedious. It's time consuming. It can be frustratingly slow, and it can cost you in the short-term. Yet it's the most important thing you can do to drive consistent, incremental improvements in every aspect of your business.

If you're not familiar with the concept of A/B testing, it's been used in the advertising industry for years. The basic premise is to produce two pieces of nearly identical content with a single change to one version that you believe will result in a better performing ad, and then measure the results. In advertising, frequently that means trying two different headlines, calls-to-action, images, or placement of any or all of the above.

While a lot of SMBs aren't familiar with this concept, even fewer are aware of how widely you can apply A/B testing throughout your business.

The underlying goal of A/B testing is constant, incremental change that increases organizational knowledge and provides continuous improvement. This is achieved by continually testing your assumptions and challenging the status quo; making changes where necessary and refraining from changing something that already works well.

Ok, that's a lot of conceptual talk, how can you apply this to your business or your job?

The most important thing to understand is that this concept works best when it's ingrained in the culture of your organization. Testing shouldn't just be something that happens every once in a while when you decide you want to try something out. It's something everyone in your organization should understand the value of and be empowered to implement.

For most businesses, advertising and marketing is an easy first step on the road to becoming a testing maniac. Digital advertising makes it very easy to A/B test, and most (if not all) modern digital ad platforms give you the ability to easily test multiple versions of the same ad. For example, Facebook advertising allows you to build a single ad and test up to five different images at a time, or to simply copy an existing ad, make a simple change, and run the two side-by-side in the same ad group for as long as you need to determine a winner.

In your ads, test everything you can: Headlines, calls-to-action, images, descriptive text, display URLs, etc. Just remember that you need to measure your results against a goal. If that goal is traffic to your website, most clicks wins (although it should be noted that this is the most basic measure of performance and probably one of the worst). A better option is to set your goal as quality traffic to your website and then determine what that means to you. Maybe it's a user that visits four or more pages because you make money by selling ad-space on your site.

If you want users to fill out a form, join your mailing list, or buy something from you, then your goal is conversions (a four-page visit could also be considered a conversion, but that's just semantics). Conversions have gotten much easier to measure performance against, and again, all modern digital ad platforms have built in conversion rate measurement and testing options. This metric is far better because you can build an ad that drives a lot of traffic at a very small cost; but if it's not well-targeted traffic, they'll leave your site as soon as they arrive. Well-targeted traffic might cost you a bit more per click, but the resulting increases in conversion rates should be worth it.

On the other side, quality landing pages on your website can do everything from lowering your cost-per-click (CPC) to increasing conversion rates, so it's important to test those too. Maybe you want to test an intro video against a static image and some text, or requiring more information to download your whitepaper to see if you can capture more information about your prospects without lowering your conversion rates. Here again, call-to-action and headline placement and copy can also be tested and optimized.

The same goes for email. One of the reasons I've been pushing my clients to MailChimp from Constant Contact is the extensive built-in testing functionality. Test subject lines, images, image placement, calls-to-action, copy, and design to find the optimal way to present your information. If your mailing list is large enough to support it, the best way to do this is to send your test emails to a small subset of your list, then send the winner to everybody else.

It's important to understand how powerful this can be. If you have 15,000 subscribers and you can increase click-through rates by just 1% by writing a more compelling subject line, 150 more people just performed the action you wanted them to. Then, if you've optimized your landing page and again convert just 1% more of your visitors, that's 2 people that buy from you that never would have before (not to mention converting the additional 1% of those that would have clicked through your email anyway if you're following the math correctly ;-).

This tactic isn't just limited to digital advertising. Print ads can just as easily be tested. If the publication you're advertising with won't allow you to run two different ads in the same issue (most won't), get a better rate by signing a longer term contract and test them one after the other (being sure to account for any differences in season, of course). It's not as immediate a result as digital, but "get rich quick" is a myth and this stuff takes time and effort to get right.

If you're doing direct mail, it's a lot easier. Print two versions, provide a unique phone number or URL for each version and track which one gets more calls or traffic.

For both print and digital you can (and should) also test placement. Do you get a lower cost-per-conversion on Facebook or AdWords? In the local newspaper or a trade publication?

Where this really gets fun (yes, I'm a huge dork, I actually love this stuff!) is when you start experimenting and testing stuff that's a little more outside the box. Do you have trouble getting through your email every day? Test a new approach to managing your inbox for a week and measure your productivity. Manage a retail store? Test product placement and see if you can find ways to draw customers to higher margin items or impulse purchases at the register.

Run a manufacturing facility? Study your process to identify bottlenecks then design and test alternative solutions. Find that you consisitently don't hire the best candidates? Test changes to your screening and interviewing process and see which employees last longer or produce better results.

You can apply this anywhere efficiencies can be gained or results can be improved. If you're having a hard time figuring out where you can apply this to your business and you need ideas, feel free to reach out to me anytime.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3325/Whats-the-Difference-Between-Sheet-Fed-and-Web-Printing What's the Difference Between Sheet-Fed and Web Printing? Here at Searles Graphics we've traditionally run sheetfed offset presses. Within the last decade we've invested heavily in digital printing as well. One thing we've never offered is web printing. Most consumers don't have any idea what type of printing press the finished piece they're looking at ran on. Luckily, you won't be one of those after reading this ;-).

I've written about digital printing and I've written about offset printing so please check those articles out to get an idea for the differences between the two, and know that both offset and digital printing provide options for sheet fed and web presses, with the primary advantages and disadvantages of both being similar.

If you follow Searles Graphics on social media or have been on our website before, you've no doubt seen pictures and video of our sheet-fed presses in action. The primary difference between web presses and sheet-fed presses is that web presses feed off of a large roll of paper, while sheet-fed presses feed individual sheets of paper.

Ok, you're asking, "So what? Why is their a difference and what does that mean to me?" Easy, I'm getting there ...

All paper is manufactured in rolls. As such, there is a cost involved in sheeting paper; that is, the process of taking a large roll of paper, slicing it into individual sheets of a certain size, and stacking and/or packaging those sheets. This makes purchasing sheets of paper more expensive than purchasing rolls.

It's also slower and more difficult to feed sheets into a press than it is to continuously feed a roll.

All that being said, in order to produce a finished product, that giant roll of paper needs to be cut, folded, and bound just the same. The difference is in where this occurs in the process.

On a web press, printing, folding, and sheeting all happens in line. After all, those rolls of paper are extremely heavy, so moving them from place to place is both cost prohibitive and difficult, so it's important to only have to do that once, rather than in between each step in the process. This video is of a monster Manroland heatset web press:

As a result, once a web press is running, the printing, folding, and sheeting/sheet handling process is significantly faster, reducing overhead and production times.

On the other hand, all that functionality comes at a cost. Web presses are larger, heavier, more expensive, costlier to maintain, and require far more in terms of infrastructure and power requirements. Some large web presses are so loud while running that they need to be run inside specially-designed sound-dampening enclosures.

Having all of that functionality inline also means that if one thing goes wrong anywhere in the process, the entire process can come to a screeching halt, so downtime is far more impactful on operating costs. With sheet-fed, downtime on a folder or cutter doesn't stop your press from running, and it's far less expensive to have a backup in place and ready to go.

Make-ready costs and waste are also much higher with web printing than with sheet-fed because of the size and complexity of the press. Here's a video of a sheet-fed Heidelberg press:

Similar to the differences between digital and offset printing, all of these trade-offs in cost and speed have break-even points where the speed of production more than makes up for the added costs. Essentially, longer runs tend to be more economical on web presses vs sheet fed (think newspapers and jobs requiring hundreds-of-thousands of impressions as a general idea, but be sure to talk to a printer about your specific needs).

Here's a good overview of the cost structure of a printing job, especially as it pertains to economies of scale. ]

Finally, there's the difference in the finished product. All that speed comes with trade-offs in quality. No matter how you put it on a sheet, ink needs to be applied wet and allowed to dry. With sheet-fed presses, ink is either allowed to dry naturally over time as it absorbs into the sheet, or the sheet itself is coated with a laminate and then dried through a heating unit on it's way to being delivered to the end of the press.

With web presses, because the folding process occurs inline and at such a high speed, it's critical to expedite the drying process.

Traditional or "cold" web presses only work with uncoated paper. Without a coating on the sheet, the ink is able to absorb into the sheet to dry. This is the newsprint you're used to when you read the newspaper. It's not an ideal process as is evident from the remnants you undoubtedly end up with on your hands after handling newsprint.

The other option is heatset web printing, which is the process used for the major publications you see every day on the magazine rack. Heatset web printing can be used on both coated and uncoated stocks.

On a heatset web press, after the roll passes through the impression units, it is run through an oven that dries the ink on top of the paper before it's absorbed into the sheet. This lack of absorbtion (mostly on coated stocks) yields a glossy shine, and it's also why the ink is more likely to rub off onto your fingers if you hold onto the page too long (anybody that's ever read a magazine on the beach or by the pool in the summer can attest to that!).

As a side note, it's also common for the covers of some magazines or catalogs to be printed on sheet-fed presses as a high-quality wrapper around lower-quality interior pages that are printed on a web press.

One final drawback of heatset web printing is a phenomenon known as fluting. Fluting doesn't happen on every job, but when it does, it's problematic. Drying ink at such high temperatures also affects the paper, which contains moisture. The heat draws moisture out of the sheet, which actually causes the paper to shrink. Depending on the amount of ink coverage on the piece, some parts of the sheet will lose more moisture than others, causing a sort of ripple, or wave effect on the page.

All of this brings us to some basic realizations. If quality is of the utmost importance and/or you're not doing very large quantities, sheetfed printing is usually your best option. If quantity and speed are the primary factors, web printing is generally the way to go.

One final caveat to all of this ... technology is constantly getting better across the board. So just as the quality of web printing has gotten significantly better over the years, so too has the speed of sheetfed printing, blurring the lines a lot more than ever before. The job that used to only be feasible on a web press might be able to run on a sheetfed press now, and the high-quality job you couldn't afford to do on a sheetfed press and didn't want to do on a web press could be a possibility on a modern heatset web press.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3317/Our-Latest-Innovation-Launches-Today-and-Its-a-Big-One Our Latest Innovation Launches Today and It's a Big One! We continue to innovate and provide new products and services to our clients at a pace unmatched in our industry! I could tell you all about what we're launching today, but I figure it's much better to just show you. Watch the video below and prepare for something you've never seen before.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3282/Introducing-CorporateNotepadscom Introducing CorporateNotepads.com! Anybody that's worked with us for any amount of time knows about our notepads. We've been producing them for ourselves for decades now and they're one of the best marketing tools we use. While we've always printed notepads for clients, it's not something we've ever really pushed. That changes today!

Today we launched a new custome notepad service at CorporateNotepads.com. The goal is to provide the same amazing marketing tool we've always used to other businesses in a simple and convenient package where you can complete an order in minutes.

Notepads are an amazing marketing and promotional item for a number of reasons. First, everybody uses a scratchpad / notepad at home and at work. Whether you're writing a to do list, a shopping list, taking a message for someone, writing a reminder for yourself, or you just need pen and paper to work something out, you always need a place to write notes.

At the same time, marketing is mostly about keeping your brand in front of prospects. What better way to do that then to have your logo, name, and contact information on the notepads that are kept on someone's desk or coffee table? Not only does that person constantly see your brand, but so does everyone that gets a message, list, or note from that individual.

People spend a lot of money on promotional items that don't work very well because they have no utility. But how many times have you been caught with a pen but nothing to write on so you scramble to scratch a note out on anything you can find? You're not the only one.

So for everyone that's a regular reader here, a customer of ours, a follower of mine, or just passing through, please take a look at our new site, corporatenotepads.com and give it a test drive. Even if you decide not to buy (but you definitely should), I'd love to get your feedback. Call me, tweet to me, email me, message me on Instagram, contact me through my website, contact me through Searles Graphics' website ... whatever works best for you!

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3275/Gateway-Playhouse-Summer-Season-Announced;-Playbill-Space-Now-Available Gateway Playhouse Summer Season Announced; Playbill Space Now Available The summer 2016 lineup for the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport has been announced and advertising in the playbill is now available. This season, the Gateway is presenting 4 shows at the Gateway's theater in Bellport and 2 shows at the Patchogue Theatre. This summer's lineup features:

  • Anything Goes
  • Ain't Misbehavin'
  • Priscilla Queen of the Desert
  • The Rocky Horror Show
  • Million Dollar Quartet
  • Dancing with the Movies

The Gateway playbill offers a unique opportunity to reach a targeted, captive, high-income audience that enjoys a number of activities and entertainment options. Audiences include a variety of age groups who enjoy a night on the town and lead active lifestyles. From a value perspective, the playbill offers the best media buy available anywhere on Long Island and each year reaches over 100,000 patrons.

The Gateway is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and advertising in the playbill helps support the Gateway's mission of advancing the arts on Long Island, in addition to providing outstanding performance for your ad dollars.

Advertising in the Gateway playbill is coordinated by Searles Graphics and more information (including ad sizes, show dates, and rates) can be found by visiting www.gatewayplaybill.com.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3260/5-Tips-for-Working-with-a-Logo-Designer 5 Tips for Working with a Logo Designer We've designed hundreds if not thousands of logos here at Searles Graphics over the years. You could say our artists have a little bit of experience in the field. That's why I reached out to some of Searles Graphics' finest graphic designers to have them share their tips for working with a logo designer to make sure you get exactly what you need.

1. Be Specific

A logo is personal to you and your business. When discussing what you want, avoid vague words like "original," "unique," "different," "eye-catching," or "interesting." As graphic designers, we strive to do that in most of what we do; they don't give us much to go on. Try and give us words with more volume that better describe who you are, what you do, and/or what your business represents.

- Erica Barnett

2. Be Color-Aware, but Not Color-Critical

Color is extremely important, so if you have specific colors you want to use, make sure you communicate that clearly. However, your logo needs to be extremely versatile. If you're doing your job right it will be continuously used and translated to a variety of different media and applications. If you get too caught up in color, you're only going to be disappointed when it's time to go from PMS to 4-color process to the web to black and white ...

- Nicole Jakob and Derek Wells

3. Be Clear and Specific when Describing Your Business, Your Market, and Your Customers

It's important that we understand your target market; who are your primary customers and what demographic do they fall into. Your logo needs to appeal to your customers more than anyone, so it's critical that any logo design communicates who you are to your target client-base.

- Rob Seifert

4. Be Involved

Because a logo is personal and a representation for all you and your business stand for, it's crucial to be a part of it from start to finish. We enjoy feedback and the challenge to give you exactly what you are looking for and more. Don’t hesitate to give direction, but also remember to keep an open mind.

- Nicole Jakob and Erica Barnett

5. ... but Don't Be an Art Director

Remember, you're hiring a graphic designer for their artistic ability and creativity. It's important to give direction, but it's also important to allow your logo designer to be creative. More often than not, if you're working with a talented designer, they might surprise you with something you would have never thought of yourself. They also have a lot more experience in working with logos than you do. A great logo designer will be able to anticipate future problems when it comes time to use your logo in different ways, and help you avoid them during the initial design process.

- All (plus every graphic artist ever :-) )

 

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3259/Printing-Basics-What-Does-the-Weight-of-Paper-Mean Printing Basics: What Does the Weight of Paper Mean? If you're not experienced in buying printing (and even if you are), the terminology we use can be difficult to understand at time. In the past we've written about things like saddle-stitching, 4-color printing, offset printing, PMS color matching, digital printing, image resolutions for print, variable data printing, and perfect binding to help give you a better understanding of the basics of print media. But all of these processes would be nothing without the substrate they're printed on. The stock (paper) you choose for your print job matters a lot and can make or break a commercial print job.

We often hear terms like "thick card stock" or "poster board" but the problem with those terms is that they're subjective and somewhat meaningless. What we consider thick may not be thick enough for you, and you can make a poster out of just about anything. Like most problems, however, there's a solution - although it might not be as simple as you're hoping.

When we talk about paper weights, we're really talking about is what we call the basis weight of that stock. The basis weight of paper is how much (in pounds) 500 sheets of that particular stock weighs in that paper's basic sheet size. Pretty simple, right? Well, here's where things start to get tricky.

For some reason (that was decided well before my time), different types of paper have a different basic sheet size. I'm going to discuss the three that are most common for you to see today (stocks like tag and index are far less common these days so we're going to leave those out for simplicity).

The three most common types of paper you'll see or hear about from your printer are bond, text, and cover weights. It should be noted that while bond and offset used to be quite different, these days they're essentially completely interchangeable and most mills no longer even distinguish between the two, they make one stock and either call it a bond or an offset. However, because they label it one way or the other, we still need to talk about both because the weights are very different depending which way they've chosen to label it.

The basic sheet size of bond is 17" x 22", text is 25" x 38", and cover is 20" x 26". The three most common weights of bond are 20 lb., 24 lb., and 28 lb., which correlate exactly to offset (uncoated text) weights of 50 lb., 60 lb., and 70 lb., respectively (i.e. 20 lb. bond = 50 lb. offset). For cover stocks, 60 lb, 65 lb, 80 lb. and 100 lb. tend to be the most common weights. Once you go higher than 100 lb. cover, the weights that are available are very dependent on the actual stock, with values anywhere like 111 lb. (don't ask me why) and 130 lb.

As if that wasn't enough to confuse you, here's where things really get interesting. Although we commonly use weights to indicate a thickness, the weight of the stock doesn't necessarily correlate to thickness, even within the same category.

One of the questions we get quite often goes something like, "Why is this 80 lb. uncoated cover so much thicker than the 80 lb. coated cover?" This is the inherent problem with specifying a weight when what you really care about is thickness. In this particular instance, the coating on the paper actually adds a lot of weight to the sheet. In order to get 500 sheets of the coated stock to weigh the same as 500 sheets of the uncoated stock, the paper needs to be much thinner.

If what you really care about is the thickness of the paper, a better approach is to specify a thickness, or "point" size (often referred to as the "caliper" when shopping for paper). This is a measurement of how thick the sheet is in thousandths of an inch. So one sheet of a 10 pt. stock measures .01 inches, regardless of it's basis weight. A 10 pt. stock generally equates to a 100 lb. coated cover, and an 80 lb. uncoated cover. For text weight stocks, the difference between coated and uncoated thickness by basis weight are even greater. A 60 lb. offset sheet is roughly equivalent to a 100 lb. coated text sheet; both around 4.7-4.8 pt.

It's important to have an understanding of the basics when you buy printing so you have a general sense of what you're asking for and what you're going to get. If it's a brand-critical piece (rather than a cheap instruction set you're including with your product), it's even more important to sit down with your commercial printer and discuss what you want so they can provide you with a range of options to meet your needs and your budget. If they can't do that, then it's time to find a new printer!

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/3204/Anybody-that-Tells-You-Print-Is-Dead-Is-Lying-to-You Anybody that Tells You Print Is Dead Is Lying to You "Print is dead." It's a message we are bombarded with constantly, but is it true?

Nope. In fact, there may never have been a bigger opportunity in print marketing than there is right now. Why, you ask? How much mail do you get today versus 20 years ago? My bet is significantly less. How excited are you when you get something in the mail because of it? My bet is far more excited than when you get an email.

I'm sure most people remember the old days of direct mail marketing. You go through your mail every day and sort out the massive piles of junk mail, put all the bills in a pile, and maybe there's something leftover that's not one of those two, but probably not. Later that day, you'd login to America Online (they weren't AOL yet), and get super excited as you waited to hear those three magic words; "You've got mail!"

My how times have changed. Email has become such a huge, almost mundane, part of our lives that there's no excitement over getting a new email anymore. It's just a given that they're going to funnel in all day long. On the other hand, when we reach into the mailbox and pull out a magazine we subscribed to, or a letter, or even a catalog from a company we like shopping with, there's an excitement attached to it that was missing for a long time.

The smartest marketers of the mid-to-late-'90s jumped on email as a marketing opportunity as quickly as they could to capitalize on that excitement factor. That's how fast you should be jumping on the print bandwagon right now.

I'm not saying email marketing is dead - far from it. We're actually investing heavily in email as a primary channel and encouraging our clients to do the same. Nor am I saying that you should time-warp back to 1990 and resurrect the same marketing strategies you were using back then. What I am saying is that there are huge opportunities for the right kind of print marketing that will get your targets excited about hearing from you.

Don't believe me? Look at the image attached to this article. That was a variable data print mail piece sent to me by Google. Yes, that Google. And better yet, what were they trying to sell me? Digital advertising! One of the largest and most recognized tech companies in the world spends money on direct mail print advertising to drive revenue to their digital advertising services.

Need more examples? Red Bull, one of the most progressive media companies on the planet (yes, I said media company, not energy drink company) publishes a highly targeted print magazine, The Red Bulletin. This publication distributes 2.3 million copies globally, half of whom are under the age of 34. Content Marketing Institute, a business dedicated to serving marketers that deliver original, high-quality content to their audience, also sees the value in print marketing. Not only do they preach print marketing to their audience of over 150,000 email subscribers, but they practice it as well with their CCO (Chief Content Officer) Magazine, a subscription-based printed magazine.

So what is the right kind of print marketing for you? The answer is different for everybody and depends on a lot of factors. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or via email and I would be happy to take a quick look at what you're doing, or contact us at Searles Graphics if you want a more in-depth analysis of how you can make print work for your business. Either way, it's time to seriously think about making print a primary medium for your marketing or content strategy.

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http://www.christophersearles.com/3181/What-should-I-name-my-business What should I name my business? What do I name my business? This is a question I see entrepreneurs struggle with constantly. After all, your business name is the first thing people see and notice about your new company, right?

Nope. The first thing people notice about your company is your product. You can have the greatest business name in the history of business names, but if your product or service sucks, you're doomed.

I touched on this topic in my post about how important a logo design is to your business, but it can't be said enough. Your business name is important to an extent, but your primary focus has to be on delivering a fantastic product that the market wants at a price they can afford; and then following that product up with impeccable service. If you do that right, your business name could be Craptastic Garbage Inc. and people will find it "cheeky" instead of representative of your product or brand.

Just 20 years ago, Google (or rather, googol) was just a number. Before that, an apple was just a fruit, and at one point IBM dominated the meat and cheese slicer and commercial scales markets as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (or C-T-R) before changing it's name to International Business Machines in 1924 (ok, so maybe they didn't dominate the meat and cheese slicer market but they were a part of it!).

I said it in my logo design article and I'll say it again now (with one small change): The business name doesn't make the brand, the brand makes the business name. Coca-Cola might be the worst business name ever. The name literally was drived from it's two "medicinal" ingredients: Kola nuts and extract of coca leaves (ahem, cocaine). Despite that fact, the name remains because the company that was built behind it makes you forget where it came from.

With all that being said, I know you're still going to stress out about naming your business so here are a few tips when it comes to generating a business name. There are a lot of business name generators out there on the web. Don't use them! It's also important you don't use a domain registry service to search for business names. Companies like GoDaddy make millions when you search for a domain name you're interested in and don't buy it right away. Once they see you want it, if you don't snatch it up, they will. Then, when you return because you're ready to purchase it, it's suddenly a "premium" domain name that will cost you $2500 instead of the $12.99 you were originally quoted.

If you're worried about obtaining the URL to match your business name (and you should be), there are two tools I use often that I trust. The first is Domainr which utilizes all of the available TLDs to help try to match your request even if the .com is taken. Non-standard TLD's like .co, .ly, .media, and .club are starting to become more common so I say go for it if you can find one that you like. The other tool I use often is Bust A Name which will take in a list of words and try different combinations to present you with a list of available names.

Feel free to ask a few people but don't go crazy. I'm sure every single one of the businesses I listed above (along with every one I didn't list) had people who thought the names could have been better. Bottom line, pick something and work your ass off to make it a household name because people can't stop talking about how amazing your product or service is.

Photo: Flickr | Andrew Eland

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http://www.searles.media/blog/3169/5-Facebook-Marketing-Tips-for-Small-Businesses 5 Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses I often see small businesses make the decision that they "need to be on Facebook" without taking the time to truly understand the platform and figure out how to make it work for them. While you may get something out of simply having a Facebook presence that you post to every once in a while, by-and-large you definitely won't get back enough value to justify the time you put into it.

When it comes to your social media marketing, the most important thing you can do is to educate yourself first (take a look at my introduction to Twitter when you're done here). To that end, here are five quick tips to help you with your Facebook marketing and advertising efforts.

1. Determine Your Goals

Before you embark on any marketing or advertising effort, it's important to determine what your goals are for that activity; social media marketing is no different. Social media activity in-and-of-itself is useless if it doesn't provide some return on your investment. It's up to you to determine how to both define and get that return. Whether you're a deli or a restaurant looking for a good way to get your daily specials out, or a community newspaper that wants a platform to build a bigger, you need to have a clear idea of what constitutes success. From there, make sure to re-evaluate your goals on a regular basis and make sure your content falls in line with your goals.

2. Use "Boost Posts" Sparingly and Strategically

About two years ago, Facebook made one of the best business decisions it ever has; they provided the ability for page admins to pay to boost their regular posts as ads. This was fantastic for Facebook and potentially damaging to small businesses that don't use it properly. This feature is a fantastic way to quickly and easily test content and ads. It isn't an end-all-be-all solution to your Facebook advertising. Facebook has some extremely powerful advertising features that can only be accessed in the Ad Manager or in Power Editor. While all of Facebook's ad tools are continually getting better, at this point in time there is no replacement for what these two can do for you. Between custom audiences, advanced targeting, conversion tracking, and ad types that can only be created using these tools (Power Editor just released an awesome new "Lead Ad" you should absolutely pay attention to), there is still no substitute for either of these tools.

3. Images, Images, Images!

There's a reason Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram and tried to also acquire Snapchat for billions: Images work. Scroll through your Facebook feed and tell me how many posts without images you see at all, let alone notice and pay attention to. A good image for your post is the initial attention grabber that your headline and post text need to convert to a click (or a like, or whatever other goal you're trying to achieve with your post).

4. Native Videos

Facebook has made a few key moves that affect how you need to handle video posts within the platform. The biggest was when they stopped auto-playing YouTube videos in the feed and instead began to display them like links. The reason for this was to push users to upload their videos natively to Facebook rather than uploading to YouTube and then embedding the video in Facebook. (My assumption is that Facebook is actively working on ways to monetize video content the same way YouTube currently does.) What this means to you is that those embedded YouTube videos get far less views than they used to, while native Facebook videos with their auto-play and click-to-hear-sound functionality get significantly more. SIGNIFICANTLY. It's not a small difference, it's a MASSIVE difference. If you want your video seen on Facebook, you have to go native.

5. Dark Posts

Dark posts are becoming less of an "insiders only" feature and more of a standard for Facebook advertising. I suspect the term "dark posts" will probably go away soon as more people use the feature without even knowing they're creating a dark post. A dark post is simply an ad that doesn't appear in your page's timeline. This is powerful because you can separate the content you push to your existing audience from the content you push to those who aren't already following you. Want to offer a discount to a targeted audience that doesn't yet follow you without pissing off your existing followers? Dark post. Want to advertise an introductory offer for new customers in a specific market segment? Dark post. Want to advertise the same exact item or content to different demographic segments with different text and images? Dark posts. To create a dark post simply use the aforementioned Ad Manager or Power Editor and create a news feed ad with brand new content.

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http://www.searlesgraphics.com/blog/2161/Printing-The-Non-Traditional-Media Printing: The Non-Traditional Media Just about everybody these days uses some form of digital marketing. Whether it's email marketing, Google AdWords, social media marketing, your company website, SEO, native mobile apps, or any of the countless other ways to market yourself digitally, it's being done. But how many of you are still using print as a way to really connect with your audience?

I recently read Joe Pulizzi's 2013 book Epic Content Marketing in which he tells the story of a client that came to him wanting to utilize print media because he was looking for "non-traditional media" opportunities. Yes, that's right, he wanted to utilize print as non-traditional media. Pulizzi even adds, "I’m here to tell you that there has never been a bigger opportunity for brands in the printed channel than right now." (You can read an article written by Joe discussing the opportunity print represents here. Please do, it's worth the read.)

When you think about it, it makes sense. The digital shift has happened. Brands and businesses are no longer worried about the value or ROI of digital media as a whole; it's now a given that you can't not have a high-level of digital brand visibility. And rightly so, digital media and digital marketing are extremely valuable tools. I myself am a software engineer and a marketer that convinces clients to utilize the right digital tools every day; but I'm also a printer at heart with a strong belief in the value of printed media.

Our core business philosophy has always been to stay ahead of the technology curve to provide the most amount of value to our customers that we possibly can. Recently, that has meant shifting a lot of our energy and resources into digital mediums and offering services like web design, digital marketing, content marketing, social media management, email marketing, and more. But we still have our roots firmly planted in print because it works. And we're staying put because it works, not just because we're clinging to an idea of the past and are too afraid to move forward.

Just last week we undertook a direct mail campaign for one of our products that produced better results in a shorter period of time than any of our digital efforts in that area. We're also undertaking a large investment and expansion in our own print marketing efforts that will be coming in January of 2016 as a way to capitalize on the lack of print material being produced these days.

The best business owners are contrarians. Nobody ever changed an industry or experienced record growth by doing what everybody else was doing. So the fact that everybody has now gone digital should raise an eyebrow about the opportunity that print represents.

To be clear, I'm not advocating you return to the same things you were doing in print 20 years ago, and I'm certainly not telling you to halt your digital marketing efforts. Rather, it's time to take your digital efforts and use them to help improve your print. Build better mailing lists, get better data about your customers, and customize your print to perform at a level that wasn't possible 20 years ago.

I'll be following this up with more specific recommendations about how you can use print to stand out from the competition so be sure to subscribe for updates!

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