marketing • design • printing • online marketing • promotions€¦ · for the...

A Publication Focused on Growth for Companies Like Yours | June 2019

Marketing • Design • Printing • Online Marketing • Promotions

Idea Generators: Keeping it Cool

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B2B: Roles of the Sales Person ...........................................................5

Tell Us Where it Hurts ..............................................................................6

Direct Mail Plus Geo-fencing ................................................................9

The Secret Weapon for Brands: Niche Influencers ..................10

Warmth, Competence, and Word of Mouth ................................12

EDITOR: Eric Webb

Publisher: AlphaGraphics of Cary

Art Director: Bruce Harris

Writers: Bob Lambert

Bruce Harris

Eric Webb

Noam Gordon

Stan Phelps

Evan Carroll

Contact: ewebb@alphagraphics.com

919.233.7710

© 2019 - Eric Webb. All Rights Reserved.

This AlphaGraphics® business is an independently owned and operated franchise of AlphaGraphics, Inc.

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Enjoy

Eric Webb,AlphaGraphics Cary | N. Raleigh

Letter from the Editor

Eric Webb,President of AlphaGraphics, Editor of Momentum

Please send your comments or suggestions to me at ewebb@alphagraphics.com. We are always looking for unique stories about growth, and facts to publish, as well as ways to improve.

Some-times you must

make a BIG SPLASH!!! Growth does not come from keeping things

the same. This issue's cover reflects both the impact of summer on all of us (who doesn’t

enjoy a “cannonball”) and different ways to make waves to your organization’s success.

We have several Summer inspired Idea Generators, and an excerpt from the book Blue Goldfish. Co-author, Evan Carroll, will speak at our upcoming Brand-Link and Drink (June 20). This is rounded out by a success story from one of our clients that has made a Big Splash with direct mail and geo-fencing. We have some tips from our lead de-signer and sales tips from Author and Radio Personality, Robert Lambert.

Enjoy the articles and take a careful “reflection” of the cover. Move it around under the light and

you will see how the “splashes” have more impact than the rest of the image

(hint: spot clear coat creates the enhanced look).

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To transcend the traditional sales role and be perceived by the customer as a trusted asset, you must act as if you were an employee of the customer and fill the following roles:

1. Business Agent - You must act as if you were the manager of an internal

department and take personal responsibili-ty for producing the results. This will require you to be the liaison between the custom-er and your company, and to manage your company’s resources.

2. Business Advisor - You must under-stand their business from a big picture

perspective; their values, culture, markets, customers, goals and objectives, and indus-try. You should provide advice that can help them get where they’re going.

3. Advocate & Expeditor - You must make sure that your organization pro-

vides the necessary emphasis and resources to the project to ensure timely results.

4. Consultant - You must provide appli-cations, not products.

5. Troubleshooter - You must resolve any problems that occur and pre-

empt problems when possible.

6. Innovator - Today’s business custom-ers are demanding innovation and

continuous improvement in every product and service that they outsource, just as they do for all their internal production. What they are really buying is you and your com-pany’s expertise and your ability to apply it in new ways to improve their results.

The B2B Sales Environment Series: Roles of the Sales PersonBy Bob Lambert, Samurai Business Group, LLC

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“ Good morning, Dr! I’m going to need 750mg paracetamol, 200mg celecoxib, a series of x-rays, 100mg doxycycline, a pair of crutches, several sutures, and a cast for

my leg. ”...said no patient. Ever.Yet, it is commonplace for creative profes-sionals to have his or her craft inadvertently micromanaged this way by well-intentioned clients. Instead of starting with a discussion of the problem, clients on graphic design projects tend to try to solve the problem through unnecessarily complicated instruc-tions. While this can be frustrating for every-one involved, it’s perfectly understandable. It is often said that to a hammer, every prob-lem looks like a nail. There is a lot of truth in that simple statement because we can only rely on the tools we know. After all, how can

one be expected to solve a problem with a tool that isn’t in the toolbox? Recognizing this pitfall in ourselves can be very difficult, especially when we are trying to solve a problem outside our area of expertise.

It's NOT your fault. It’s just the result of liv-ing in an amazing era when technology is at the fingertips of virtually everyone. You have been given a peak through a window that was closed to previous generations, giving you just enough information to be a danger to your own documents. Anyone with even

Tell Us Where it HurtsPart 2 of the Design Tips Seriesby Bruce Harris

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minimal experience using software like Mi-crosoft Word or PowerPoint has a passing awareness of layout design jargon such as fonts, leading, justification, paragraph spac-ing, etc., but there is much more to layout design than that. Applications like Micro-soft Word put document creation on rails to simplify things for their users. They excel at making the most of a limited set of tools and canned templates. They are great at what they do, but they lull users into a certain way of thinking about layout. All too often, when a client sees a problem with a layout, they rely upon this limited tool set, rather than

the design professional they have hired to solve the problem.

When we receive a request that seems sus-piciously specific, our first step is to get to the root of the problem. We ask ourselves “What are they trying to accomplish with these changes?” Invariably, the client is at-tempting to address a larger root issue, and there is often a better way to solve that prob-lem than the steps they have requested. Here are a few common requests we see in our design studio, followed by the translation of what the client is really trying to address:

Instructions Translation• Make the font 20% smaller• Remove the hyphen from these words• Start a new paragraph here• Make the gutter a little wider

I don’t like the way these lines are breaking.

• Reduce the line spacing• Use a narrow font• Set the margins to 0.25 inches• Make the page 2 inches taller

I need to make room for more text.

• Make the logo larger• Make this line bold• Add this paragraph• Make the border thicker

I want less white space.

• Make the logo smaller• Push this text to a new page• Increase the margins 30%• Increase the line spacing by 4 points

I want more white space.

• Add 20% more cyan to the logo• Lighten the gray by 10%

The logo needs to match to our brand color

• Add a blank page here• Add notes pages here and here

Make sure each section starts on an odd page.

Seasoned creative professionals have a huge skillset and years of experience to draw from which allows us to solve these kinds of problems in ways that may not occur to our clients. While we do our best to interpret the essence of client requests, we can use all the help we can get. So, the next time you have a problem with a design layout, remember that you hired a professional for a reason. Take a step back and try to distill the problem to its root. Of course, we graphic designers aren't doctors, but you can often get your best results if you start by telling us where it hurts.

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Idea Generators: Summer Wreaths

Idea Generators: Pause and Refresh

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Direct Mail Plus Geo-Fencing Drives New Customers to Clientby Eric Webb

Over a period of several weeks we developed a direct mail program with a client to increase new customer engagement. This dental group developed offers that were enticing and we helped them develop Every Door Direct Mail programs to reach households in the area.

While many retailers leverage Every Door Direct Mail, we also recommended using geo-fencing to continue to build the brand and increase frequency. “One issue we’ve seen is retailers and restaurants that have a one-and-done marketing effort. Consistency and frequency is key to increase response rates from consumers,” explained Eric Webb, President of AlphaGraphics Cary.

Average direct mail response rates are be-tween 1-5% depending on the industry. An-other consideration in any marketing effort is to understand that using multiple channels to reinforce and support each other increases your response rate as well. Geo-fencing offers another channel that most people have with them 24-7. At a cost of just 1.6 cents per ad delivered, it the dental group was able to con-tinuously reach those same households. And not just the head of household but every per-

son that goes through the virtual fence of the neighborhood with their mobile phone.

If you are not familiar with geo-fencing, it’s a platform that allows AlphaGraphics Cary to create a virtual fence around any build-ing, park, event, etc. and capture the mobile phone ID of anyone that walks through that virtual fence. The platform then delivers the ads to those phones for 30 days or when 63,000 ads are delivered. You can also create any number of virtual fences.

In this case the dental group sent the EDDM and followed up with the geo-fencing ads to the mobile phones. Thousands of mailings went out to various neighborhoods every week. Each household received a nice mail piece with strong offers to drive response. Mobile ads follow and over the next 30 days or longer, will continue to keep the dental group in front of that same audience.

Frequency is key in direct marketing, and the addition of geo-fencing makes it affordable to have a high level of contact at very little cost.

Initial results are positive and they continue to deploy the strategy and add to it.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, the average response rate for direct mail house lists (existing customer) is 9% and 2-5% for prospect lists. However, if your direct mail piece is advertising an expensive or complicated product, a response rate that is less than one percent is not unusual.

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The Secret Weapon for Brands: Niche Influencersby Noam Gordon

Niche influencers are the way forward for many companies looking for more creativity — here’s why.Any serious marketer has a copy of Jay Levinson’s 1984 book, Guerilla Marketing on his or her bookshelf. Because finding cre-ative ways to do more with less, as Levin-son advocates, is the essence of effective marketing.

Today, the sub-segment of marketing called influencer marketing is often seen as a mod-ern form of guerilla marketing – a shortcut to reaching new customers or a certain demo-graphic and market. And it can be, but – un-fortunately – not the way it is typically done. Give it a few years, and it will be done right.

The average brand manager thinking about working with influencers has the image of a Kardashian or a minor celebrity in mind. They imagine spending thousands on a sin-gle post and competing with other brands for the influencer’s attention to win the contract. This approach entirely misses the point of influencer marketing and misunder-stands something fundamental about social media influence.

Social media influencer is anti-advertisingSocial media influence is not advertising. In fact, it is in a sense anti-advertising since it allows brands to reach consumers within

their online lives, rather than as an external disturbance to it. Influencers gain this inside access to people’s digital lives through di-rect communication and engagement, con-nection, through community building.

An account with a million followers that ad-mires a celebrity is almost never a communi-ty. And while many celebrities are influential, and they do bring some awareness to the products they promote, there are far less ex-pensive and more powerful ways for brands to use the medium to reach more potential target customers. By working with influenc-ers who have fewer followers, a lower profile and awesome content related to the brand, marketers can achieve their goals.

Focus on niche influencersWithin this broad definition of influencers, the real gold can be found among the niche influencers: those people who have built a community around a niche interest. When a common interest is specialised, such as this account (https://www.instagram.com/onceuponapumpkin/) focused on a love of all things pumpkin, followers are less likely to find people in their day to day lives who share their obsession and the online com-munity is everything.

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Here is another example:NOLA Concerts who talks, writes and is in-spired about concerts near her home. This post got over 5% engage-ment, which speaks for itself.

As a result, members are much more likely to be moved emotionally and follow recommen-dations from the leader of a niche community. Since we buy based on emotions, and then find ways to rationalise our decisions later, this is a winning formula.

What’s the takeaway for brand marketers?There are tremendous, almost unlimited op-portunities for brand marketers to explore in hiring niche influencers. Instead of paying for very general marketing activity, brands can now target segments that are strongly related to the brand itself and hire a number of influencers, with fewer followers, to reach those segments. Those niche influencers can bring your message to their communities, your brand from unknown to known, and create a positive bias in favor of your brand. This approach means less wasted money be-cause it’s super focused, and increases the brand’s chance of winning market share.

Seeking out niche influencers also al-lows brands to work with influencers they wouldn’t have imagined they could have partnered with before. For example, imag-ine that Donnay, Dunlop, Yonex or any oth-er tennis racquet maker releases an orange color racquet. A typical marketing approach would be to seek out tennis lovers. But find-ing a niche influencer who posts about all things orange will bring new, untapped po-tential customers to the brand – people who

will buy an orange racquet for their orange collection, and not just for playing tennis.

A final, little understood advantage of work-ing with smaller, niche influencers is that the brand gains access to the unique, creative, shareable content with a fresh point-of-view that the influencer creates for the brand. For example, the famous Estée Lauder’s cam-paign that recruited 60 niche influencers and resulted in a gain of 120 pieces of con-tent that the brand can re-use and an Insta-gram reach of 3.3 million.

Niche influencers are the secret weaponIn other words, niche influencers have be-come a secret weapon for brands that are willing to put in the effort to find and con-nect with niche influencers. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore the celebrity influ-encers, but put your energy into niche influ-encers because once you identify them, they are your secret weapon.

As for how to go about identifying and find-ing niche influencers, start with a hashtag search and go from there.

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Warmth, Competence, and Word of Mouth An Exerpt from Blue Goldfishby Stan Phelps and Evan Carroll

Stew Leonard grew up the son of a dairy farmer in Connecticut. In the 1960s, he be-gan working for the family business. Clover Farms Dairy delivered milk to customers’ homes. Two events would alter the trajecto-ry of his life and the business. The first was the decline in demand for milk delivery. The second was that the family dairy farm was lost to the State. Connecticut invoked emi-nent domain, taking the dairy farm proper-ty to build a new highway called Route 7 in Norwalk. Stew was forced to pivot. The re-sult was the opening of his first dairy store in Norwalk in 1969.

During the first year the store was open, Stew was asked by the local elementary principal to speak at an upcoming Career Day. The principal asked Stew to talk about his store and the dairy business. Even though Stew didn’t see the appeal for kids, he reluctant-ly agreed. That Friday morning, he drove to the school. As Stew pulled into the parking lot, he immediately knew he was in trouble. There was a fire truck parked in front of the school with kids all around it. It didn’t get any better when he walked through the doors of the school. He immediately saw a room with

an Air Force officer. A movie about the his-tory of jet airplanes was playing. It was filled with kids. Across the hall was a police offi-cer, and he was showing a packed classroom about various police equipment and weap-ons. Stew proceeded to walk down the hall and eventually found his classroom. There was a sign on the door that read: The Milk Business.

Stew walked in the room to find only three kids sitting inside. Two of them were the sons of his produce manager. For the next 30 minutes he talked about the dairy business and running a store. At the end of the talk he thanked the kids. Stew then reached into his pocket and handed them each a coupon for a free ice cream. The kids left and Stew waited to present the second of his two Ca-reer Day sessions. He waited and waited. No kids. After 10 minutes, no one had showed up. After 15 minutes passed, not one kid had arrived. After 20 minutes, the principal came rushing in and frantically exclaimed, “Stew, I don’t know what you told those kids, but we have to move your next presentation to the school auditorium.”

“If you love your customers, your customers will love you back.”- Stew Leonard

Come to our Brand Link & Drink on June 20th and hear Evan Carroll in person!

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This simple story underscores the power of giving little unexpected extras and how effective word of mouth marketing can be. This event would shape Stew's thinking on the importance of word of mouth marketing and the importance of doing little unexpect-ed extras. To this day, when you visit Stew Leonard's and buy $100 or more in grocer-ies, you will receive a free ice cream. If you don’t like ice cream, you can show your re-ceipt for a free cup of coffee. Buy $200 and you get two ice creams or coffees. It's just one of many examples of a Purple Goldfish from Stew Leonard’s.

WHY DID THOSE KIDS REACT SO STRONGLY?The word traveled quickly about Stew’s coupon for a free ice cream. Why did this small gift move the needle? A big part of the reason has to do with how our brain evolved as humans. As we evolved, we were forced to develop skills integral to our survival. One of those skills was the abili-ty to make snap judgments about our sur-roundings with a high degree of speed and accuracy. As we walked out of the cave, our senses went immediately into survival mode. We judged everyone and everything we encountered on two basic criteria:

1. What is their intent? Are they a threat? [Warmth]

2. What is their ability to carry out that intent? [Competence]

This basic truth is at the heart of Chris Malone and Susan T. Fiske’s book, The Hu-man Brand. Their research, built upon work done by Dr. Bogdan Wojciszke, has shown that over 80 percent of our judgments are based on these two factors of warmth and competence. These perceptions don’t just apply to people. We also apply the same standards to products and companies. We automatically perceive and judge their be-haviors on a subconscious level. Brands are people too.

FROM THE LOCAL VILLAGE TO MASS MARKET TO GLOBAL VILLAGEThe mass market we know today is a rel-atively new phenomenon. It only began

150 years ago. Before the industrial revo-lution, nearly everything we consumed was made by people we knew. The reputation of a merchant was as precious as gold. If a small business wronged you, everyone in the local village would quickly know about it by Sunday services. Merchants faced public censure, potential ruin, and even losing a limb (as we’ll find out in chapter four). As a result, businesses worked hard to establish trust and earn repeat business. Business was about relationships and not just transactions.

But then the mass market emerged, and the modern corporation was born. Almost everything we consume today is made by a faceless, far-off company. The voice of the customer waned. We were powerless to expose or punish brands that acted bad-ly. Outside of lodging a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or consumer advo-cates like Ralph Nader, we were handcuffed.

Enter Digital, Social, and Mobile over the last 15 years. The Internet and global con-nectivity have changed the game. In the words of author Chris Malone, “For the first time in history, the entire world is wired in a way that is consistent with the way evo-lution has wired us to think and behave.” Social has flattened the earth. Consumers have the opportunity to share their expe-riences with millions of others causing a huge ripple effect in the global village.

Customers want to be heard. Social ac-countability is back—and it’s here to stay. Customers expect to have relationships with their brands. Companies must forge genuine relationships with customers. We now expect relational accountability from the companies and brands we support. Malone and Fiske call this a “Relationship Renaissance.”

BRINGING WARMTH AND COMPETENCE TO LIFEConsumers will view the actions (or inac-tion) of brands based on warmth and com-petence. And warmth is absolutely key. Need an example to drive this home? Are you familiar with the story of Panera and Brandon Cook?

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In the summer of 2012, Brandon Cook was visiting with his grandmother. She was in the hospital in New Hampshire and the prognosis was dire. Brandon’s grandmother had pancreatic cancer and was down to her last few days. One of the horrible side effects of pancreatic cancer is that you get to the point where you can no longer eat. Brandon was watching his grandmother suffer, and he was pleading with her to have something to eat. After the consistent pleading, Brandon’s grandmother said, “I’d like to have some soup.” She then qualified her request. “But not the crap they serve at the hospital,” she said. She wanted a bread bowl of clam chowder.

Where do you get a bread bowl of clam chowder? You get it at Panera. But here was the problem. Due to demand, Pane-ra only serves clam chowder on Fridays during the summer. This was a Monday. Brandon wasn’t going to let that get in the way. Being the millennial that he is, he simply picked up his phone and called the closest Panera in Nashua. Within a minute, he was speaking to Sue, the manager at Panera. Brandon explained the situation and his grandmother’s wishes. Upon hear-ing the story, Sue stopped Brandon and told him to come over. They would be hap-py to help him and his grandmother. Bran-don drove the 10 minutes to Panera and met Sue and her team. They gave Brandon a couple bread bowls of clam chowder. As a little extra, they also threw in a small box of cookies for them to share.

Brandon returned to the hospital and had a wonderful lunch with his grandmother. For a short time, it sustained her and made her happy. Driving home that afternoon, Bran-don reflected on this small act of kindness by Panera. He decided he was going to do something about it.

How do we know Brandon Cook is a good kid? Well, he must be as he took the time to visit his grandmother. He was also thought-ful because he fulfilled her clam chowder request. How do we know for sure? We can be 100 percent sure because Brandon is friends with his Mom on Facebook. Bran-don wrote about his experience on the so-

cial networking site. Here is what he shared in the post:

My grandmother is passing soon with cancer. I visited her the other day and she was telling me about how she really wanted soup, but not hospital soup because she said it tasted "awful" she went on about how she really would like some clam chowder from Panera. Unfortunately, Panera only sells clam chowder on Friday. I called the manager Sue and told [her] the situation. I wasn't looking for anything special just a bowl of clam chowder. Without hesitation she said absolutely she would make her some clam chowder. When I went to pick it up they wound up giving me a box of cookies as well. It’s not that big of a deal to most, but to my grandma it meant a lot. I really want to thank Sue and the rest of the staff from Panera in Nashua NH just for making my grandmother happy. Thank you so much!

Brandon’s Mom, Gail, saw the post and was moved. She copied it and placed it on Pane-ra’s Facebook page. That’s when something amazing happened. In less than four weeks, a single Facebook post by Brandon Cook had garnered more than 800,000 likes, over 34,000 comments, and scores of nation-al media attention. Why? Because Panera empowered its employees to demonstrate warmth and competence by doing the little extra.

The idea of warmth and competence is not just theory. It draws from original research spanning ten separate studies. Companies need to find ways to leverage individual cus-tomer and employee relationships by doing a tangible extra. Actions speak louder than words.

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