Call to Action!

Crafting a Call to Action that Will Drive Your Business

When it comes to online marketing for your small business, it’s all about compelling website visitors to become website customers. You want viewers to take that extra step and become active. What better way to do just that than a strong call to action?

Summer Marketing

How to Market Your Business During the Summer

For many of us, summertime means relaxing beside the pool and soaking up the sun. It’s full of lazy days that are great for individuals, but can breed bad news for small businesses. It’s been called the “summertime slump,” as many small businesses experience a decline in sales during the hot, lazy months. So how can you combat this slump? By staying current in marketing strategies, of course. Check out some of these top recommendations on how to boost sales and market your business over the summer.

Keys to Content Marketing

It’s well into 2015, the year of content marketing. Every marketer has been trying to increase sales with branded content. What exactly is content marketing? It’s basically branded business storytelling. It’s sharing your professional, company and employee stories with your audience to cultivate a client relationship. People tend to trust brands more when they are humanized. Here are three tips to creating your own content marketing strategy:

Content is King

What To Do When Your Content Marketing Consistently Flops.

It’s the painful truth. Your content marketing is more likely to fail than it is to succeed.

As disappointing as that may be, developing content marketing is still a necessary part of your business’s success. But why is no one reading your content even when you pour your heart and soul into creating it?

Social Media Waves

How to Surf the Changing Tides of Social Media

It is a confusing time for social media. It seems like every day, new and conflicting reports come out about the future of different platforms. Is Facebook a sinking ship? Or is it simply being used by a new demographic? Is Instagram the new thing? Or should you be using Snapchat?

In addition to all of the ever-changing buzz, Facebook has recently switched up their algorithms. If you've been watching your business’s page, you've probably noticed a big decline in the number of people your posts are reaching.

The Right Way To Do Real-Time Marketing

5 keys to making your real-time marketing work for your company.

Since Oreo’s outrageously successful “You can still dunk in the dark” tweet during the Super Bowl XLVII power outage, several brands have attempted to adopt the quick-and-witty tactic of real-time marketing. 

Unfortunately, there are many more examples of RTM failures than successes. Take U.S. Cellular, for example. Following Adele’s big win for the “Skyfall” theme song in 2013, the company tweeted “What if her lyrics come true?” with a picture that said “The sky may fall, but we won’t drop your call. Punny? Yes. Funny? No.

Tell a Story With Your Marketing in 2014

Use story telling as a way to engage your clients at a higher level.

“Tell me a story!” This typical refrain heard from children at bedtime also applies to your customers. When it comes to marketing, they don’t just want information. They want a story too. Scientific studies have shown that our brain activity increases and we become more engaged when there’s a narrative involved. As you go into 2014, be thinking of how you can make your business’s marketing all about storytelling. Here are a just a few ways to create an intriguing narrative for your customers.

Saying "Thank You" with Holiday Greeting Cards

3 reasons why holiday greeting cards are a great way to thank your clients for their business.

In this fast paced world of email and texting, it's easy to get so busy that often times the non-essential tasks get missed.  These are the items that are not necessary urgent but are none-the-less important for the overall success and prosperity of your company.  It's often said, it's the little things that make the biggest difference.  Thanking your clients for their loyalty and patronage has a far more profound effect than the energy it takes to do it.  Here are 3 reasons why holiday greeting cards are a great way to thank your clients...

A Risk Most Marketers Won’t Take

4 Words that Double Success Rates

Nobody likes being told what to do. This principle dates back to a very early age. Tell a two-year-old toddler to go to
timeout and they very kindly break your eardrums as they shout their favorite word “no!” Ask a kid to eat their peas and they slyly spread them around on the plate—encouraged by your lack of knowledge of mathematics—hoping you won’t notice the sum of peas hasn't actually changed at all. Tell a teenager to clean their room and they silently curse you (while, of course, telling you no).

How Much Do Consumers Trust Your Advertising?

Do people honestly trust your company’s advertising? According to one infographic by Ambassador, 9 out of 10 young adults ages 18-34 say they trust advertising at least sometimes. But only 47% of consumers supposedly believe the advertising they see. And 57% of all respondents believed that ads are somewhat exaggerated.

Advertising keeps changing. Don Draper’s forms of advertising no longer rule the ad world—interactive, digital media is moving in. That being said, it’s important for brands to realize which forms of online advertising audiences are most receptive to—which ones they trust, and which ones they see right through.

Multi-Channel Approach

It's important to have your digital and print communications working together.

Don’t listen to those “all or nothing” folks out there. You’ll be hard pressed to find a customer who prefers to receive all forms of communication digitally. Heck, maybe you’ll find one, however, everyone is different and that’s what you need to plan for.

While over the past few years you've probably experienced a shift towards digital, that doesn't mean print should be phased out altogether. There are many positive effects of having printed materials working with your digital space in your marketing efforts.  Multi-channel marketing is the most effective approach because people have different communication preferences and require multiple touches to "connect" with your message.

Efficiency Drives Productivity

John McDermott operating Curry's
new Polar N115 Plus 45" paper cutter

How to accomplish more with the same or even fewer resources.

In today's work environment, employees are being asked to do more and more with less support than ever before.  High productivity is important and can be the main difference between a good and a great employee.  At the heart of all highly productive workers is the efficiency at which they do their job.  This applies in marketing as well as every position in every department in your company.

Every Day You're Marketing

There's more to marketing than just what comes out of your marketing department.

When we think about our businesses, we tend to think of marketing as just one department among our neatly segmented workplace.

But marketing isn’t some abstract thing you relegate to the writers and advertising dorks. Pretty much everything you do as a business is part of the greater marketing process.

Don’t believe it?  Let's break down the various ways you’re marketing, every day–whether you realize it or not.

Market Benefits, Not Features

Are you effectively communicating the benefits of your product or service? 

Ultimately, the reason you are in business is to help your clients solve a problem.  Whether you are part of a small business that helps its clients by repairing their automobiles or you are on a team operating a multi-million dollar company that manufactures medical devices, your clients come to you because they have something they need to accomplish and are counting on you to help them.

Top 3 Marketing Trends for 2013

Three marketing trends that will make your business stronger in 2013.

While individuals brainstorm their New Year’s Resolutions, we’re dreaming up how to make businesses better in 2013. Perhaps your company has a great product line but little marketing to spread the word. Or maybe you need to work on your relationships with customers.

Whatever changes you sense are due for your business in 2013, the projected marketing trends for the New Year can make you more competitive. Keep reading for a few suggestions on 2013’s top marketing trends and how to make them work for your business.

The Campaign Effect

Use design, layout and presentation to create brand recognition.

Have you ever seen an IBM commercial?  They’re the commercials with the blue bars running across the top and bottom of the television screen.  Have you ever wondered why they include those in every commercial they produce?  Why do they put those two, rather plain and seemingly useless bars on the screen?  Why?… brand recognition

Raise the Relevance

What you know about your clients can be a valuable resource.

Most companies have a computer database to manage their client information and transactions.  Often times companies under utilize this data when marketing their goods and services.  Taking advantage of the information you already have can help you to strategically increase the relevance of your marketing and produce greater results.
  

How to Evolve as a Marketer

Everything’s changed since we first broke into this business. Today’s marketing strategies are nothing like they were twenty, ten or even a year ago. Marketing’s constant evolution relates mostly to developing technology.

How well adapted is your marketing strategy to the consumer, whose tech-heavy environment changes daily?  The key to keeping your business relevant, and to stay in the public conversation, is to modify your tactics as consumers and the market changes. Keep reading for our thoughts on how your business’s marketing strategy can keep evolving and keep converting leads.
  

Smartphone Mania

Is your website optimized for the mobile platform?

Smartphones are quickly becoming the preferred means people on the go are using to access content online.  These devices are convenient mainly because they are with us all the time.

Check out this video to learn "the problem" smartphones pose for your clients and prospects when they visit your company's website.
 


Check out Curry's mobile website on your smartphone by visiting www.CurryPrinting.com.

Mobile Marketing

Is your business connecting with its clients and prospects through the channels they prefer most?

Smartphone sales have exploded.  In January of 2012, Google announced it is activating over 700,000 new smartphones per day.  That’s right, PER DAY!  Apple announced in the 4th quarter of 2011 it sold over 11.8 million iPhones.  Analyst from Morgan Stanley predict based on current patterns that mobile internet use will increase by 4000% by 2014.  Smartphones are here to stay and they are changing the way we communicate.