[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:03] DC: This is the true story of two printers who agreed to podcast with me and have their opinions recorded. Listen to what happens when printers stop being polite and start getting real.
[0:00:13] JM: Hi, this is Jamie McLennan.
[0:00:15] WC: And this is William Crabtree.
[0:00:16] DC: And I’m your host, Deborah Corn. Welcome to the PrinterChat Podcast.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:26] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. More specifically, we are here with the PrinterChat Podcast, which means I’m here with my two chatty printer friends, Jamie McLennan, GM of DMR Graphics powered by Innvoke. Hello, sir.
[0:00:44] JM: Hello, Deborah and Will. How are you doing today?
[0:00:46] DC: Good. Of course, we have William Crabtree, President, CEO, Founder of Tampa Media, which consists of Tampa Printer, Sign Parrot, Gorilla Consultants, and something new that we’re going to talk about on this podcast right now because we’re going to start our catch up with Will. Hello, Will.
[0:01:11] WC: Hello, Deborah. You actually missed two that are already current –
[0:01:14] DC: Oh, my God.
[0:01:15] WC: – which is printgorilla.com, which has been around for a long time –
[0:01:18] DC: Oh, and the T-shirts.
[0:01:19] WC: – but we’re bringing it back, and then 813 Shirts. Yeah.
[0:01:21] DC: Okay, I’m sorry. I can’t –
[0:01:22] WC: It’s okay. It’s okay. There’s so many.
[0:01:23] DC: I can’t keep up. There is.
[0:01:25] WC: There’s so many. There’s so many. We’re launching a new one.
[0:01:29] DC: Tell everybody about the new one. Before that, it’s Jaws, instead of, I think we need a bigger boat, it’s I think we need a bigger sign because you keep adding companies to your –
[0:01:37] WC: Yeah. Well, we keep inflating Gorillas and doing other crazy things. We do what we can to create more surface area, to have enough room for all of the logos. We’re launching a new brand, which is We Wrap Tampa. It’ll be under the domain name of carwraptampa.com for SEO purposes. But the foreword and the branding will be We Wrap Tampa. This will be a brand dedicated to vinyl. So, vehicle wraps, wall graphics, storefront graphics. There’s a disconnect in the search engine world for sign companies against vinyl and wraps. Then there’s an even further disconnect for people that are seeking this out as a service. They don’t think that it’s something that gets done by a sign company.
I think I may have talked about this in the past, went through the whole rigmarole of getting a new address added to the building that Sign Parrot is in, which is where my wrap bay is. We actually have a Google business profile page. It’s been verified. We have our own address for it. Website’s almost done. It’s got a little “coming soon” thing up right now. But we’re laying the foundation to get things rolled out. We’ll brand the building. It’ll have its own big sign. We’re rolling it out this month with marketing and then, hopefully, full launch next month just because we’ve got so much craziness going on currently.
I’m in the middle of another business acquisition, but I’m not at liberty to disclose it just yet. But it may be finalized by the time that this podcast actually airs, but I didn’t want to take a chance that it wasn’t done and hold up Deb, because she wants to send us with her newsletter, so we’re going to let her do that. We’re just not going to talk about that in detail. Hopefully, next episode we’ll be able to spill the beans and I’m super excited for it, because it’s been a long time coming and it’s almost done.
We did a really fun thing. Red Bull Flugtag is in Tampa this year, and we submitted an application, which you had to do a whole questionnaire. You had to submit a photo. You had to submit a blueprint of what your craft was going to be. If you’re not familiar with Red Bull Flugtag, look it up. Essentially, you build a craft that is supposed to fly and it gets pushed off of a 20-foot cliff into water and yeah, it’s just a fun, crazy, weird, quirky thing. We had the whole company dress up in banana costumes. We had a blueprint of the craft, a quick sketch of our idea printed on a giant banner that we had on the ground and then we had a drone take photographs.
We inflated one of the gorillas in the parking lot. We have a gorilla in front of the Kennedy building, Tampa Printer and 813 Shirts all the time, but there’s been this crazy construction going on in front of our building, so we couldn’t do the photoshoot then. One of my employees said, the great idea is like, “Dude, don’t you have another gorilla? Why don’t we just do it in the parking lot, so you don’t see the construction?” I was like, “Done. Let’s schedule it.” Because we scheduled it three times and had to keep kicking it because of the construction. That’s been all submitted. We haven’t found out if we are going to get it yet or not. We’re very hopeful. We’re actually partnering this with the Children’s Cancer Center. I’m sure you guys have heard me talk about that.
[0:04:42] DC: Yeah, that’s your cause.
[0:04:43] WC: Yeah. Yeah, the holiday cards campaign is coming up again this year. This will be our ninth year doing the holiday cards campaign. They raised the most money ever last year. They raised $60,000 through the sales in the stores. They’re super excited. We changed the whole dynamic last year, because it was put a little bit in the stores, don’t print much and then try to refill. What we found is that the stores that sold out immediately were just taking the display off the floor and not ordering more. I filled them all up last year and it worked like gangbusters and they sold way more. They’re excited this year. We’re excited. They’re partnering with us. If we do get selected as Flugtag, we’ll use it as a platform to help promote the Children’s Cancer Center and their holiday card campaign.
We did a procurement, which I usually try to stay away from, but it’s with the City of St. Pete to do all of their poll banners, which is 250 banners. It would be a three-year contract with a two-year renewal. We would be doing three to four runs a year with doing all the maintenance. I actually bid the maintenance at $0. The way they actually had it broken out was they asked for the hardware with the springs and all the stuff, which the hardware itself is 500, 600 bucks. I actually drove around downtown St. Pete and they have an existing system there. It’s a concrete pole and it has a steel pole that comes out, and then it has eyelets down and they had the bid out, the RFQ. They had for three different versions of the banner and one of the banners was for the existing system.
I wrote a separate proposal aside from the RFQ and when you had to put in your pricing and I broke everything down line item, like the install, removal, what each banner cost, what the hardware replacement would be, and what their new hardware that they were asking for would be. I got a call from them the other day and they said, “Hey, we just want to make sure that we’re reading this correctly. Is this the way that we think that this reads?” I said, “Yeah, because I went and I looked. There’s nothing wrong with your existing system.” To spend that much money to try to take all of that out and put these new springs in against – the springs are supposed to help save the banner, because it creates less resistance from the wind, so the banner doesn’t break or rip, but the amount of money that you would spend on that versus just replacing the banners when you have to, and we’re going to do the maintenance and we’re going to monitor it for you for free. Why would you do that, right?
I’m really hopeful that that lands. It’ll be super, super exciting. The sheriff’s department is in their end of fiscal year, which ends September 30th. I told them, I said, “Look, anything that you want to have done before September 30th, you tell me and I’ll make it happen.” I think that may have been a mistake because they’ve just thrown so many projects at me. It’s insane.
We did record sales for a day yesterday at Sign Parrot. We did 50 grand in sales yesterday at Sign Parrot. We did 18 today and we did record sales for best month ever in August for Sign Parrot last month. Tampa Printer’s ramping back up. We were down $120,000 in sales for Tampa Printer in July and August. Or no, I’m sorry, in June and July. Then August just went right back up to where it’s been, and September is out like a lion. Things are moving along, things are great, and excited for all the new stuff and excited for this conversation about marketing and – oh, wait, one more thing. While we’re on the topic of marketing, I have a booth at the Franchise Trade Show next Saturday and Sunday at the Tampa Convention Center.
We have a 10-foot by 30-foot booth. We’re inflating the pink gorilla in the building. We had clearance from the fire marshal and the vendor and everybody has cleared it, and Deborah’s going to come and help us wrangle people. We’re not there as a franchise. We’re not there to market to the franchisees. We’re there to market to the franchisors. The goal is to all of the other companies that are there showcasing their franchise, get with them, advertise to them, or get conversation with them, get them to a dialogue with them, so that we can market to them, give them a custom portal, do fulfillment, do inventory because franchises in their world, it’s all about uniformity, branding and making it as simple and easy for their franchisees.
Providing that tool for them, I think, will be a homerun. Really, our biggest clients, they’re not franchisees, but they’re companies that have many, many locations. I saw this as an opportunity. The show came in, so we got the booth. We’ll see. It’ll be a fun experiment.
[0:08:51] JM: Awesome.
[0:08:52] DC: My God. I mean, should we just go home now, Jamie? I mean – I don’t even want to be on this podcast anymore.
[0:08:59] WC: It’s been a while since we talked, guys. I’m sorry.
[0:09:01] JM: I’m out. Okay.
[0:09:03] DC: My God. I feel like, I’m such an underachiever at the moment. Whoa.
[0:09:07] JM: I want to know how that trade show goes, because we’ve talked about doing that one here, because I’ve been here a couple of times it’s been here. Let me know how that goes. See it all working out.
[0:09:14] DC: Jamie, we’ve been on a group text about this and I went to the show and I was watching the videos of the people who were attending and I’m like, “Oh, my God. These are people who don’t realize all the print that is missing from their lives.” I mean, that’s not what they’re there for, right?
[0:09:32] JM: Yup.
[0:09:33] DC: They have a little booth set up and a little banner behind them and they go about their business and that’s not what they focus on. I was just like, all I see are opportunities here. Thank you so much for inviting me to join you, Will. I’m going to walk the show with your manager, Jim, who I learn so much from every time I’m with him. We went to the Kush Kan in that same place. Jamie, you’ve heard this story. The first aisle, the first three booths, we didn’t get past it. They made sales in the first three booths. The people were calling them because they had Tampa Printer shirts on.
[0:10:09] WC: Come over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:10:10] DC: They were like, “Oh, my God, a printer.” Because they buy everything online and they wanted to be able to have a person, but they didn’t know how to navigate it. When Will and Jim were just walking around with a Printer shirt on, I’d never seen anything like it in my life. I was like, “This is crazy.” I’m really excited to go with you and see everything that’s going on there. Yeah, I think that is such an untapped market for printers. Jamie, you have some exciting news and some – oh, there’s always something interesting going on at DMR. Yeah?
[0:10:41] JM: We have our speech bubble, start a conversation with print. We’re going to make shirts up and start walking around shows like this. That’s a great idea. Thanks. We’re going to steal that. We’ll take that.
[0:10:51] WC: That’s what it’s all about, man. Taking the idea. Stealing it.
[0:10:54] JM: We’re going to try. Let’s see. Lots of things going on next week. Printing United. I’ll be in a group going down to that show. We got another group of our leaders going down to Label Expo. We’re going to be split up and going around, checking all things. I have a shopping list as always. We’ve talked about trade shows and what we’re going to be looking for.
Lot says, Will said he’s got things on the horizon that are happening and they can’t talk about yet. We’ve got a couple of acquisitions coming this month. We’re hoping by our next podcast, we can shout out what’s going on with that. One’s more of a local tristate area, Philly area and one is moving us closer to Florida. We’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe, in a couple –
[0:11:33] WC: Don’t be coming in my backyard, man.
[0:11:35] JM: No, we won’t be.
[0:11:36] DC: Will’s going to geofence you. Don’t tell him anything. Don’t tell him anything. He’s going to buy you –
[0:11:40] WC: You go to Orlando, Miami. Anywhere else you want. Just don’t come to Tampa. I’ll fuck you up, man.
[0:11:42] DC: I hope you bought every new URL that you need, Jamie.
[0:11:45] JM: Bought every printing URL anywhere down there in that area.
[0:11:49] DC: Yeah. Make sure you can’t get geofenced by that bastard, that bastard in Tampa.
[MESSAGE]
[0:11:56] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships and events to the next level? Then I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations, and they meet the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level. Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:12:57] DC: Great catch-ups, gentlemen. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I wanted to focus this podcast today on a little cross-pollination of podcasts, because recently, I recorded with Robert Rose. He is the Chief Strategy Officer at The Content Advisory. The Content Advisory is a content services firm. They work with companies of all sizes to co-create pragmatic content strategy plans that help companies evolve and develop valuable customer experiences. There’ll be a link to that podcast and the website in the show notes for everybody if you want to catch up on that.
I originally met Robert at the thINK Ahead Conference that is hosted in Boca. It’s the Canon Solutions America User Group, and they always have amazing speakers. Robert Rose did a presentation that was the servitization of print business. In it, he basically frying panned to the head everybody in that audience about the importance of customer experience as being really the true differentiator in why someone is going to choose a business moving forward. That really starts with taking the time to establish trust and authenticity about everything that you do, so it’s not ignored in a stream, so it’s not deleted in an email box, so it’s not marked spam.
It’s considered important and relevant to the recipient, because you’ve already established through everything else that you do that it’s relevant and topical and meaningful for them. I really wanted to start off with how are the ways that you guys currently establish trust and authenticity with your customers? Jamie, we’ll start with you.
[0:15:14] JM: Most of it is just sharing relevant information. Find out what the customer is looking for, what they do, and showing them other things that we’ve done that’ll help them expand their world. A lot of times, you’ll go visit a customer like, we’d really like to do some display that shows off this new product we’re making, but we have no idea what to do. We’re cutting it in the back on table saws of wood and gluing it together and we can show them different ways to do that to save money and make it quicker and easier for them and stuff like that.
It’s just being upfront with them and saying, “Hey, look, there’s a lot of things out there.” We might not always print on it, but it could be fabricated. We can bend plastic and mold something. Or if it’s doing a mailing, I had a chat with a customer doing a mailing the other day and they were just like, “We’re looking at doing 78,000 mailers. We’re going to do it to this list,” and it’s giant and it kept growing and growing and the list kept going up. I said, “Look, there’s ways to break this down. Why don’t we do it in more manageable chunks? Like, do 15,000 to this list? See how it works. Then do another 15,000. You don’t have to do all 80,000 on that one time, if you’re not ready for that yet.”
They didn’t have all the background for, if any data they’re getting, they weren’t ready for all that yet. I said, let’s plan this a little bit better, narrow down your search, who you’re looking to mail this to and then go from there and then do that. It’s all being truthful and honest with how I work with customers and not just saying, “Hey, we can do – Yeah, no problem. We’ll do 100,000 brochures for you and mail them tomorrow.” Then they don’t get a good response for it. It’s a process. It’s not something that just happens overnight. It’s something that you share different ideas, and some stick, and some don’t. It takes some time.
[0:16:52] DC: I have a lot to say about that. But before, I don’t want to influence Will’s answer. I want to hear Will’s answer. How do you establish trust and authenticity with your customers in a different way? Because sometimes you don’t ever interact with them ever, right?
[0:17:08] WC: Me personally, no. I very rarely interact with customers. I have a few that are very high-profile that I still deal with. I have one specifically that I’m one of the only people that they deal with directly on anything high level. The way, when we’re talking about experience, the messaging that we’ve always done, and I’ve always been big on experience, right? Come in, see samples. We’re available to you, however you want to interact with us. We’re online. We’re on the phone. You want to call us. You want to come by. We’re available, however you want to interact with us, right? Versus, no, this is how we are as a company. We’re online. You can’t call us. You can’t come by.
The trust has been there for us from the beginning because we’ve grown with Tampa. From a local company, we’re very trusted, right? We have a great reputation. The company that I took over, Sign Parrot, didn’t have the best reputation, but we’ve changed that. In the process, we actually lost some clients that didn’t like the fact that we were going to do business the right way and they wanted to be shady, right?
The way we interact with our clients and the way that we sell, I don’t have salespeople. I’ve never had salespeople. We are where our customers are looking for us. Or, they’re looking for us, but they’ve already seen us. They’re on the search engine and they’re searching and we’re coming up in the top results, but they’ve probably driven by one of our shops, or they’ve seen one of our signs on the side of the road, or they’ve gotten an email from us, or they’ve seen us on social media, right? Or they’ve just heard of us, right? They’ve gotten a referral from us. All of these things, we were strong in referrals, we’re active in the community. All of these things combined gives us the trust and the reputation that we have.
Tampa Printer side, there’s a lot less of the, “Well, I got a price from so and so. Can you match this? Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” Versus, Sign Parrot, we still have a lot of that. Well, I think it’s more prevalent in the sign industry than it is in the printing industry, with like, I’m going to get five quotes, because they treat it like a construction thing, versus just a marketing thing. We’re still working on the trust with the Sign Parrot side of things and the wraps and the signs. But Tampa Printer has established that trust and I think reinforces that trust when we sponsor events, or our community outreach, the nonprofits that we work with, and just the overall culture and vibe that we as a company have and how we present ourselves has always been kind of, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
I think that in conjunction with the lack of sales, and even when you call, like there’s no high pressure like, “Oh. Well, you should do this.” There may be a suggestion of like, “Oh, if you bump up to from 500 to 1,000, your cost repeat goes down by 50 cents.” Outside of that, there’s never any high-pressure sales. I think that’s one of the big differences that creates and prevents that trust is that if somebody feels like they’re being pressured and they’re being badgered and you’re calling them and you’re following up constantly, constantly, constantly, I’m probably going to go with somebody else, right? Because you seem too desperate. That’s always been our take on things.
Just to comment on something that you mentioned earlier, Jamie, is from a sales standpoint is giving value to somebody, right? Like, “Hey, we’re going to do this the right way and make sure that you see results out of it,” versus like, “We’re just going to take your money and give you the most expensive thing that we can for the sake of selling it.” You know what I mean? Actually digging in and how do we make this work for you, so that good business, it’s going to work for you this time and you’re going to come back again, versus just getting that one-shot transaction taken, collected, and moving on to the next guy. It takes so much more to gain a client than it does to retain a client.
[0:20:43] DC: Okay. What you both said, there’s nothing wrong with what you both said. What I would say on top of that is that Robert is saying that that is only part of it now, because you already have these customers, or your proof point is, “Look, we didn’t mess up your order and we charged you what we said we were going to charge. Now you can trust us and we’re – now you can trust us.” Or you’ve established trust. You’re doing it through the actual sale and execution of the projects, which is not wrong. That’s where it’s leading to.
I believe, what he was saying is that let’s just use nonprofit as an example, even though, Will, this is not necessarily your method of doing things. All of a sudden, I start seeing that your social media is sharing research about the things that nonprofits are investing in, the upticks in verticals for nonprofits, are they popping up for a certain cause more than another. Becoming a trusted resource in the business of your customers. Again, I know that’s a little more difficult for you, Will, because even though people can walk in and you can have conversations with them, if I’m not speaking out of terms, it’s that your preferred method with Tampa Printer, certainly with the sign shop and stuff like that. But for Jamie, it’s a different situation.
You establish trust and authenticity before a sale interaction is ever made, which is what he is saying is the piece that’s missing. We have discussed this before in, hey, if you’re in real estate, click here, and then you click there and then there’s the entire ecosystem of everything a realtor might need to sell a house, or to a list of house, or whatever for their offices, if they’re starting up new offices. This is more about creating an ecosystem of trust and authenticity, because all you’re doing is giving those people information so that they have better information to do their jobs correctly, so that when they’re actually ready to do some printing, they want to work with you because they already trust that you understand their business. I’m going to stop there and get your comments on that. Jamie, you’ve been nodding your head, so you go.
[0:23:23] JM: Yeah. I totally agree with that. Yeah. Like I said, it’s a process. It takes time. You’ll share information, or share details on how to do a project and hopefully, people are listening. You’ll either be in a networking group, or something like that, and somebody’s telling them about their story on how things didn’t go well when they dealt with some company and you’re like, “Well, I know customers that do it this way, this way and this way, and we can help you do that.”
It’s always building and sharing little nuggets here and there that customers will, or prospects, or clients, or even people that are not clients now, just people that like, “I know you’re a printer. I know you can help me do all these things.” I don’t do that right now, but they’ll remember that. I’ve had a lot of referrals that I can –
[0:24:05] DC: But it still seems to me, you’re talking about face-to-face interactions, and that’s not what he’s talking about.
[0:24:10] JM: Right. He’s talking about doing everything online. None of it is face-to-face.
[0:24:14] DC: I’m saying that eventually. No, there’s more than one path. I’m not talking you’re in someone’s face, you can have a conversation with them. Even then, to establish trusted authenticity with a stranger, let’s just say it was a nonprofit. We’ll just keep in that example. You could say to them, “Oh, we work with a lot of nonprofits and we really understand the market. If you have some time, check out our website. We have a ton of resources there,” and then you walk away. Then the trust and authenticity that you understand their market, their vertical, their business, their needs is coming through stories from your customer case studies and maybe investing in some research from the industry, or sending out infographics.
I always think printers miss a gigantic opportunity by not just putting really fast, quick visuals about “a direct mail response rate increases X amount of percent in a red envelope,” which there is some crazy stats about that.
[0:25:17] JM: There are. Yeah, there are.
[0:25:18] DC: Or if there’s handwriting on it, right?
[0:25:19] JM: Then able to climb that. You’ll be able to scale it on LinkedIn or something, where people are –
[0:25:24] DC: I’m just saying, if I’m doing need to print direct mail then, or looking to expand my vendor relationships, or explore them, you might have been doing this long enough that I believe you’re authentic in your understanding of what the most effective and efficient direct mail programs would be for my business. It’s – you’ve pre-established all of that, and then you can get into proving it through the work you do. Will?
[0:25:53] WC: Well, so customers, leads, contacts, whatever you want to call them, right? A customer is somebody that has actually done business with you. A lead is someone that you’ve engaged with, but you’ve never had a transaction. A customer is someone you had a transaction. Leads and contacts versus customers is like dating, right? If you’re too needy and you’re too overbearing and it’s not about them and it’s about you, then you lost them. When you’re marketing and you’re messaging, and stop me if I’m wrong here, Deborah. But what I’m gathering here is the content, and I’ve seen this from an overarching standpoint from the digital marketing side of things is that content is going very much more about being about the person consuming the content, right? How can my content benefit you? How can I teach you? What can I give you that is going to benefit you that makes you interested in me?
[0:26:51] DC: And trust you, because you’re helping me.
[0:26:52] WC: And trust you.
[0:26:53] DC: Right? You’re authentic. Yes.
[0:26:56] WC: This is done through content creation. It’s done through – you make the right podcasts. Like, our email blast now, I’ve changed our email blast. I’ve combined all of our email lists and all of our email lists continue to remain combined as a pool. We send out from tampa.media. We try to do something that’s an opening article, whether it’s Florida man, something weird and crazy, or we do on marketing –
[0:27:17] DC: I click on your emails every single time because it’s some news article.
[0:27:21] WC: Right. We make it a news thing, right? We’ve even actually been bringing it back and we’ve been creating our own content using – like, we’ll write something, we’ll have a little bit and then we’ll put it into AI, let AI build an article for us. We’ll put the landing page on our own website. It doesn’t look like an advertisement. It’s not an advertisement, it’s just content.
[0:27:38] DC: No. Doesn’t at all. Yeah.
[0:27:39] WC: But it’s also SEO-driven, so we submit it to the search engines. Then that’s our headline. Then we’ll do a little bit of an advertisement about a product, or a service, something that we want to highlight. Then Gorilla Consultants comes in at the end and has a marketing tip. I’ve been trying to drive this content and get my people to understand that marketing now needs to be less about us. It’s not about me selling you what I want you to buy. It needs to be about you, the consumer and what you want and how I can stroke that and make you feel good, right?
This is nothing new. This is age old marketing tactics, but it’s just being packaged in a different way now, and especially with social media and content-driven influencers, all of that. The ones that are smart and the ones that are being successful right now, it’s a benefit-driven content, right? The content that is being created and is being presented to the person that’s viewing it is benefit-driven, right? That’s why they subscribe. That’s why they look at it. It interests them. It has something to do with their life, has to do with their business. Then the product or service that you’re selling, or you’re offering becomes an afterthought. That’s how you establish – That’s part of, or one of the ways that you can establish that trust.
[0:28:47] DC: Okay, Jamie. Did you have anything else you wanted to add to that before we move on to the next point?
[0:28:53] JM: No, I agree with everything you’re saying. You have to have good content. Your marketing department’s got to be able to put things together, but you’re also going to be able to have it in a way that people can find it, because there’s so much out there that a lot of that gets lost. It’s got to be in spots where your prospects, or your customers will get it, like it, and share it with other people. The biggest part is getting that referral. Even if it’s a customer, or even if it’s somebody that knows your company and likes what you share, if they’re sharing that to somebody else and getting you a client, because they’re sharing your material saying, “Hey, these guys are good. I trust them. They’ve done a lot of good things. I haven’t bought from them, but you should try them.” That’s huge, if you can get that. That’s, well, having the right material in the right places to share it.
[0:29:38] DC: I would also say, as far as content goes that print customers would be interested in is anything that helps them do their jobs better, including maybe there’s new terms that they’re not aware of. I fight with the literal PDF people all the time. I’m like, why are there 900 options for saving a PDF in Illustrator, and no one’s telling me what the difference is? Some people are like, “Well, just pick the latest one. That’ll be the best one.” I’m like, “Then why are they all in there?” It’s just so confusing.
I imagine a printer putting out, “Confused about how to save your PDF file? Here’s a five-step tips for you.” Now you can establish trust and authenticity with people, with all the designers that you want to be your customers anyhow. But it’s not about you selling print. As Will said, it’s about helping them do better in their jobs.
Okay, so now we’ve established trust and authenticity, which means that maybe when I see Jamie’s post in LinkedIn, I’m like, “Oh, I know I can trust this. It’s not going to be a bait and switch, or clickbait, or something useless. He’s not just promoting his company.” Here’s something fun from Will,” which is really what I think of your brand is, Will. I do love your newsletters. It is actually a perfect example of what I’m speaking about here, because they’re not sale-sy at all. They’re informative. They’re stories about what’s going on. The headline is never about Tampa Media. I mean, the with some – there’s some crazy stuff that goes on in Florida. You have a wealth of things to choose from, from crazy news articles of things that go on here.
Now you have this customer, right? Traditionally, we think of that person. I think you guys even defined it in the beginning as somebody who buys things from you, right? Robert suggests that that is actually just one of the types of customers that your business might actually have. Jamie, why don’t you recap that little section and what you’ve thought about it?
[0:31:51] JM: I brought it up a little bit. Yeah, it’s like, the information that you’ve shared, they might not be buying from you, actual customers, but they’re taking your knowledge. They’re liking it. They’re sharing it with their circle of influence and going, “These people share really good information. I’ve liked it. I’ve followed it. It’s not, I haven’t worked with them because they’re not in that spot to work with us yet,” but they’re sharing it with a dozen other people that they’re – in their circle, that they have a good influence. They’re saying, “You should use this company because they’re trustworthy. I think they’re trustworthy.”
That’s probably one of the biggest things that I got out of this conversation was like, your customers aren’t always buying from you. Your customers are the people that are sharing your content and getting your name out there. I really got that. That really hit home.
[0:32:35] DC: With me as well. They’re customers of your thought leadership. They’re customers of the print possibilities that you can offer. They’re customers of the possibility of one day working with you, which is when we used to do Project Peacock and I would show people sample, of the agency’s samples of Scodex. a lot of them knew what it was. They were just like, “Everybody shows us this, but none of our clients want to do it, because it’s too expensive.” I’m not saying that it is too expensive, but I’m just saying, that’s always the pushback on it and it’s not always accurate, by the way. If you’re interested in that, go actually price it out.
What I would say to them is whether or not your clients are going to use this technology, why would you pass up the opportunity of showing them it, because the next person who shows it to them, they’re going to turn around and say, “What do I need you for?” I’m not going to use it, but at least they’re bringing me new ideas. I think that they’re a customer of your information, I thought it was just genius. Then in turn, they become influencers for your company. William?
[0:33:48] WC: I mean, I think we’re splitting hairs, what you call it, right? I say, lead. I say, follower. I say, contact. Versus customer doing an interaction with you. It’s terminology. I had an interesting interaction with my bookkeeper, not yesterday, the day before. She came in and she walks into my office and she’s got this thing in her hand. She goes, “I need to make a vendor account for this person.” I said, “Okay.” I knew what it was. It was like a car dealership that did some bodywork on my car and we wound up doing a wrap for. I’m like, “Why? We don’t need to make a vendor account for them. That makes no sense.” She was just trying to create an account as a customer for them. That’s something she never does, so she didn’t know how to do that, but she was asking to actually create a customer within the software, not a vendor.
Just these little words that, yeah, to make it neutral to what you’re saying is that the people that you’re talking about are consumers. They’re consumers of the content that you’re putting out. They’re not a customer. They’re not interacting with you. They can be an advocate for you. They’re a consumer of your content. You’re putting out content. They like it. They enjoy it. They share it. Just the terminology of a customer, if you look at the definition, it is someone that purchases from you.
Now, you could look at content as a transaction and that they’re spending their time to enjoy your content, or to consume your content, and that’s the interaction, right? They could still technically be a customer. Again, for me, it’s always been that way, right? I’ve always been someone that is creating something for people to enjoy and for people to consume. Whether you buy shit from me or not, enough people are going to buy stuff for me that the things that I do and the craziness that I create pays off, right? That’s the fun part that I get to have is being a creative, right?
[0:35:26] DC: Do you drill down? Let’s say that you get this contract in St. Petersburg and my tax dollars are now going to pay you, so you’re welcome. Now, you have an opportunity to create trust and authenticity with other cities through content creation. I’m sorry, they’re not a lead. If you want to call them a consumer of your content, versus a customer of your content, I’m not going to argue with you on that. You do this already. I’m not pushing back on you at all.
What I believe Robert is saying, though, is that what more can you do on that end? What else can you do to get more customers for your content, to get more champions of your trust and authenticity through just giving them what they need, whether or not they ever buy something from you? There’s still an opportunity that these people are actually your new business development people out there, who are sending people to you.
[0:36:40] WC: I mean, that’s the constant challenge is how do you get more people to enjoy what you, or be even aware of what, because to Jamie’s point earlier, there’s so much more.
[0:36:48] DC: But that’s what he’s saying, not focus on being everything to everybody. But when you say, “If you’re in real estate, this blog is for you. Sign up just for our newsletter about real estate. Sign up for just our newsletter about sporting stores.” It’s more work, yes. But the point is that I’m not ignoring it in my inbox. I’m not ignoring it on my social channels. When I see your name pop up, I’m going to more than likely answer that call, answer that email, because we’re already at a different level, because I’m not reading through things. It’s just about making the customer journey better, which is what I actually want to move to now. Unless, Jamie, you have something to add about this. No? He’s good.
Okay, all of this, let’s say that we’ve established authenticity and trust. We’ve converted some of our consumers, or customers of content and knowledge sharing and anything else into actual customers, where transactions are taking place. Then Robert focused on the importance of managing those relationships, every step of the way. Even when they’re not buying from you in those dull points, they can still be consumers of content. There’s still ways to establish trust and authenticity. Jamie, how do you manage the customer journey?
[0:38:29] JM: There’s a few ways. I mean, it all depends on the customer and what they prefer. I think, Will said it earlier, whether they want to deal with me directly, or whether they want to deal with my office, like a CSR, or somebody else, or whether they just want to be set up on the portal. I order these things, and as long as I can just click on here six times and my order goes through, that’s what I want. I know that you’re there, if I need something more important, or and has needs a little bit more, you know, we need to review something a little deeper.
We try and make sure there’s three different ways, four different ways for customers to engage with us. It’s not always me making the phone call, or sending an email. That’s probably the most important way is like, how do they want to be spoken to? Whether it’s an email, text and whatever. I mean, I’m not a fan of doing text, but I have a lot of customers that just text me information and I’m always screen capturing and emailing it to myself, so I have a record of it. Stuff like that. If that’s the way they prefer, that’s the way they prefer. It’s trying and making it easier for them to deal with us, what is their best way of communication? We’re there for you when you’re ready.
Like you said, sometimes they go dark. It’s not bothering them. I don’t want to send them emails every two weeks. I don’t want to do it every other day. It’s you do a job for us, we’ll send you a survey. How was it? How do you like it? Then three months later, maybe you’ll get another one, but you’re not getting bombarded over and over again with stuff. We just want to make sure that you’re happy. We always look at it as after – It takes usually three jobs for somebody to become a client. They’ve done their customer. The first time we do, we work out the bugs. Maybe the files weren’t correct. We work it back and forth.
Like, “Hey, this is how we like them, or how do you set your files up?” By the third time, things are usually running very smoothly. After that, you feel more comfortable. Now, they’re a customer. Now, we can engage. Now we can send them some things like, “Hey, this is the market you’re in. Here’s a white paper on something. This is something you might find interesting. We’ve learned this on the first three jobs that this is the work you do. Is this right? I’ll have that conversation. I’m going to share some information with you. Is this what you look to do? Because that we can help you a little bit further.” It’s sharing a little bit more. When you learn about –
[MESSAGE]
[0:40:41] DC: Printspiration is streaming across the Printerverse on the Project Peacock Network, and our mission to provide education and resources for print customers, students, and printers around the world has never been more accessible. Watch what you want, when you want, where you want. It’s free. Visit ProjectPeacock.TV to access original programming, and replays from our online events. Learn about the Peacock partners and companies featured in our shows. Join our mailing list to learn about new episode premieres, and series launches, and create a free account to make watchlists. Ready for your close-up? Get your Peacock show on air by visiting ProjectPeacock.TV and request your partnership proposal today. Peacock long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:41:33] DC: I just want to clarify something about this dark phase. Is this when a customer might get an email like, “Hey, just check it in. Wondering what’s going on with you?” I mean, is that the kind of checking you do?
[0:41:46] JM: I never call and check in. Always call and share something.
[0:41:49] DC: Okay. You don’t have a CRM system that’s every three weeks, they –
[0:41:52] JM: I use it all the time, but I don’t do it every three weeks. It all depends on the – I mean, I have hundreds of hundreds of people in there. Some of them, it’s like, I need to talk to them in the middle of every month, or I need to talk to them every three months. Some customers do not need to. Then some of them are more like, I need to talk to them every Monday because they have jobs every Wednesday and I need to be in touch with them. Stuff like that. It’s after you’ve learned about what their habits are is when my CRM says, “Hey, it’s a good time to reach out.” I try to mix it up between an email, sharing something, or a phone call.
[0:42:24] DC: Okay. Nothing you’re saying is wrong. There’s just lots of money on the table from not – what I’m hearing from you is that because they’re your customers, they’re managing their experience with you in a lot of ways. Like, if they say, “Don’t call me every week,” right? They’re thinking of that as a sales call, right? It’s not that, would they be upset if you sent them a quick tip about how to save money on postage? Or, I’m just saying. There’s –
[0:43:00] JM: I sent them a quick tip on how to barbecue for the weekend.
[0:43:03] DC: There you go. There are all of these –
[0:43:04] JM: Something friendly, something not business like.
[0:43:07] DC: That is what Robert is saying that in those spaces in between, you’re not really managing anything if you’re just waiting for that CRM system to ping you, that it’s time to get in touch with somebody. Again, I’m not saying that’s wrong.
[0:43:24] JM: Yeah. The same customers, you can do that. But if you have a hundred, you’ve got to space it out a little bit. You can’t be doing it every day. Yeah. It depends on –
[0:43:31] DC: We’re talking about marketing, not sales. We’re talking about marketing, not sales. It could be a monthly newsletter that’s dedicated only to what they do that they get. I hear what you’re saying and there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just, this is very – What Robert is talking about is a lot of the things you’re saying, or the customers are not going to be appreciative of that because everybody’s doing it. How do you stand out by being a trusted advisor, an authentic partner, or someone who’s sharing information all the time, whether I’m buying or not? They’re not just saying, “Hey, what do you got going on?” I’m not suggesting you do that. I hear what you guys are saying. I appreciate it because this is how printers are.
[0:44:24] WC: Can I interject you?
[0:44:25] DC: Go ahead. Go ahead, Will.
[0:44:27] WC: I’ve got a couple of things here. I hear you wholeheartedly, Deborah.
[0:44:31] DC: I hear you guys, too. I just want you to know. I hear you. We’re trying to get to the next level.
[0:44:36] JM: Right, right, right. The mediums where you can do this, right? You have so many different ways that you can communicate with your clients, customers, whatever you want to call them, right? Customer versus a client, client, someone’s been with you for a long time. A customer is a customer. They came in, they bought some shit and they left, right? There’s only so many different ways you can communicate, email, calling, text messaging. Those are the most rudimentary. Social media, and social media has a whole broad scope. I’ve had clients and still have clients that I have a friendly enough relationship with that I will text message on a personal level. I try to avoid that. I try to avoid giving customers my cellphone, or any way to text me at all costs. I have three and they’re very high profile and I actually like them as humans and they have my cellphone and can call my cellphone and text me.
I know of a printer that is local. He’s been around for a really long time, and he has gone so niche that it’s amazing. I won’t say what his niche is, because if I do, it’s going to blast him. He’s so niched out that he has this one demographic, this one industry. He goes to all of their trade shows, and he does it for everybody nationwide. He does their signs and he does their printing. That guy to be able to be so niched in his content and create – and I guarantee you, he doesn’t, right? He’s still oblivious to anything like this. But to be so niched and like, “Hey, here’s a tip for how you could do this,” and to be that driven into that demographic and to something that’s so specific to them, that guy could do it all day long.
To be able to create content that is so targeted to your audience that it touches them is very difficult. Very, very time-consuming, right? You have to find how can you create content and how can you touch and be relevant and be resonating with a broad scope of people in what you do and create benefit in something that a lot of people are going to want, need, appreciate, and can use is equally challenging. But once you figure out how to do that, then it’s easier to execute and it becomes more efficient, right?
There’s a lot of different ways that you can present content to people and you can interact with people, and we talked about those. But the messaging and what you do in that is what makes a difference, right? You’ve mentioned several times that we’re not talking about sales. We’re talking about marketing, right? In my mind, they’re the same thing to a degree. Good sales is marketing. Good marketing is sales, because if you’re doing good sales, you’re not trying to sell somebody something that they don’t need, or they don’t want, right? Marketing is that you’re giving a message to people that like, “Hey, that’s something that I need and it’s going to benefit me and help me.”
On the other side, when you interact with that company, you go, yeah, this is something that you need and that you want. Wait, you probably don’t need to go to the next thing and get the higher dollar and buy the most expensive thing. This will suit you just fine. That type of relationship and that type of interaction is what creates trust.
[0:47:55] DC: Yeah, 100%. I agree with you on the time-consuming thing and what verticals do you pick, and how do you become an expert in everything? In thinking about that, there’s also ways of thinking about, what are the common things that your customers or the ones you want to attract might have in common? Do they all do presentations, or pitch books to get their customers? Do they all go to trade shows? Do they need booths and things like that? You can start creating content around these things that are still important to them, without drilling down into, “This is how the real estate people would do a trade show booth.” You don’t need to do that. Although, obviously, with imagery, you could easily just switch that out.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that, imagine if you had an email blast, or newsletter sign up and I can decide the frequency that I want it. I want tips and tricks every week, because every week I’m in a status meeting, and somebody wants something new. If I don’t have something new, I’m screwed. Send me an idea, send me the idea of the week every Thursday, so for my Monday status meeting, I’ve got something, and I sign up for it, right?
Now you’re actually creating trust and authenticity with people who want the email from you every single week. They’re asking for it. Then there’s other people, like one of the biggest selling points of my news from the Printerverse is that I send it one time a month. I don’t bother anybody about anything. They can count on it one email a month for me like clockwork. My open rates are pretty high, because I don’t annoy anybody else, and I’ve established the trust and authenticity that if they click into that newsletter, which they do, that there’s something of value in there for them, because I’ve been able to establish that through other content. It is marketing, because I don’t sell – I guess, I sell my content, I guess, for people to absorb it in a way.
I think that this conversation is not about validating what you’re currently doing, which is valid. It’s looking at it and seeing how to take it to the next level and being able to differentiate yourself on a different level, so people are coming to you already educated that you can help them. Now, they just want to understand their ideas. I do believe it would – if I put myself in that place, I already feel like I’m collaborating with the printer. I already feel like I’m in a collaborative relationship and I can ask questions. I can ask questions about what’s going on in the world, or the marketplace, not just how much does the brochure cost. Jamie?
[0:50:50] JM: I agree with everything you’re saying, Deborah. I mean, yes, we want to be able to create content, share it and have – We don’t want to have every vertical, but it needs to be more friendly for a lot of people to look at and say, “I trust these guys, because they’re helping eight different verticals and they’re sharing material that I can use, that Dennis can use, that auto and parts place can use, and so and so. These guys understand that we’re all working, we’re all doing everything we can. We don’t have time to do all this, but this guy has the time to help us do it correctly.”
That’s when you really gain everybody’s trust is, “Hey, these guys hit the nail on the head. They made it simple for us. It’s easy to consume. It’s easy to get in touch with them. They can help my business. They can help your business. They can help yours.” That’s what we all try to strive for when we’re running a business.
[0:51:41] DC: Yeah, I agree. I really am appreciative of this conversation, because it is a difficult topic and is in some way just really shaking everything up and seeing if there’s building upon what you’re already doing and looking to see if there’s a way of growing customers in other ways, because they’re in your content, they’re influencing people. You said that before, Jamie, and I think that was something I wanted to echo and I forgot.
When I worked in the advertising agency, I had my dream drawer and that’s what I called it. It was my dream drawer. All the print samples that one day I hoped we could do were in that drawer. Every once in a while, we’d pull one out when the right client came around. It was saved, because it was different and special and it had meaning in some way to all of us, and we wanted to be involved with it. I think that there is this opportunity now. As we know, there are just so many screens, and so many scrolls, and so many choices. It’s like, what makes people stop?
When it comes to needing to eventually buy, sell and buy things, I believe it, as Robert said, that it’s the trust and authenticity that’s first going to make me stop and click. Once I click, everything has to be speaking to me, or I’m going to move on. I have to feel understood, heard, you can help me, you know my business. Maybe you even know my business better than I do. You know the market, you know what’s out there, you know what’s moving the needle, in materials. You can help me print less and print smarter, or more effectively, whatever that might be. I really do appreciate this conversation.
I left it with Robert with one of his favorite quotes and I wanted to circle back with you guys to end this podcast. His philosophy, his mantra, his mission statement, “Market where you are going. Not where you are.” Which is what we’re talking about here. All the things you said you’re doing, you’re doing, right? Will, you actually do this, because you are the answer –
[0:53:59] WC: I know I do.
[0:54:00] DC: – when people have the question, you have the command of Mr. Google to make sure that you are the damn answer to that question. Jamie, don’t come to Florida, because you have no choice. It’s an interesting way of thinking about it. Will, why don’t we start with you? Where are you going now? Where are you marketing to?
[0:54:22] WC: I’ve got a quick tidbit on the last topic that I wanted to throw in is, I hate to be sold to and I hate to be marketed to. I’m the worst person – All of my employees say that I’m the worst client that they have, right? I’m the worst, because I hate to be marketed. I hate to be sold to, and I’m very nit-picky and I know what I want. If I don’t get what I want, I’d tell you what I want. I always try to put myself in the consumer seat when I am creating marketing, when I am thinking about sales, when I’m talking to a customer. How would I feel if I was being presented with this?
That has always given me a challenge in being a marketer is that, how do I create content and messaging that wouldn’t offend me and wouldn’t turn me off, right? Which is very easy to do. Then doing that in conflict with how do we get as many eyeballs to see this as possible? How do we do it in the Gorilla way, right? We’re doing it as shoestring as possible, but also, getting as much exposure as possible.
The market where you’re going, right? We’ve always, or I have always projected a bigger-than-life and I grew into it now, but in the beginning, I was so bootstrapped and so small, but you would never know, because of how I did my marketing, and because of how I presented myself. It’s like a fake it till you make it thing in that situation, which isn’t necessarily something to be proud of. The projecting, manifesting, all of those things as a human, as an organization, it’s something that I’ve always done and that I think our company culture does is we are looking to the future. How can we as an organization continue to help you? How can we continue to make your business better, right? Because everyone that we deal with, for the most part, whether it’s the landscaper that’s just starting out, you got a lawnmower and you need some business cards to the massive organization that has 300 locations nationwide. What can we do to benefit your business and help your business grow?
That’s always been my message. That’s always been my mantra of like, I want to help other businesses, right? It’s not about, how do I make my business better, because my business is going to grow and it’s going to get better because of me, because that’s just what I do. That is reciprocal too, in that, if what I’m doing is benefiting the people that interact with me and that are my customers, whether they’re consumers of my content, or they’re customers that interact and buy things from me, how are we benefiting them and how are we improving their businesses and helping them grow?
That’s where we’re going and it just keeps getting bigger and we keep making new brands and adding new products and new services and trying to be the, we could do it all for you. Also know that, yeah, if we can’t do this and we’re not going to do it right like, hey, here’s either someone that you can go and find, or we’re just going to bow out, because we can’t do it right.
[MESSAGE]
[0:57:29] DC: News from the Printerverse delivers topical sales and marketing insight along with plenty of printspiration one time a month to inboxes everywhere. Our contributors cover the industry and the future of print media and marketing with strategy for strengthening your customer relationships, better targeting of your prospects, and practical advice for helping your business grow. Printspiration is just a click away. Subscribe to News from the Printerverse at printmediacentr.com. Print long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:58:05] DC: Let me offer this, William. You are right, Tampa Media, because of all of the different companies, you really can do and be everything to everybody. You really do have that opportunity. In this new world that we’re coming into, imagine if you started hosting, first Tuesday of every month, a speaker to speak about real estate marketing, a seminar, a keynote. Wednesdays with Will, right? Come here and let’s talk about –
[0:58:43] WC: I like that. Wednesdays with Will.
[0:58:45] DC: Wednesdays with Will. You know what I’m saying? Thought leadership, you’re in a print shop. They already know you could print their materials, right? But that’s not what you’re talking to. Small business marketing seminars, right? Where they come to learn about marketing for small businesses. Whether they use your services or not, you’re still establishing trust and authenticity through that, and –
[0:59:13] WC: Can I tell you something really quick, Deborah?
[0:59:14] DC: – you’re creating influencers in the process. I’m just saying that that, to me, would be the market where you’re going, not where you’re almost.
[0:59:22] WC: I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m going to tell you something. This is something that you may or may not know. I may have told you this at one point in time, but my first shop, my first shop, I don’t think you ever saw my first shop. No, you did. You did see –
[0:59:32] DC: Yes, I did. The one on Kennedy. The other one.
[0:59:34] WC: Well, the very, very first one. They had the sliding glass door and the in between –
[0:59:37] DC: No. I only saw the one that was across from that Thai restaurant there.
[0:59:41] WC: Well, that’s the first one. Well, there was two of them in that same plaza. I had the little one and then I had the bigger one. The little one –
[0:59:47] DC: Actually, I did. I did go to the little one. Yes.
[0:59:49] WC: You did see it, right? The little one, I wanted to build this glass wall. It was like, “Oh, I have to have a glass wall.” I actually put in a sliding, like it was literally a sliding glass wall, but sliding glass door, but I did it this weird way. The whole idea and the whole premise behind that was to be able to open it up and convert that room into a classroom. I’ve always had the idea and the concept of teaching a class. I had the magic bullet marketing. That was what I was going to call it, it was the magic bullet marketing.
Just like my podcast now, which I haven’t recorded a podcast myself other than with you guys for, I think, six months, at least, my studio has gone through multiple phases of construction. I have a whole bunch of video equipment that’s been sitting on the couch in my office that I never go to in that building for three months, because I want to rewire everything and redo the cameras because I hate the camera quality. I get so busy and I get so wrapped up with all of the other things that I do that I don’t take the time to make that content, right?
Me actually, because I’m not in front of the camera. I used to be in front. I used to go live all the time. I used to be the one doing our social media, and now I have people doing that. That part of me doesn’t get out there, other than when I go and do speaking engagements, which is a couple of times a year. It’s easy to always say, “Well, I don’t have time.” But really, I know the content. I’ve written the program. I’ve written the classroom, or written the class. I just have never really taught it. The point is, is that that’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do and I’ve seen the value in, and I’ve known that if you come in and you take my marketing class, if there’s 10 people in my marketing class, I’m going to get one of you and one of you is going to become a customer, right? Just playing the odds of that.
[1:01:35] DC: Right. You can start off with any small business and only focus on what any small business would need to market itself. Then if you start seeing that, huh, there’s 30 people here and 20 of them are realtors. Now, I’m going to start just with the Realtor 101 marketing classes, because like attracts like. Then you start establishing that trusted authenticity in that vertical.
I’m just saying that there are ways of easing into it and then creating an audience for a specific subject matter and becoming their end-all-be-all, go-to resource for that thing, who will also, in the scheme of things, one hopes, end up with the business, which is the goal here. Jamie?
[1:02:24] JM: Well, let me go back real quick because I just really like the highlight drawer thing because I love making sure that one of our pieces is in somebody’s highlight drawer. Because yes, you do get callbacks for that, because that is just the best. But marketing where we are going, it’s something that we’ve done more recently in the last couple of years with the equipment that we bought. It’s basically the neon inks. We’ve been marketing to that part. There’s a lot of customers in this area. They want something bright and that type of thing.
There’s a local aquarium that they want this whole neon thing with their jellyfish wall and stuff like that. They want something that’s going to glow in the dark when they have their black lights on, and they already have all the lighting set up in there. It’s just, they don’t have the person to do it. I’m like, hey, I just showed up one day. But we market where we’re going. We’re working with a lot of high-end artists now, because all the texture prints we can do and with the spot varnishes and stuff like that. We’ve gotten three artists right now. I have this piece of art in my office now. It’s got to be worth, I don’t know, thousands of dollars that we had it scanned. Our guy, one artist, he scans it, 3D scans it. Now we’re going to be printing 3D versions of it.
We’ve been marketing that, and slowly marketing that. For our next podcast, I’ll be able to share where some of our art is going to be displayed in the world, because we’ve done a couple of IN pieces. That helps us with our decision with equipment we’re going to buy is what market we want to get into, our market that we think is growing. This is definitely one of the ones that we think is growing, and some of our suppliers have helped us and reached out to us and said, “Hey, call Jamie, because they do this.” Not too many people in the area that do it.
[1:03:59] DC: Just imagine that the content opportunities, creating an engaging environment with print, right? Using, perhaps, pictures of the aquarium as an example, not that you’re going to attract aquariums, but the whole point is that I didn’t even know you could print wallpaper. I didn’t even know that you could do all of this stuff. But it’s not about sales. You send it only to retail stores. You know what I’m saying? That could be a dedicated mailing list. If you have a retail store, this is the email that you want. How often do you want tips? I understand. It’s not an easy thing to do with every – If it was easy, everybody would do it, right?
[1:04:44] JM: You’re right. It takes a lot of thought and a lot of time.
[1:04:45] JM: Hold on. Deborah, you were talking about podcasts in a box earlier. What about content in a box, right? You can create relevant content to verticals and mediums and demographics that’s white-labeled, that can be branded and distributed to your customers as your own.
[1:05:01] DC: Doesn’t Mr. Google get upset when there’s same contents on multiple websites? I thought –
[1:05:05] WC: They do. They do. You can’t use this for SEO. This is not SEO at all, but there’s still plenty of ways that you can distribute content that’s not search engine-based that wouldn’t negatively impact you.
[1:05:19] DC: Okay. Well, there’s a reason to get in touch with Will, everybody. Gentlemen, I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope that you did, too. Thank you all so much for listening. Next time, we’ll have a recap from Printing United, a recap from Label Expo, a recap from the franchisor show that Will and I are going to. Please, like the podcast, share it with your friends, leave us some stars and a review.
I know you hear this all the time if you listen on to podcasts, but it really does matter. It is how the algorithm knows that your podcast exists. Otherwise, it’s just sitting there in a vacuum and more people should hear these great conversations about print because print is cool. It’s important that we promote our own industry as much as we can. Until next time, everybody, print long, promote long, and prosper.
[END OF EPISODE]
[1:06:13] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com. We’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
[END]
