Excitement…Simplicity…Intrigue…Pitch Me!

THE PITCH! It doesn’t have to be a real elevator where the scenario happens, it could be anywhere. Researchers have widely debated the human attention span, but some say it could be as little as eight seconds. Not very long, right? Use these tips to make sure you’ve mastered how your company will be portrayed.

Sell Your Story, Not Your Business
Let’s be honest—elevator pitches get a bad rap. Many of us don’t like to come off as “salesy.” But if you truly care about your business and its success, you should be ready to talk about it at any given moment.

In lieu of sounding salesy, focus on what really matters about your business. Ask yourself questions to help develop the kind of story you’d like to tell. Why do you love your business? What would get other people excited about your business? What is the most important thing for people to know?

Shape your story around the answers to those questions. When you light up talking about your passions, other people take notice. They’ll want to be a part. So, what will your story be?

Cut the Jargon
Never assume that people know what you’re talking about. You may be trying to sound smart, but really you’ll only confuse somebody who isn’t in your industry. That’s why you should explain the pitch in terms that anybody could understand.

Start by practicing your pitch on somebody who has no idea what you do. Get their feedback. Listen to their feedback. Having somebody to bounce ideas off of makes a world of difference.

Provide Next Steps
Remember that a short-form pitch is just enough to intrigue your prospect. Now that you have their attention, remind them of where they need to go next.

You can do this by using a shortened URL that leads to your website with something that’s easy for them to remember. Better yet, make sure you have business cards or some sort of information handy that is tangible. With so much information swirling around in our day-to-day lives, it’s hard for somebody to remember something off the top of their head. Make it easy, and they’ll be coming back to learn more about how amazing your business is.

NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the Midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.

5 Steps to Growing Your Brand on Instagram

Instagram, the image-based social networking platform, has quickly become one of the most effective ways to market yourself or your business. On Forbes.com, Griffin Thall, the CEO and co-founder of Pura Vida Bracelets shares these five steps for building your brand on Instagram:

Find your niche
Every person or brand must have a niche– a way to set yourself or your business a part from everyone and everything else. With out a niche, you will blend in and become lost in the social media noise. Finding your niche is creating your personality. To get started, first ask yourself: what am I good at? What do I enjoy doing? What is my brand’s main purpose? You need to not only be unique, honest, and sincere, but also somewhat mysterious. Be sure to keep your purpose and persona clear but always strive to have people wanting to know more. If people are confused at what you do in the first few seconds, you’ve lost them for good.

Find your influencers
Once you’ve found your niche, the next step is to find your influencers. An influencer on Instagram is someone who has power, reach and authority among their followers. Pairing your brand with the right voice can be the single most important force in getting the word out. Who do you want talking about your brand and sharing your story? Start with people who have between 5k and 25k followers and classify them as your “content producers” or entry-level influencers.

Find your product photographers
Once you’ve found your potential influencers, you need to find product photographers. These Instagram users are similar to influencers, but you are not looking to them for outreach purposes, you are looking to them for high-quality lifestyle or product photos of your brand in action.

Send out samples
Once your list of influencers and photographers is finalized, the next step is to send out samples. To do this, first draft up a very simple and to-the-point email to these Instagram pros. These days, anyone can detect a “spam” or templated email from a mile away, so take your time to draft up a unique email that caters exactly to the person you’re trying to target. Remember, these influencers are sorting through hundreds of emails a day just like you, so your first go is very important.

Repeat
Creating a “system” and repeating the steps above is key to growing your brand on Instagram.

NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the Midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.

4 Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses in 2016

With the New Year quickly approaching, business owners should be thinking about new marketing strategies to help their business grow in 2016. Consider these four strategies from OutboundEngine.com.

1. Think Mobile
If you’re not thinking about how customers see you on mobile devices, you need to start now. Don’t believe us? The numbers speak for themselves.

• Internet users spend 51 percent of their time browsing on mobile versus 42 percent on a desktop or laptop.
• Nearly 75 percent of Americans own at least one smartphone, and for many, it’s their main entry point to the Internet.
• Facebook, the world’s most heavily trafficked social media site, reports that a whopping 38 percent of its users are mobile only

2. Get Creative with Email
Don’t let having a routine stop you from getting creative with your marketing strategy. You might send emails to specific customers on specific days using specific language, and that’s all well and good, but why not branch out and try something new? Testing out unconventional email subject lines is a great strategy to apply in the new year because it’s easy to execute, allows for simple analysis (how was your open rate on this email versus that one?) and costs absolutely nothing.

3. Pay to Play
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a number of other social media sites now offer enhanced advertising options to people who are willing to put their money where their ads are. It seems simple enough: Pay the social network a few dollars and your company’s page, post, tweet or whatever you want to boost will get an increased reach. But what many business owners don’t realize is that paid ads on social are one of the fastest growing marketing channels available to them, and they ought to jump on board.

4. Share More Video
Believe it or not, about 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s 18,000 minutes of video in a single day! Video content has quickly become one of the most readily consumed forms of media on the Internet, with social networks like Facebook and Twitter both adding native video and autoplay to their platforms. It’s no wonder, then, that advertisers are quickly jumping on board and pushing video as the dominant medium for grabbing consumers’ attention. What does this mean for you? Get on the video wagon! Uploading your own content or sharing third party links are great ways to incorporate video, stay relevant and keep your brand top of mind. You can consider starting a vlog (video blog), sharing tutorials, or even look into video advertisements.

“Let me give you my business card”

The digital world has changed just about everything we do in business — sending mail, signing contracts, attending meetings, even networking. The business card is still one “old school” way of presenting yourself professionally.

Think about the number of times you hand out business cards to customers,  future prospects, and other connections.  A memorable business card can be the stepping stone to a great first impression.

Standard cards can do just that, but what if you are looking for something with a little more kick to it. Edge painting, edge coloring, colored edges – call it what you may, is the newest trend in business card design. The process is not new by any means, but it’s definitely getting a lot of exposure these days and with good reason – it makes a huge impact.

Click on the link and check out some of these samples, and let us know what you think of them. Would it be a product you would consider spending a little more money on? Edge Painted BC

 

NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the Midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.

Time to Shift Your Focus to Mobile Marketing

It may seem like an afterthought but mobile-users have skyrocketed in the past year. Time to shift your focus from desktop to mobile and become a better marketer by knowing more about your mobile audience. Here are three key points about mobile marketing:

Mobile App —Analyze your mobile audience (you can find this in your website analytics) and see if a mobile app is necessary, or maybe just a mobile website redesign will suffice. Generally, mobile apps allow for more creativity and better interaction with your users.

Competitors —The key to being more innovative is to analyze your mobile offerings compared to your competitors. If none of your competitors have a mobile app, then it may be time to evaluate your need for one.

Social Media —The last key to mobile marketing is to hook your audience to download the app. How do you do this? Through social media. Utilize the platforms your audience is on and heavily campaign the need for your mobile app while providing a download link.

NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the Midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.