Lots of good sales going on this month at PsPrint. The sales are in full swing for spring and it’s time to get the word out about your business. Over the last few months I’ve been reposting some great articles from the PsPrint website about using print marketing to your advantage, so these sales are an awesome time to take advantage of that advise.

• 20% off Brochures
  • Brochures are the fastest way for your clients to look up information about your business in a convenient matter without the aid of your website.
  • Brochure Printing Made Easy
  • Branding with a Shoestring Budget
• 50 4″ x 6″ Postcards for just $14.95
  • With prices like these, even the smallest business can promote their products or services. Postcards are also great inexpensive alternatives to party or event invitations. With such a low price for such a small quantity, any mother can send postcards for a proud graduation party.
  • Top Six Mistakes to Avoid in Any Postcard Marketing Campaign
  • Ninja Marketing Tactics – Postcards
  • 5 Proven Tips for Powerful Postcard Marketing
• 15% off Rack Cards
  • Rack Cards provide travelers not familiar with the area with highlights of local sights and attractions in hotel lobbies around the country. Rack Cards can effectively advertise restaurants and shops as well to an audience wide open to suggestion.

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Annoying Tactic #1: Launch a campaign without communicating it to everyone who needs to know internally.

Yes, if we told you we’d have to kill you. It’s that secret! Or, just not well communicated. There’s a fine line between keeping everyone in the loop and spamming everyone with constant updates. Personally, I’d rather err on the side of caution and go with the borderline spam. At least that way I never hear that dreaded phrase “Well nobody told ME that”. In my opinion, the more informed the employees are, the more interested and invested they are in making the company work and grow successfully. Maybe that’s just me.

Annoying Tactic #2: Contact everyone at the company you have contact info for to push a deal.

While erring to spam internally doesn’t bother me, constant follow up when I have no say in a matter does. I read an interesting blog a few months ago and man does it ring true. Listen up…if I’ve told you that you need to talk to a certain person that’s obviously not me, don’t keep sending me e-mails and calling me. Despite the word “assistant” in my (former) title, I am not this person’s secretary and cannot get them to call you back any faster if they are not interested or, better yet, not in the office. I’ve never been one to respond well to hard sales even if I was genuinely interested in the product. So back off, Salesman Steve. We’ll get to you when we’re good and ready.

Annoying Tactic #3: Make sure everyone you’ve ever met knows where you work and how they could use you.

There’s a fine line between informative introductions and obnoxious introductions. If someone you meet at a show or other non-work related function asks what you do or where you work, don’t be afraid to tell them. It might spark their interest and give you a wide opportunity to explain to them how great your company is without shoving it down their throat. But be careful not to be obnoxious. Princeton’s WordNet search defines obnoxious as “objectionable: causing disapproval or protest”. So don’t leave a sour taste in people’s minds about your company by announcing it off the bat when you shake hands. Yes shows are great networking opportunities, but if you go around spewing information about your company to everyone who didn’t ask, they won’t be likely to use you. Saturation is not always good.

Annoying Tactic #4: Miss deadlines

Missing so many deadlines that the promotion or campaign is practically a moot idea is the most annoying of all. When people get a postcard for a sale and the sale is halfway over, they tend to be ticked off about it and it really doesn’t encourage them to go order right away to take advantage. I know, I’ve received many a sale card mid-sale and thought simply “well, that’s a sale I won’t be able to hit”. Marketing is all about timeliness, so missing the mark is just poor form. It doesn’t motivate your customers to take action and it holds back other people within your department trying to work on the same project.

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As most marketing professionals have experienced, we all get these lofty, grand ideas about ways to draw in customers, enhance our user interfaces, sell the products, you name it. But often, when we present these rough ideas to the IT or tech departments at our company, we’re met with resistance.

Talk back people, I know I’m not the only one!

Sometimes it’s a matter of not having enough resources to bring one of our bright ideas to life. Other times it’s a matter of something being extremely difficult to create, technically speaking. An sometimes the technology required is just too dang expensive for the company to agree.

We had a similar problem with landing pages recently. Not enough IT or design resources to create, code, and launch the many different landing pages we wanted to create to promote things. Without more IT people or more designers, we were faced with sticking a lot of ideas in drawers.

Until now. We came across Marketo, online B2B marketing software that offers landing page creative tools, Salesforce.com integration, Google AdWords integration in their PPC product, and soon to come will be lead management tools. A short-tech-staffed marketer’s dream come true.

From the Marketo About Us Page…

Marketo provides affordable, easy-to-use marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive more revenue and improve marketing accountability. Our solutions automate lead generation and lead nurturing processes over multiple channels, beginning with pay-per-click search marketing and landing page optimization. Our analytics bring accountability and respect to the CMO by providing forecasts and metrics that matter to CEOs and CFOs, and help turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue-generating part of the company.

Sounds great to me! This gives us exactly the vehicle we want, for not that much money at all, to launch numerous landing pages presenting whitepaper downloads and other product or project specific information. One of the best features of Marketo’s landing page optimization is that you can sent the pages to appear under your company’s URL. They’re a great invisible partner, with pretty thorough reporting tools available.

I highly encourage anyone remotely interested to use their Test Drive feature to play around with a dummy account or to go ahead and sign up for the free 14 day trial. Once you see how easy it is (seriously… practically everything is drag & drop) you’ll be intrigued to learn more about how it can help you.

Added 1/13/08 – Marketo agrees!

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