We Lost...But Really We Won

At the Mesa Chamber of Commerce's Annual Luncheon, AlphaGraphics Mesa was one of the finalist for Mid-Sized Business of the Year. We did not win. Yes, I was nervous, yes I was disappointed, yes I was a little angry for a little bit.  However, as I thought about the whole experience, I believe that when we consider the entire event, we were a winner.  Let me explain.

I have spent a considerable amount of time and effort over the last few months promoting my business with SEO efforts.  I have worked on optimizing my website with the right keyword presentation, I have started a blog, I am doing press releases online so that they are picked up by Google, I am writing online articles with Ezinearticles.com, we are distributing a monthly email newsletters, we have done a couple of 3-dimensional mailing pieces to select customers and prospects and I continue to look at other opportunities to promote my business outside of the internet, such as sponsorships and networking.

So how does the Mesa Chamber experience fit into all of this? 

Well, a few months ago, I was asked by a staff person at the Chamber to "self-nominate" myself because they had not received enough nominations from the business community.  After a little thought, I did. I then learned that I was one of two finalists in the Mid-Sized category.  This was my start of a big SEO effort. I updated my status on Facebook and Twitter several times that we had been nominated. I wrote about it on my blog. (I guess this post qualifies also). I issued a couple of press releases, one with PRWeb.com, and one with Grassroots PR.  I was interviewed by a reporter with the Arizona Republic, which was published online and in print.

I received a few benefits also. 

My new picture that I am now using in my social media efforts was donated by a Chamber member (Steve Nissle).  The Chamber did a great video on my business. I will be receiving a copy of this video which I am going to upload to YouTube and embed it into my next blog, our AlphaGraphics websites, our Google Maps site and where ever else I can put it. I have been trying to figure out how to put a video on my websites for quite some time.  Google loves videos when evaluating the rankings of a website.

In addition to the SEO activities associated with this nomination, I received some RLO (Real Life Optimization) benefits. Even though the nomination had been made public by various means, most people did not know of the nomination until the event.  I had many businesses in the area congratulate me on the nomination and comment about how well I must be doing to be nominated (I do not bring up the fact that it was a self-nomination). I had a lot of people say they wish I had won for one reason or another and our new video was played to a room full of Mesa businesses.  What can be better than that?

So here come the sour grapes. 

The difference between winning and losing was that I did not receive a framed picture of my building (which I already have). I guess I will not be able to wear the tiara, to go to grocery store grand openings or to work for world peace, but I will survive. Instead of having more material for another press release on this nomination, I will work on a press release about our new FSC Certification.

I want to thank the staff of the Mesa Chamber for allowing me to be a part of the process and I sincerely want to congratulate Invision Auto Body for winning the category. Maybe we will try again in a few years.


You can always contact us at the following websites:

AlphaGraphics Mesa on Baseline - Printing and Marketing
AlphaGraphics Tempe on Elliot - Printing and Marketing
AlphaGraphics Phoenix - Northwest Valley - Printing and Marketing

Follow me on twitter: @steveadams291

Who is the Real AlphaGraphics Millennial Customer?

I found this video on YouTube a few days ago.  I think it precisely presents the gap between what a lot of businesses think about Gen Y/Millennials and how the Millennials think about themselves.  Honestly, I think the perception is somewhere in between, slanted toward the latter view.


The reality of the matter is that a lot of the Millennials have not ventured into an AlphaGraphics Printing Facility unless they have been trained for a design background.  We are also finding out that the trained designers are being trained for all things Internet and very little print.  In a lot of cases, we have to train our young customers on what it takes to have something printed on an offset press or that things need to be presented differently if they want to take an Internet page and convert it into a printed piece.

The Millennials are not only a significant portion of today's market but they will be the dominate portion of the overrall market in the future. So we will need to learn how to promote ourselves to them.  They will eventually learn the value of the printed piece so we must be patient in teaching them the benefits of print, combined with the digital presentation.

Previously, I published a Blog post on this subject.  You can find my thoughts at: http://stepheneugeneadams.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-alphagraphics-customer.html

At AlphaGraphics Printing in Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona, we do more than just print.  We are also marketing and communications consultants familiar with annual marketing plans, website design, SEO, SEM, Email marketing, direct mail campaigns, news releases and blogging.  We can be reached at the following websites:

Alphagraphics Mesa Printing and Marketing
Alphagraphics Tempe Printing and Marketing
AlphaGraphics Phoenix Printing and Marketing

Follow us on Twitter at:  @steveadams291

New Rules...

In the last couple of months, I have been reading a lot of books on marketing, advertising, public relations, SEO and email marketing. The two books that stand out as it pertains to my AlphaGraphics business are David Meerman Scott's book "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" and John Jantch's book "Duct Tape Marketing-The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide". Both of these books have valuable insights and advice on how to market in this new Web 2.0 environment and how to save money in this area over traditional methods. I now follow both of these authors on their blogs and twitter postings.

I have been reading all of these books for two reasons: I want to be the best in marketing my three AlphaGraphics centers and I want to be able to consult with my customers on how to market their businesses in this environment. As I stated in my last blog posting, quick printing businesses are becoming more marketing consulting oriented and to become so means to learn all the tricks of the trade.

In this posting, I want to discuss David Meerman Scott's book and how it has effected my marketing thus far. My timing on this book could not be any worse. Just after I finished reading his 2007 edition, he released the second addition last week. David's first book was very heavily oriented in the blogging area with additional discussions about social media, video and podcasting which he admitted were areas he needed to spend more time. Well since that published date, he has expanded these areas and I am sure that the new edition has significant additions to these areas.

With apologies to David for copying the following section, I believe that he said it best in his book. In the first couple of chapters, David described the Old Rules of Marketing and PR, namely,

"-Marketing simply meant advertising and branding

-Advertising needed to appeal to the masses

-Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to the message

-Advertising was one way-company to consumer

-Advertising was exclusively about selling products

-Advertising was based on campaigns that had limited life

-Creativity was deemed the most important component to advertising

-It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers"

"-The only way to get ink was through the media

-Companies communicated to journalists via press releases

-Nobody saw the actual press release except a handful of reporters and editors

-Companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release

-Jargon was okay because the journalists all understood it

-You weren't supposed to send a release unless it included quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysts, and experts.

-The only way buyers would learn about the press releases' content was if the media wrote a story about it

-The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through "clip books," which noted each time the media deigned to pick up a company's release"

David then went on to talk about the new rules of marketing and PR, namely:

"-Marketing is more than just advertising

-PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience

-You are what you publish

-People want authenticity, not spin

-People want participation, not propaganda

-Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it

-Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of under served audiences via the Web

-PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It's about your buyers seeing your company on the Web

-Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It's about your organization winning business

-The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media

-Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content

-Blogs, podcasts e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate

-On the Web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred"

In "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" David discussed that determining the various persona's of your buyer was very significant in designing your website and delivering your "thought leadership" message through blogs, emails, new releases, white papers, wiki's webinars, e-books, podcasts and videos. He also discussed re-purposing content to fit into these various avenues since the customer is now going to the Web to seek out content and information, not to see an advertisement.

So what have I done for my three AlphaGraphics center since I read this book?

-First, I started this blog. I have written on a number of marketing concepts and thoughts. Some of my postings, I am very proud of, some were just postings.

-From these postings, I have submitted three of them as ezinearticles.com publishings. The first attempt was brutal, but I finally got the hang of it and am was able to publish on my first attempt the last two times.

-I re-purposed two postings into news releases. One about the Top 10 Ways to Market a Business in 2010" and the other about the benefits of Direct Mail. I also post these news releases as separate pages on my website.

-I issue a monthly email newsletter to my customers using some of the information in my blogs. I now archive the past issues of my e-mail newsletters on an off site website that links into my main website.

-I've improved the keywords on my website.

-I've become active in the blogging community, commenting on blog postings and reading as much marketing information from this source as possible.

I would whole-heartedly endorse this book for all my fellow AlphaGraphics owners (the second edition, of course) and to any small business owner. It really cleared my head about what I needed to do to expand my marketing effort.

So what has this done for my businesses since I started this effort? Well, that is a subject for a later posting.

You can reach us at the following websites;

AlphaGraphics Mesa 480-844-2222

AlphaGraphics Tempe 480-413-1900

AlphaGraphics Phoenix 602-234-2944

Follow us on Twitter: @steveadams291

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The Do's and Don'ts of Email Marketing

I spent part of this last weekend between watching football games reading a new book entitled "The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing" by Eric Groves. Eric is the Senior Vice President of Global Market Development at Constant Contact. Constant Contact is the largest provider of email marketing software and tools for small businesses, associations and nonprofits. Eric wrote this book because he noticed that a lot of their users were not avoiding some of the biggest pitfalls when it came to using their services. Eric is big on lists about the do's and don't of implementing an email marketing program. In fact, the first chapter is a summary of all of the lists condensed down to 40 items to consider.

As I said in my last posting about the benefits of direct mail, I am a firm believer in Email Marketing. At AlphaGraphics, we started a practice in 2009 of sending out monthly email newsletters to our customer lists. We are also active in getting our customers and prospects to sign up for these emails. What I found out after reading this book, is that I can do a significantly better job with these emails by using the information in this book. I do use Constant Contact for my emails and I do highly recommend their service if anyone is serious about doing this on a frequent basis.

The biggest concern that Constant Contact has and the one I have always been concerned about is the number of spam complaints received from any of the emails sent. Eric stated that if an issuer can keep the spam complaints to less than 1 in a 1,000, then there should be no concern. Since the emails are sent out by the Constant Contact ISP, any large spam complaints effect both Constant Contact and the issuer's domain name which could result in excessive blocking and filtering by the larger email providers or worse yet, a CAN-SPAM complaint. That is why Constant Contact makes the issuer assure them that they have permission to send emails to the recipients prior to accepting the list. The biggest gray area, however, is in the area of implied permission. Eric stated that if the recipient knows who you are, has done business with you in the past, or if you get them to give your permission then you probably can avoid any CAN-SPAM problems.

There is also a couple of chapters on how to decrease the number of emails that are rejected by the recipients and the number of unsubscribes. Some of the discussion centers around being recognized by the recipient, using a good subject title, avoiding spam words and giving the recipient what you promised when they signed up to receive your emails. The length of the emails was also discussed, which is an area that I struggle with. The longer the email, the faster the recipient will lose interest and unsubscribe. If you do have a longer message, it is usually better to give the essential information in a paragraph or two and then link to your website where the full information is available. This is also a great way to get the recipient to go to your website.

Although emails that promote your product are acceptable, the most favorably received emails are the ones that are informative in nature. Writing as an expert in your field are the best emails. Even though you don't feel like and expert, you certainly know more about your field than a majority of your readers. Having a call to action is also very important. Getting the reader to go to your website to download a white paper, participate in a survey or receive a promotional offering is important when you consider why you are sending these messages out.

Constant Contact, as well as most of their competitors provides a lot of analytical information on each email that is sent. They can tell you how many people have opened your email and who they are, how many people forwarded your email to someone else, who opted out of future emails from you and how many emails were non-deliverable for a variety of reasons. These analytics allow you to adjust your message or your subject line to increase readership.

Eric does spend a lot of time trying to help the reader address the concern about content. He acknowledges that this is the weakest link in having and maintaining a long-term email marketing program. His biggest suggestion is to write like an expert but don't say everything in the first email message. He also states that the value of an email marketing program is significant enough that you might want to consider hiring someone in charge of content whether it is an in-house employee or a consultant.

I do believe that anyone who is currently using an email campaign or are contemplating a campaign should both read this book and consider using a company such as Constant Contact for their provider. AlphaGraphics can help you design an email marketing program and has access to content writers.

You can reach us at AlphaGraphics at the following websites:
AlphaGraphics Mesa on Baseline 480-844-2222
AlphaGraphics Tempe on Elliot 480-413-1900
AlphaGraphics Phoenix - Northwest Valley 602-234-2944

Follow me on Twitter at: Steve's Twitter Account

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Is Direct Mail Dead?

We, at AlphaGraphics Say Definitely Not!

One of my salespeople had a conversation with one of her customers last month where she asked the customer whether they had thought about doing a direct mail campaign. The answer she got back was laughter. Why would anyone consider a direct mail campaign when you have email newsletters, a drop-dead website, a business FaceBook page, an active Twitter account and an ongoing blog? Why pay anyone to design a mailer, have it printed and pay postage to distribute it?

Here is a short print industry video to kind of illustrate the point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ3Je3zpMqg

I am not here to bad mouth Social Meda and the Internet. I, myself, have adopted all of the practices I described above and I believe that each of these items are a critical part of any company’s marketing arsenal. However, I believe that direct mail is still a vital component of a comprehensive marketing plan.

First of all, here are some of the discussion points that most people use to justify an email only approach:

-According to the Direct Marketing Association, a properly constructed email campaign returns about $45 per dollar of expense compared to $15 for direct mail.

-Admittedly, an email newsletter is cheap to distribute. No printing costs, no postage.

-There is a perception that the printed piece is hard on the environment, wasting valuable forests and energy costs to produce and distribute.

-A properly run email campaign will allow the issuer to obtain valuable analytics. You will know how many people opened the email, and how many people clicked on the enclosed links.

So what are the benefits of Direct Mail?

-Direct mail has almost a 100% deliverability factor. If a customer or prospect has changed their address, the Post Office will give you the new information. Most emails sent will have between a 33% to 67% undeliverable factor depending on spam filters and blocking. If someone leaves a company or changes their email address, there is no notification received with the correct information. EMailLabs did a survey in 2006 with company executives which asked the question: How significant a challenge is deliverability for your company’s email marketing programs? 30.5% responded that it was a significant challenge and 51.8% responded that it was somewhat of a challenge.

-Direct mail can support and enhance a great email program. Royal Mail, Britain’s Post Office, did a study and determined that an email marketing program supported by a direct mail program increased the effectiveness of the email program by 65%. Quite an improvement.

-Direct mail can stimulate web traffic. In today’s SEO world, the name of the game is to attract prospects and customers to your company website and/or to your blog. Sometimes the only way to get people to these online locations is through the printed piece.

-Direct mail can keep the company’s database current, including active email addresses. Mailers, with attached personalized url’s drive people to a landing page that has the customer update their data. I should note that the recipient will need a good reason to go to the website such as a gift certificate or a downloadable white paper.

-Believe it or not, there is still a big portion of the market that is not Internet savvy. There also needs to be a way to contact customers and prospects that opt-out of your email messages. Understanding the demographic targets of a company’s customers and prospects will allow the right choice on media to use.

-Most of the paper used in a printing operation comes from FSC certified forests. These are forests whereby the trees used in the manufacture of paper have been grown specifically for that purpose. Most of these papers also have a high mix of recycled content thus reducing the energy used in its manufacture.

John Jantsch, author of the book “Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” had this to say about Direct Mail:

“…one of my favorite forms of advertising for the small business—direct mail. The reasons I like direct mail are pretty simple, but it all leads back to my prevailing principles when it comes to analyzing any form of advertising.

1. Does it allow you to specifically target your Ideal Prospect?
2. Does it provide a high return on investment?

Properly executed, direct mail offers a resounding yes to both of the above questions.”

He also wrote, “Few advertising mediums are targeted enough to offer the small business a high enough return on investment, but the primary reason I believe direct mail is the best choice for most small businesses is that you can start very small, test very quickly, and easily expand your efforts when you have a winner.”

He then goes on to discuss the ability to personalize direct mail and the need to have a great list, which is the subject of a later posting.

I leave you with some final statistics supporting Direct Mail. In 2009, marketers are estimated to have spent about $149 billion on direct marketing, which accounts for 54.3% of all ad expenditures in the country, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Measured against total U.S. sales, these advertising expenditures will generate approximately $1.78 trillion in incremental sales.

You can reach us at AlphaGraphics at the following websites:

Mesa 535 W. Baseline Rd., Mesa, AZ 85210 480-844-2222

Tempe 720 W. Elliot Rd., Tempe, AZ 85284 480-413-1900

Phoenix 8041 N. Black Canyon Hwy, Phoenix, AZ 85021 602-234-2944

Follow me on Twitter at: Steve's Twitter Account

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Hey AlphaGraphics, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

So now that I have published the Top 10 Ways to Market Your Business in 2010, the question being asked is, "Steve, how are your going to market your three businesses in 2010?" Well, after much thought and discussion, here are a few of the things we are going to do.

1. Website and SEO-AlphaGraphics, Inc., our franchisor, controls much of the formatting of our local websites. They use a Utah firm with the appropriate name of SEO.com. At the local level, we can tweek the home page and certain pages in the "About Us" section. We will continue to adjust and evaluate our content and keywords to get our centers a higher ranking with the search engines. We are evaluating whether we want to hire a local firm by the name of VirtualIT to help us with the local page rankings. In addition, the Phoenix Owners Group, which represents the 15 AlphaGraphics franchisees in the Phoenix metropolitan area has contracted with AZPixels to help with our SEM (search engine marketing) placements. This year, we will also ask our customers to rate our performance on our Google, CitySearch and Yahoo pages. To entice them to do this, we will give our customers a $5 Starbucks card. The search engines evaluate the number of reviews when deciding which businesses get shown on the map on the first page. It is also our goal to significantly increase the amount of links to our websites from outside sources by asking our customers, our vendors and our business contacts to consider a like-for-like linking.

2. Blog-Well, your reading it. I intend to continue with a weekly posting until I get a little more comfortable with a more frequent publishing schedule. I have referenced this blog in my websites, my twitter page, my LinkedIn page, my personal Facebook page and on each of my centers' Facebook pages.

3. Demographic Profile-We plan on completing a demographic profile of our best customers at each of my centers this year. With that information, we will identify about 500 companies that are similar to our best customers and we will market to these companies with all our resources as discussed in the points below.

4. Direct Mail-As part of our AlphaGraphics program, each of my centers will do a monthly mailing to a combination of customers, prospects and leads. We grew our businesses on direct mail and we continue to see benefit for continuing the practice. In fact John Jantsch, in his book "Duct Tape Marketing" stated that direct mail is still one of the most cost effective ways to reach your prospects. In our direct mailing campaign, we will use personalized url's (purls) to obtain additional information from these prospects. As a Phoenix Owners Group, we plan on distributing a series of 3-dimensional mailings matched with a purl site and some type of give away such as a gift card.

5. Email Newsletters- We have started a monthly email newsletters to our customers and prospects. We are currently using Constant Contact to help us with this process. Each of these newsletters will be based upon a marketing and/or a printing theme and will be associated with one of my blogs. Our email newsletters will be information and hopefully will not come across as purely promotional.

6. Social Media-We are now very active in the Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn arenas. The trick now is to get all of these areas linked in with each other so that we only have to do one posting at at time.

7. News Releases- We plan on issuing one news release per center per month. We use, through AlphaGraphics, Inc., a company by the name of GrassrootsPR to help us with these news releases to the local media. Our news releases will be on items such as new equipment additions, promotions of key people, awards won or nominated, information that will benefit the business community or a host of other things. From an SEO standpoint, we will us PRWeb.com to distribute these news releases on the web so that they are searchable by the search engines. These releases by PRWeb cost us $80 per release.

8. Community Activities-We plan on continuing to be active in our local chambers of commerce, the Mesa Rotary Club, the Mesa United Way and BNI. We believe that it is important to be active in the community to help others and ourselves.

You can reach us at AlphaGraphics at the following websites:

Mesa 535 W. Baseline Rd., Mesa, AZ 85210 480-844-2222
Tempe 720 W. Elliot Rd., Tempe, AZ 85284 480-413-1900
Phoenix 8041 N. Black Canyon Hwy, Phoenix, AZ 85021 602-234-2944

Follow me on Twitter at: Steve's Twitter Account

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Top 10 Ways to Market Your Business in 2010

As we go into 2010, full of promise and change from 2009, it is time to think about economical ways to market your business in the coming year. In this internet, social media age, the old marketing plans can no longer be copied into the the new plans. Here are our top ten things AlphaGraphics suggests that you do:

1. Update your Website- Your website is no longer a brochure for the company. The internet search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have changed the rules. Your website needs to be searchable, it needs to have outside links refer to its content and it needs to be changed very frequently. If you have not had a major overhaul of your site in the last 5 years, its time to invest in a total makeover. Even if you do not make any major changes, the site needs to be editable by the Marketing Department or the owner. There needs to be a system of updating and changing the site on a weekly or monthly basis and having an easy to use edit tool accessible to the marketing people is a must. As discussed in the next item, the use of keywords is also essential for the search engine.

2. Invest in Search Engine Optimization- SEO is the word of the new decade in the marketing arena. For as little as $200 per month, you can hire a company to make your website land on the first page of any search. They do this by testing your website to make sure it has been optimized, by making sure the keywords are in the right place, by making sure that there is activity outside the website that points to your website such as blogs, news releases, email blast, etc. and they use tools to monitor your website activity. You may be able to do it yourself. There are many books written and being written on the subject.

3. Think About Search Engine Marketing- SEM is the sibling to SEO. When you do a search on Google, there are two distinct parts of the results page. There usually is a couple of listings at the top of the page and there are several listings to the right of the page. These are the sponsored links. If you click on one of the links, the sponsor will pay a click-thru fee, usually averaging about $3 per click. The other part of the page is the organic listings where SEO activities dictate the rankings. SEM is done by bidding on the keywords you want to sponsor with the search engines. With Google, you can bid on certain words using their AdWords feature. It is usually a good idea to hire a consultant to place the words for you and to monitor the results. You might also want to design different landing pages within your website for each category of keywords so that when the customer does click-thru to your site, where they land is relevant to the search term.

4. Send out Email Newsletters- This is an email world now. Monthly email newsletters are a great way to inform your customers and prospects about your business. You do have to be careful not to come across a selling a product or service too much or people will opt-out of future mailings. Emails that are informative and specific to what your customers want to know are the best types of emails. Occasional promotional postcard email blasts are OK, but do it too often, your will lose the ability to send future emails. Companies such as Constant Contact are perfect for distributing these emails. They have templates available and they monitor the email addresses for bounces and opt-outs.

5. Do a Demographic Profile of Your Customers- How would you like a listing of the companies or prospects that are out there that are exactly like your current customers. Well, it is possible to get this listing by doing a demographics profile of your existing customers. Once this information is put into the system, we can identify a listing of companies and prospects that have the same attributes as your existing customers in your market. This process usually runs around $1,000 to have done, but it will allow you to better target your market with a reduced number of mailed or emailed items.

6. Don't Forget Direct Mail- Direct mail is still one of the best ways of contacting prospective or current customers. Email filters and the rapid changes in email addresses reduces the overall benefits of doing email only. Using an efficient mailing list such as the one discussed above, greatly enhances your chances that the direct mail item will be read. We also use three-dimensional pieces and personalized url to improve responses rates on our mailings. Personalized url's (purls) are a great way to get your prospects or customers to go to a website to capture additional demographic information on that customer.

7. Write a Blog- Every company needs to have a blog. The best way to drive people to your company's website is to have them read your blog. As in the email blast discussions above, blogs should be informative and not promotional in order to capture and maintain a frequent audience. Starting a blog is easy. I started this one by going to Google and typing in "starting a blog". Don't worry that it appears that no one is reading the blog. Your readership will expand over time and it will be very beneficial with the search engines. Link your company website, your Twitter page and everything else within your blog. Just remember, link, link, link.

8. Be Active with Social Media- Most people understand Facebook and LinkedIn now. A lot of people do not understand Twitter and its benefits. "I'm sitting on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" does not appear to make a great business tool. However, using Twitter to make an occasional statement about something of interest in your business or industry will get you some followers. On Facebook, having a separate company page whereby people can become fans of your business has its benefits. Cross linking your website, your Blog, your Facebook page and your Twitter page will enhance your readership and your search results.

9. Issue News Releases- Commit to issuing a monthly press release about something of interest that has happened to your business. This can be about a new product, a new piece of equipment, a move or something that one of your employees did. Before your do the first one, you need to develop a contact listing of your local media outlets. Once the news release is written then it needs to be distributed to the local media outlets as well as placing the news release on the wire. Putting the news release on the wire allows the release to be searched by the search engines and catalogued.

10. Go to Trade Shows- Re-commit to going to trade shows. At least plan on getting a booth at the local Chamber of Commerce Business Expo. Trade shows are an inexpensive way to get in front of prospective customers. The use of large format graphics and brochures helps to make your booth pop. Capture business cards of prospects by offering something of value such as a prize or free service.

At AlphaGraphics, we are positioned to either providing the above listed services or to helping you to contact a company that provides the service. We would be happy to meet with your to plan out your full year marketing plan.

You can reach us at AlphaGraphics at the following websites:

Mesa 535 W. Baseline Rd., Mesa, AZ 85210 480-844-2222
Tempe 720 W. Elliot Rd., Tempe, AZ 85284 480-413-1900
Phoenix 8041 N. Black Canyon Hwy, Phoenix, AZ 85021 602-234-2944

Follow me on Twitter at: Steve's Twitter Account