Steve Friar, on Wed, Feb 08, 2023 @ 02:46 PM
If we’ve seen it once, we’ve seen it a hundred times: enthusiastic yet inexperienced marketers running up print fulfillment costs by creating exotic designs that are undeniably beautiful but prohibitively expensive to produce and distribute. And there’s no shortage of printers who are happy to encourage that sort of behavior and take your money in the process.
Steve Friar, on Wed, Feb 01, 2023 @ 11:52 AM
It’s a new year. Time to start preparing for the various events, conferences and tradeshows on your marketing calendar—not to mention all your other projects and priorities.
Unfortunately, adding headcount right now is difficult if not impossible. Current economic conditions are forcing businesses to tighten their belts. Even if you could find and hire the right talent, building a full-time team to handle spikes in activity surrounding individual events doesn’t make financial sense.
Steve Friar, on Tue, Dec 27, 2022 @ 09:49 AM
After two years of COVID-related shutdowns, events—conferences, seminars, tradeshows and the like—are coming back in a big way.
Weekly, if not daily, organizations are asking us to help them ramp up their marketing event support activities. They want to get back out there and start meeting with customers and prospects again. Only now, they’re facing a host of new challenges.
Remote workforces. Reduced staff. Depleted or non-existent marketing closets. It’s like learning how to plan, manage, and execute events all over again, with fewer people and resources.
Steve Friar, on Mon, Nov 14, 2022 @ 08:26 AM
Running an online business is incredibly complex.
The technology required to create a website where people can virtually browse, shop, reserve, order, download, or purchase items is overwhelming. If anything, we should be amazed when it works properly rather than annoyed when it doesn’t. The fact that it is so commonplace and reliable is a testament to the tenacity and creativity of the developers who made it possible.
Even the presumably easiest tasks are fraught with difficulty and challenges. For instance, in order to maintain some semblance of order, one of the first things an online business must do is assign users to predefined groups or roles that determine what resources they can see or access. On the surface, this seems to be a fairly simple and straightforward process.
Steve Friar, on Sun, Sep 25, 2022 @ 09:38 AM
So you’re exhibiting at an upcoming trade show, where you hope to attract a ton of high-quality prospects. You’ve got a table or a booth, be it large or small. Forgetting for a minute about what you did PRE-event to promote your event participation, think about what kinds of “swag” you should have at your display to give to passersby.
Swag, in PG terms, is short for “stuff we all get.” If you’ve been to trade shows before, you know you’re going to have salespeople foisting various and sundry objects upon you. And if it’s a major show (think hundreds of exhibiting sponsors, not just one or two dozen), be prepared. You’ll be like that neighborhood kid with a too-small paper bag on Halloween having to face four dozen homeowners tossing candy bars and popcorn balls in your general direction. With luck, that’s what they’re tossing – as opposed to apples or boxes of raisins. (Come on, who among you hasn’t received unappetizing “healthy” snacks on Halloweens of yesteryear, only to pitch them in some darkened neighbor’s yard before you ever reached home?)
