Carmen Sognonvi

Steal This Idea: How GotPrint Won My Business With a Single Postcard

Want to do a direct mail campaign for your local business but need postcard ideas? In this video, Carmen Sognonvi shares how GotPrint won her business with a single postcard, and the lessons that local businesses can learn from this example.

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Tweet about this post

Here are some pre-crafted tweets you can use. All you have to do is click on the “tweet this” link, and it’ll post to your Twitter account! You may have to log into Twitter first.

Steal This Idea: How @GotPrint Won My Business With a Single Postcard (tweet this)

Need postcard ideas for your #localbusiness? Steal this idea from @gotprint (tweet this)

Boost your direct mail response through the power of customization! Here’s how: (tweet this)

For more…

Leave a Comment or Read the Transcript

Transcript

Hi I’m Carmen Sognonvi, and this is a “Steal This Idea” video.

This is an occassional series where I share with you cool things that other companies are doing, and I show you how you can apply the same ideas in your own business.

Today’s video tip is all about how to customize direct mail for maximum impact.

We get tons of mail at Urban Martial Arts, our karate school: postcards, flyers, brochures.

Most of it ends up in the trash because it seems irrelevant or doesn’t seem particularly useful to our business.

But recently I got a postcard that really piqued my interest, and this is it.

Now the postcard is from a printing company called GotPrint.com and the reason it caught my eye is because the whole postcard is geared around how martial arts school owners can use their services to build a better business.

What I love about this piece is that the whole thing is specifically designed to appeal to me as a martial arts school owner.

Everything from the headline, to every single image that they picked out, was completely martial arts-themed.

The headline, for example, reads: kick, punch, and wrestle your way to a better business with direct marketing.

And on the front of the postcard there are four photos: one of kids doing karate, one of adults doing karate, one of men wrestline, and one of a man doing boxing.

Now on the back of the postcard they feature three or four different samples of the products they can create: business cards, postcards, door hangers, other printed materials.

And what I really appreciate is the level of detail that went into this. Even those four samples are also geared towards a martial arts theme.

What I love about this is that I can immediately see how this company can help me market my business because they’ve shown me visually exactly what martial arts school postcard would look like, what a martial arts school business card would look like.

So I don’t have to make that leap of imagination – it’s all there right in front of me.

The next time you do a direct mail campaign, keep this in mind and think about what GotPrint.com did with their postcard.

Think about what specific target client or customer you’re going after, and think about how exactly you can customize a direct mail piece to appeal to them.

If you’re marketing business-to-business, pull images that specifically reflect the industry that company is in.

If you’re marketing to consumers, try to pick photos that actually reflect the customers you’re trying to reach, whether it’s by age, by ethnicity, by gender.

You want people to be able to recognize themselves in the piece that you’re sending to them.

Technology makes it so easy to do this kind of customization nowadays that there’s really no excuse not to do it.

Now you may be wondering, did this marketing actually work for GotPrint.com?

Did they actually win my business?

And the answer is, absolutely.

After getting the postcard, I went to their website and checked out their prices and found that their prices were really, really competitive.

I’ve since placed two big orders with them for postcards and rack cards and I’m planning to use them on a consistent basis for all of our major printing needs.

In case you’re wondering, no they did not pay me to make this video.

I’m just genuinely a happy customer and I was so impressed with the marketing that they did that I wanted to share it with you because I wanted you to see how you can apply the same tactic in your own business.

If you enjoyed this video, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

Thanks for watching, and I’d love to hear your tips for how to get the most out of your next direct mail campaign!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Why Failure Can Be Good for Your Business

When something in your business goes wrong, it’s hard not to feel down about it. But in this video, Carmen Sognonvi will show you how failure can actually be good for your business!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Tweet about this post

Here are some pre-crafted tweets you can use. All you have to do is click on the “tweet this” link, and it’ll post to your Twitter account! You may have to log into Twitter first.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” (tweet this)

“Failure is just another cell on my Excel spreadsheet” (tweet this)

“Success is sweeter after failure” (tweet this)

For more…

Leave a Comment or Read the Transcript

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi. When something in your business goes wrong, it’s hard not to feel down about it.

But in this video, I’m going to show you how failure can actually be good for your business!

I’m going to share with you three of my favorite quotes about failure.

I hope they will help you redefine what failure means for your business.

Make sure to watch till the end because I’m going to share a bonus quote that has one extra tip for you!

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
~ Thomas Edison, inventor and entrepreneur

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you can learn a lot from your failures.

Here’s a story about that.

The first year we tried to launch a summer camp at Urban Martial Arts, it failed miserably.

People complained that it was too expensive, and only one person signed up.

The following year we tried again but this time, we changed the pricing structure.

Instead of listing only the per-week cost, we offered 3-week, 5-week, and 7-week packages.

We signed up 16 campers and many of them had such a great time that they added on more camp weeks than they had originally signed up for!

The funny thing is, we hadn’t lowered the price. We had just changed the way it was structured.

So sometimes the difference between success and failure is a small tweak of the details.

But you won’t know which details to tweak until you get out there, try something, and fail at it.

“Failure is just another cell on my Excel spreadsheet”
~ Steve from MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, blogger and entrepreneur

There’s a great book by Barry Moltz called Bounce: Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success.

In the book, Moltz says that people like to think that we can always learn from our failures.

But sometimes, there are no lessons to learn.

You failed, and that’s all there is to it.

What you need to understand is that there are always going to be ups and downs in business.

There’s no getting away from that.

But the quicker you can pick yourself up and move onto the next thing, the better an entrepreneur you’ll become.

“Success is sweeter after failure”
~Vidya Malvade, Bollywood star

How many times have you heard about someone who came into a large sum of cash very suddenly, and was broke again in a matter of months?

There’s a reason that this happens so often.

If you get success too easily or too quickly, on some subconscious level you’re going to wonder if you really deserve it.

And if you think you don’t deserve it, you’re going to start sabotaging your own success.

So failing at something a few times before you succeed at it actually helps you appreciate your success and work to keep it.

Now as promised, I’ve got one more bonus quote for you.

But before I get to that, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

People often look at successful entrepreneurs and write them off as simply being “lucky.”

I once read a great blog post about this written by the billionaire Mark Cuban.

He wrote that when he sold his company, people said he was “lucky” to sell at the right time.

When he invested successfully in tech start-ups, people again said he was “lucky” to know about technology.

In reality, Mark Cuban had experienced a lot of failures along the way.

He spent years working dead-end jobs and starting failed businesses, all the while spending nights and weekends educating himself about technology and figuring out what would and wouldn’t work.

Now, no one says he was “lucky” to have gone through those rough times because all they see is the end result, not the process of how he got there.

So keep in mind that when you experience failure, it’s simply a natural part of the journey to success.

With that in mind, here’s the bonus quote for you from Cuban himself:

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. All that matters in business is that you get it right once.”
~Mark Cuban

Thanks for watching. How do you handle failures in your business? I’d love to hear your tips.

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Steal This Idea: Create an Emotional Connection With Your Customer

If you want to boost customer loyalty and retention in your business, you need to create an emotional connection with your customers.

In this video, Carmen shows you how Baskin-Robbins leveraged a recent promotion to do just that, and how you can apply the same strategy in your own business.

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Tweet about this post

Here are some pre-crafted tweets you can use. All you have to do is click on the “tweet this” link, and it’ll post to your Twitter account! You may have to log into Twitter first.

Want better customer loyalty? Create an emotional connection with your customer. (tweet this)

Steal this idea! -> The @baskinrobbins method of boosting customer loyalty (tweet this)

The more emotionally connected a customer is to your biz, the more loyal they’ll be (tweet this)

For more…

Leave a Comment or Read the Transcript

Transcript

Hi I’m Carmen Sognonvi, and I’m coming to you today with a “Steal This Idea” video.

This is an occasional series where I share with you cool things that I’ve come across that other companies are doing, and I show you how you can implement similar ideas in your own business.

Today’s idea comes from Baskin-Robbins, and it’s all about how to create an emotional experience around your product or service.

I was in a Baskin-Robbins a few months back and I snapped this picture because I really liked this particular promotion that they were running.

The promotion was: “Wear your team uniform and get a kids soft serve cup or cone with sprinkles for only 99 cents.”

Now what I love about this idea is that it encourages families to start going to Baskin-Robbins after every game and build that into their ritual during the weekends.

So parents would either be celebrating their kid’s victory with ice cream, or if they lost the game, then it becomes a consolation prize and they’re able to have a nice treat to take their mind off of the loss.

And ultimately what this does is it starts building an emotional connection with the brand and with the product.

So think about how this would apply in your own business.

What are some major milestones or celebrations in people’s lives that you can build a promotion around?

If you work with famiies, you could do a promotion where the kid brings in their report card and if they get a B+ or above, they get a certain free prize.

Or if you’re trying to reach newlyweds, you could have them bring in their wedding pictures and get a coupon towards a free meal at your restaurant.

The more emotionally connected a customer is with your business, the more likely it is that they’ll return and become a loyal customer.

If you found this video useful, please sign up to get free email updates!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to visit www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter

Thanks for watching, and let me know if you try out this idea!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

The 7 Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing Your Local Business at a Street Fair

Local street fairs are a great place to attract new customers for your local business. In this video, Carmen shares her list of 7 do’s and don’ts when it comes to marketing your business at a street fair.

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Tweet about this post

Here are some pre-crafted tweets you can use. All you have to do is click on the “tweet this” link, and it’ll post to your Twitter account! You may have to log into Twitter first.

The 7 do’s and don’ts of marketing your local business at a street fair (tweet this)

Giving away tchotchkes attracts freeloaders, not customers. Here’s what to do instead: (tweet this)

How #localbusiness owners can triple the number of leads they collect at street fairs: (tweet this)

For more…

Leave a Comment or Read the Transcript

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi. One of the best ways to get new customers for your local business is to set up a promotional booth at a local street fair.

But how exactly do you turn those street fair attendees into paying customers?

Keep watching to find out.

In this video, I’m going to share with you my list of 7 do’s and don’ts when it comes to marketing your business at a street fair.

1. DON’T go for exposure

If all you’re going to do at this street fair is hand out flyers to give your business some “exposure,” you might as well stay home.

Exposure is a game for big businesses.

What small businesses like ours need are actual paying customers.

And the best way to get paying customers is to generate leads.

1. DO collect leads

Your number one goal at this street fair should be to collect as many leads as you possibly can by giving something away for free.

For each lead, make sure you get their full name, phone number, and email address.

2. DON’T give away tchotchkes

We made this mistake the first year we opened Urban Martial Arts.

We spent a few hundred dollars printing up tote bags with our logo on it and gave them away at a street fair in exchange for people’s contact info.

We ended up with a big list of leads, which was good.

But when we followed up, we realized that a lot of them had zero interest in martial arts classes.

All they wanted was a free bag.

2. DO give away trials

Giving away stuff like pens and notebooks is just going to attract freeloaders.

If you want to attract prospects who’ll turn into actual paying customers, offer them a free trial of your product or service.

If you own a dance school, give away a free week of classes.

If you own a restaurant, give away a free appetizer when they buy an entree.

Just make sure that they can only receive the offer if they give you their contact information.

3. DON’T just stay at your booth

Don’t make the mistake of just sitting at your table and waiting for people to come up to you.

3. DO walk around the entire street fair

Make sure you always have at least two people working the street fair.

While the other person stays at the table, you should walk around with a clipboard, collecting leads.

Go up to people and introduce yourself.

Let them know what you’re giving away that day and if they’re interested, jot their contact info on your clipboard and give them a flyer.

You’ll easily double or even triple the number of leads you collect by doing it this way.

4. DON’T pursue anyone with a pulse

Remember that your goal isn’t to collect as many names, phone numbers and emails as possible.

Your goal is to generate leads that will turn into paying customers.

So be picky. Don’t just go after anyone with a pulse.

4. DO segment your leads right away

As you collect people’s contact info, jot down a few notes to yourself.

If you spoke to someone who seemed especially eager, put a star next to their name so you remember to call them first.

If you met someone who seemed like a nightmare client, cross them off your list. Why put yourself through the agony of dealing with a jerk?

The earlier you can start qualifying your prospects, the better results you’ll see when you follow up.

5. DON’T be a wallflower

If you want to market your local business effectively at a street fair, you have to make yourself stand out.

5. DO attract attention to yourself

There are lots of tricks you can use to make people notice your booth at a street fair.

Play loud music.

Have a prize wheel.

Hire someone to dress as a mascot.

Remember: The more attention you can draw to yourself, the more leads you’re likely to collect.

6. DON’T be a stranger

Make it obvious which business you’re representing.

No one should be wondering which company you’re with!

6. DO promote your brand

Everything you bring to the street fair should have your logo plastered all over it.

Wear T-shirts with your logo and URL big and bold.

Bring a banner that’s got a huge logo.

IF you can afford it, get a custom pop-up tent made with your logo and URL.

People should be able to tell from half a block away exactly who you are and what you do.

7. DON’T let your leads gather dust

What’s worse than collecting no leads at a street fair?

Collecting lots of them but never contacting anyone!

Trust me – I’ve fallen into that trap before.

More recently than I’d like to admit, actually, and I really regret it.

So learn from my mistakes.

7. DO follow up promptly and persistently

The longer you wait to call a lead, the less likely they’ll remember that they met you.

And the less like they’ll be to actually come in and try your product or service.

So make it a priority to call everyone the very next day.

If you don’t get through, keep trying that person every other day for at least 3 times.

After that, invite them to join your mailing list so you can reach out more passively through your email newsletter.

If you found this video useful, please sign up to get free email updates!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to visit www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter

Thanks for watching. Have you ever tried marketing your local business at a street fair? If so, I’d love to hear your tips.

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

The Messy and Emotional Side of Business

When you’re still working your day job, it may seem as if the hardest part of transitioning from employee to full-time business owner is making your escape.

But life after you quit your job isn’t all unicorns and rainbows either.

It’s messy. It’s emotional.

And that’s okay, because you’ll come out of it a stronger person and a better entrepreneur.

I just wrote a blog post about this very topic for my friend and mentor Pamela Slim’s blog:
Confessions of a Runaway: The Stuff Nobody Tells You About Escaping From Cubicle Nation

It’s probably one of the most personal articles I’ve ever written.

In the post I come clean about a lot of things I struggled with after leaving my job: losing friends, not getting things done, mismanaging money, and more.

I’m a bit nervous about putting this all out there. So if any of it resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Please join the discussion by leaving a comment there!

Image Credit: tibchris on Flickr

Carmen Sognonvi

Are you ready to make more money, get more customers, and close more sales?

Steal This Idea: How GotPrint Won My Business With a Single Postcard

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Tweet about this post

For more…

Transcript

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Why Failure Can Be Good for Your Business

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Tweet about this post

For more…

Transcript

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Steal This Idea: Create an Emotional Connection With Your Customer

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Tweet about this post

For more…

Transcript

Get free local business tips from Carmen

The 7 Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing Your Local Business at a Street Fair

Get free local business tips from Carmen

Tweet about this post

For more…

Transcript

Get free local business tips from Carmen

The Messy and Emotional Side of Business

Connect With Carmen:

About Carmen:

Free Resource Guides:

Get Free Local Business Tips

About Carmen