Working with outside agencies like PR firms, advertising agencies, and marketing agencies can cause a lot of problems for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Should you hire an outside agency at all? If so, do you need an advertising agency, a marketing company, or a PR firm? Do you need to hire more than one? All three? Mostly that starts with understanding what each of those agencies can and will do for you, and what they won't. All these topics and more covered in this episode of The Mes...
Sep 25, 2019•31 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Price comparison shopping has become so prevalent that it's starting to have negative consequences for business owners and consumers who only look at price without evaluating the value provided by both low- and higher-cost options. How cheap or expensive an item is doesn't have anything to do with the size of the price tag; it's all about how much value you get for what you spend. This episode is a deep dive on evaluating your options beyond just the price tag.
Aug 29, 2019•20 min•Season 2Ep. 28
Digital printing is a relative newcomer in the world of printed media and we often face a lot of questions with regard to when we choose to use one process over the other. On this episode of The Messengers podcast (https://messengers.blog), Chris Searles (www.christophersearles.com) and Rob Seifert of Searles Graphics (www.searlesgraphics.com) discuss the differences between digital printing and offset printing, the pros and cons of each print process, and when you might choose to use one instea...
Aug 21, 2019•32 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Many business and individuals are guilty of failing to follow the most basic of cyber security steps to protect their own information, and the personal information of their employees and customers. Far too often we see the lack of simple procedures result in data breaches, stolen credit cards, identity theft, financial issues, and massive headaches for everyone involved. In this episode of The Messengers podcast , Chris Searles (www.christophersearles.com) and Rob Seifert discuss the most basic ...
Aug 13, 2019•48 min•Season 2Ep. 26
One of the hardest things for entrepreneurs and small business owners to wrap their heads around when it comes to marketing and advertising their business is how much they should be spending on those activities. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss the issue of budgeting your marketing and advertising activities, with specific detail about how much you should actually be spending and the proper way to account for those expenses. Visit https://messenger...
Aug 07, 2019•32 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Many entrepreneurs and businesses spend far too much time, effort, and money on logo design. While your logo holds some importance, it’s not the make-or-break endeavor that many make it out to be. Whether it’s spending too much on logo design, or agonizing over details that won’t matter at all to your business, mistakes happen in the logo design process all the time. On the other hand, there are a number of important elements when it comes to choosing a logo designer that need to be considered, ...
Jul 31, 2019•34 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Deploying your website is just step one in the long process of maximizing that shiny new domain name you just purchased. All of the effort getting things just right is wasted if you’re not measuring the performance of your website, and then making changes based on the results you see. Modern analytics tools– the most common and accessible being Google Analytics– make measuring your website’s effectiveness simple. Unfortunately, even for many who see the value in analyzing their analytics data, t...
Jul 23, 2019•39 min•Season 2Ep. 23
To some, direct mail sounds like an outdated marketing method. But with the oversaturation we’re seeing in digital marketing mediums, it’s as (or more) effective than ever. In fact, for many marketers, it’s the single best direct response marketing medium they have. In this episode of The Messengers podcast , Chris Searles and Rob Seifert of Searles Graphics discuss the benefits that direct mail marketing can bring to a business and how they’ve managed to use direct mail to make a difference for...
Jul 16, 2019•32 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Keeping your website up-to-date can be one of the most difficult tasks for a small business. Very few small businesses and entrepreneurs are able to dedicate personnel to this task, which means it usually falls by the wayside until it gets so bad it can no longer be ignored. At that point, it comes time to make a decision on whether you’re looking at an update or a complete, ground-up rebuild. It would be nice if there was a rule we could follow, such as “if it has been X years since you did Y ,...
Jul 09, 2019•31 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be one of the hardest aspects of digital marketing. But with the majority of people picking from the first page of Google’s search results when they need a service or product, organic search optimization is a critical part of any comprehensive marketing strategy. And with paid search engine advertising being more prominent than ever, navigating the Google landscape can be more confusing than ever. In this episode of The Messengers podcast , Chris Searles a...
Jul 02, 2019•35 min•Season 2Ep. 20
No matter the particular marketing piece, the goal is to drive the user/reader/listener/viewer to take an action. Your design might be a masterpiece, but it's unlikely to drive revenue to your business if your only goal is for it to look nice. Driving action is about designing for results, not aesthetics alone. Real marketing is designed based off real data. When designing an interactive piece like a website, using heat maps or tracking click-through rates can help determine what parts of the de...
Jun 25, 2019•20 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Facebook advertising can be incredibly valuable ... but it can also be daunting or, even worse, a complete waste of money if not done properly. We often see money being thrown at the platform without measuring any meaningful metrics. Other times it's someone that's excited they can spend $5 to boost a post only to realize they heavily underestimated what they need to spend to get the results they really want. Marketing on Facebook is a mix of determining and managing realistic budgets, targeting...
Jun 20, 2019•28 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Promotional items can be largely hit-or-miss. On one hand, your t-shirts, pens, and notepads could do a great job at keeping your company name in your customers’ minds, hitting the most important marketing element there is: Frequency. But on the other hand, you might just end up wasting your money on stuff that nobody actually wants. You could end up spending thousands just to have these items go right into the garbage. While giving a free t-shirt with your logo on it to every customer might see...
Jun 14, 2019•23 min•Season 2Ep. 17
"The most underrated skill in business is being nice." - Mark Cuban We've seen firsthand how true that is. Cultivating positive working relationships with your customers, vendors and employees seems to be an underdeveloped skill for a lot of people these days. Whether it's because we're always too busy to take the time or too disengaged with the people directly in front of us or on the other end of the phone or screen, far too many people forget that it simply pays to be nice to your fellow huma...
Jun 04, 2019•18 min•Season 2Ep. 16
In an increasingly-mobile world, a custom mobile app for your business might seem like a surefire way to drive revenue and make what you offer more convenient for your customers. Unfortunately, most people underestimate the time and costs that actually go into designing, building, and maintaining an app. It’s not just the upfront costs either; an app needs to be designed for both iOS and Android devices, and rigorously maintained to support hundreds of devices and remain compatible with the newe...
May 28, 2019•30 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Modern marketing is all about effective storytelling. Fortunately, the tools to tell those stories have never been more accessible. The problem is, the inexpensive nature of many of those tools leads many to believe content marketing is cheap and easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Content marketing can be an invaluable tool, but doing it right requires dedication, perseverance, and patience. Without investing in quality content and active and consistent promotion (and sticking with i...
May 22, 2019•31 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Many small businesses often feel like their biggest threat is competition, especially from large corporations. While competition certainly plays a role in the success or failure of any business, very few businesses fail because of competition alone. On the other hand, one of the biggest threats all businesses face is time. Most businesses fail because they fail to innovate, change with the times, and keep up with advancements in technology and consumer demands. A lack of foresight into the devel...
May 13, 2019•24 min•Season 2Ep. 13
The Messengers are back, this time with special guest Messenger, Darrah Brustein. Darrah is the founder of Network Under 40, an Atlanta Georgia based business meant to help young professionals with networking and relationship building as they enter the workforce. She’s also a founding partner at Equitable Payments and a contributor at Forbes and Entrepreneur.com. In this episode, Chris and Rob speak with Darrah about the paths they took to get where they are, entrepreneurship, and how to reevalu...
Apr 29, 2019•33 min•Season 2Ep. 12
It’s inevitable that every entrepreneur, business owner, and professional is going to experience failure. What distinguishes successful entrepreneurs is the way they handle failure when it happens. They learn from it, analyze where they went wrong, and make sure to never make those same mistakes again. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles shares his biggest professional failure (to date) and does a post-mortem with Rob Seifert ( Searles Graphics ) to look at where they went w...
Apr 22, 2019•24 min•Season 2Ep. 11
The perfect advertising campaign is a well-balanced mix of creativity and clarity. The idea is to make the message memorable while not losing the clarity of the product or service you're selling in the process. Often, marketers or businesses lean too far to one side of that formula. This means that their advertising is either too uninteresting or too crowded to actually grab someone's attention, or too complex for anyone to easily understand the message. In this episode of The Messengers podcast...
Apr 15, 2019•22 min•Season 2Ep. 10
In today’s digital landscape, photo and video are the two main driving forces behind modern marketing campaigns. No matter how good the copy is, supplemental photos and video will always play a huge role. Many business owners and entrepreneurs believe they can cut costs by doing their own photography, either by investing in a nice DSLR camera or just using the HD cameras that come equipped on high-end smartphones. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss s...
Apr 08, 2019•17 min•Season 2Ep. 9
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make when working on marketing is worrying too much about what they like and not enough about what their customers or prospects will respond to. When creating a marketing strategy, it’s imperative to put yourself in the head of the client, and realize that your wants and needs are a distant second to the wants and needs of the people you're trying to reach. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss the ways that c...
Apr 01, 2019•10 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Boasting open rates that approach 100% and action rates nearly 20x higher than email, text message (SMS) marketing is a much more efficient way to communicate with highly-engaged customers and prospects. Strict opt-in controls coupled with simple and effective opt-out mechanisms are currently keeping the medium from being watered down the way email has become. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert of Searles Graphics discuss the success they’ve seen implementin...
Mar 25, 2019•21 min•Season 2Ep. 7
We’ve noticed a trend that a lot of businesses believe customer service is an easy place to save on costs. Customer service is one of the primary areas in your business that needs to be invested in, not an opportunity to cut costs to the bone. On this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert of Searles Graphics discuss the things companies do that make or break customer service, with real world examples of customer service is done right … and wrong. The upfront costs to e...
Mar 18, 2019•15 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Many small businesses make the mistake of either looking at the wrong metrics when analyzing their social media platforms or outsourcing their social media altogether with the expectation that they can just be hands-off and having any presence on social media is better than none at all. On this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert of Searles Graphics discuss the ways that you construct your own social media strategy by setting meaningful goals and then determining who...
Mar 11, 2019•17 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert address the issue of measuring whether you’re getting a return out of the investment you’re making in the marketing efforts for your business or non-profit. Deciding what your marketing will look like and where you'll place it is only half the battle. Without a detailed plan for measuring the results of your efforts, it’s impossible to make the appropriate adjustments necessary for long-term success. This episode discusses ...
Mar 04, 2019•19 min•Season 2Ep. 4
The print buying process can be confusing for new business owners or new marketers. Chris and Rob spent some time on the latest episode of The Messengers podcast talking through some of the more common questions clients have when they don’t have a lot of experience in buying printing to help ensure you end up with a piece that works for you.
Feb 25, 2019•24 min•Season 2Ep. 3
The most successful companies aren’t the ones that take any business that walks through the door, but ones that know their ideal customer and have the courage to say no to customers that aren’t right for them. In this episode of The Messengers podcast, Chris Searles and Rob Seifert discuss understanding your market and the power of saying no. Subscribe to The Messengers podcast on: Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-messengers/id1315145712?mt=2 Google Play - https://play.go...
Feb 18, 2019•16 min•Season 2Ep. 2
New co-host Rob Seifert joins Chris Searles for the first time to discuss Valentine's Day promotions and ways to identify under-served and under-represented markets throughout the year.
Feb 11, 2019•16 min•Season 2Ep. 1
John and Chris discuss how to track the return on your social media investment; what big brands and businesses are doing well and where they're falling short, and what small businesses and marketers can do to make sure they're investing their money wisely.
Feb 11, 2019•41 min•Season 1Ep. 3
