by admin | Jul 22, 2015 | Business Tips
KNOW – LIKE – TRUST
These are the steps all of us must walk our audience down in order to convert them into paying customers. If we believe we provide a valuable, worthwhile service to our audience, we better spend time each day bringing people down this path. This formula works, by the way, regardless of what we are selling – product, service, non-profit cause, religion, or anything else you care about. Whatever our message is – if we believe in it – we must commit to sharing it on a proactive, ongoing basis. Here’s how:
1. KNOW – Getting the word out is where it all begins. If people have never heard of your product, there is no way they can consider it for purchase. Give them the benefit of knowing who you are. Social media, display advertising, word of mouth, and radio are all ways to get your product KNOWN.
2. LIKE – This is where you start to show the benefits of your particular solution. WHY buy from you over the competition? This is both understanding your competence and ability to deliver, and also your personality. People prefer to buy from someone they like – everyone wants to patronize a business represented by a ‘good guy’. Be authentic and likable – this is the goal at this stage.
3. TRUST – Once they like you, they need to know that you are good at your job. This is trust. Liking you as a person or a personality isn’t enough. You also have to engender confidence that you actually know what you are talking about. Depending on the product or service you are offering, this may or may not be that important. Generally, the more complex your product – and the higher the sale price – the more TRUST is critical to making the first sale. Don’t underestimate the need for trust.
Consider these carefully – you can’t convert a causal observer into a paying customer without walking them through all three of these stages – KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST. Hopefully, this blog is building these qualities in our readers when they consider us for their upcoming printing projects. We try to display our personality and fun side, as well as showing we really understand labels. That is the ultimate goal of the 4 years we have been blogging – help people down the path to KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST Rose City Label.
What are you doing to help your customers down this path? How do your labels reinforce that message? How can we help?
Call us today – we will help you connect with more customers and grow your business.
by admin | Jul 8, 2015 | Business Tips, Company News
New Rose City Label Website Coming Soon
A BEAUTIFUL Rose City Label web redesign is coming soon – You will LOVE it! More natural layout, better navigation, and more of a visual focus on the amazing products we help to promote. Our work really is VISUAL – what we produce needs to pop off the shelf, and the new images in this site will show that much more clearly.
The important take away for you – the small business owner, label buyer, or budding entrepreneur that is reading this – are the lessons I learned along the way. After many years of using the same web ‘guru’ – who I loved working with and is still a good friend – I decided to make a change. My previous service provider was excellent, and very technically savvy, but he is not a CREATIVE TYPE! I am also not a creative type, so we got along great. When I decided I could only go so far working with someone who thought “just” like me, so I made a Leadership Decision and I COMMITTED to fill a gap.
I could only go so far working with someone who thought “just” like me, so I made a Leadership Decision and I COMMITTED to fill a gap.
Engaging the Creative Website and Internet Marketing Services of the talented Scott Sakamoto of Ronin Studios has been a great experience, but not always easy. Here is what I learned:
- You can benefit greatly from surrounding yourself with people that are NOT like you (that THINK DIFFERENTLY). I have benefited greatly by having a different perspective. I am not a designer, I did not go to art school and I don’t see things in that way. Square peg in a round hole. BUT, I get great value by having input from someone with a different perspective.
- I am not good at letting go. As a small business owner, I am usually where the buck stops. Right or wrong, I have to make a decision. With the partnership with Scott Sakamoto and Ronin Studios, I had to defer some of that control. I agreed to it as a condition of working with Scott and the Update of the Rose City Label Website – he has the experience to know that only one Leader can be in charge of a project like this; that part was easy to understand from Scott’s experience (Ronin Studios Blog “What We Believe“) and portfolio reflects the type of work I can expect to receive.
- Rewarded: It was worth it. After some hand wringing and hurt feelings, I am thrilled with the end result – and I think you will be too. Keep the big picture and the end goal in mind when you enter a project like this, and make sure you have clear communication with a top quality partner, and I think you will love the results.
Stay tuned for the final product – and maybe a few more stories about the journey – but hopefully these lessons are helpful. Great growth experience for me. It has made me a better leader, and our company is better served by partnering with someone to fill in the gaps. You can’t do it all, so surround yourself with “Rock Stars”.
by admin | Jul 2, 2015 | Business Tips
The little details make the biggest impact. More often than not, this is why Rose City Label gets new customers. Rarely I hear that the price is too high or the print quality is poor, but OFTEN I hear that the previous vendor just didn’t seem to care about me. Here are my take away messages from this:
- People just want to be appreciated – Please and Thank You matter
- Simple stuff – more than high technology – matters today
- When in doubt, reach out and say thank you
- Don’t let yourself get complacent and take customers for granted
- You may be in B2B sales, but we are ALL people in the end
All of this – of course – is predicated on the notion that you have a compelling product at a fair price. You can’t ‘please and thank you’ your way out of poor quality printing. But, even with all that quality control in place, you can still mess things up by forgetting your manners.
Be smart – do the small things that make a huge difference!
by admin | Jun 22, 2015 | Business Tips, Company News
Finally some data to help support why we are doing so well! Besides the amazing employees, great vendors and of course the customers we live for every day, there is another ingredient that is allowing us to set records at Rose City Label – FAMILY.
This article from Business Insider – click here to read the full article – lists 6 Reasons why Family Business tends to outperform other business structures. We certainly benefit from at least a few of these:
1. Higher Profitability – according to the data, on average, the Family controlled companies have higher profit margins than their non-family counterparts. Maybe because of the wisdom passed through the family, or maybe for other reasons. We really like this one.
2. Risk Taking in Well Known Areas – with a long family history – maybe many generations – the family members leading the business know what they are talking about. Many were actually raised in the business and they have a deep understanding of the proper place to invest and take risk.
3. Smart Capital Allocation – because by definition, the family business has the ultimate long term approach. People aren’t looking at next year or next quarter, they may be looking at their kid’s kids running the business in the future. For these reasons, they invest wisely and for the long term. Every dollar invested has to pass the test of generations before and after the current family leadership. The bar is high so the decisions are better.
We are proud to be a family business. We were recognized by the Austin Family Business program in 2013 and we are entered in the competition again this year.
If you want to work with a local family business for your labels, please call us today. We look forward to helping you.
*Image is credited to Business Insider – featured in the article linked above.
by admin | May 23, 2015 | Business Tips, Company News
New website is under construction! In honor of that, we thought we would share a bit of online history. Here is a look back at the evolution of 17 years of Rose City Label on the web. Today we get over 1500 visitors each month, lots of quote requests, and generally 2-5 new customers per month that start out as web inquiries. We continue to be diligent with out blogging and providing good, relevant content. Our purpose here is two-fold -1. To help our customers make their label buying experience as easy as possible and 2. To show our future customers that we really know what we are doing after 87 years in this business!
Current website (for now) – June 2013 to present. Wordpress based – active blog – lots of good product photos:
Prior to this site, we had our first major upgrade with a focus on blogging back in June 2011. This site featured a YouTube video on the home page:
Before this, the web wasn’t our focus, but we knew we needed a basic brochure style site on the web. No blogging or dynamic content and not too many photos:
Going back further, it gets really embarrassing! These were the early days, but we were at least making an effort. We had an online quote form and a Map Quest Map link – remember them?
Truly back to version 1.0 – I actually taught myself HTML and posted the text of our brochure onto a web server – securing the name ‘rclabel.com’ – very basic, but we were online in 1998. Were you?
Even though some of this history is a bit tough to look at, but there is a lesson here for all of us. Don’t wait until you are ready before you launch! Often times in business, we need to work on the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ sequence. People say that if you don’t blush when you look at the first version of your product, you probably waited too long to launch. Be bold – launch your product and see what the market says. Don’t overthink it – go for it!
When you are ready to launch (or not quite ready, but doing it anyway) we can help. Call us – we will help get your product to market and make your dream a reality!
** Web historical clips are from the very interesting Internet Way Back Machine – check it out here – http://archive.org/web/ – you can see old versions of your site too.
by admin | May 8, 2015 | Business Tips, Company News
We believe that we have to track and measure everything to give you the best possible performance. It is hard to manage a business, family, or project just based on ‘gut feeling’ – you need data to keep yourself and your team accountable. Here are a few of the things we measure.
- Financial – sales, profits, material cost, labor and others
- Delivery times – number of orders shipped, average time, commitments met
- Errors – problems, rejects, items caught before getting to the customer
- Green – trash, electricity, natural gas, water usage
All of these measures give us a solid understanding of how our business is performing. The numbers don’t lie.
This is how we did for you in April 2015. This was a big month for us as we continue to grow thanks to your support – largest April in 87 years! We continue to work on lead times to keep customers happy, The other interesting thing is that within these averages – 61 orders were shipped in 5 days or less – that’s 20% of all orders in 5 days or less!
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need – chances are, we can make it happen. THANK YOU for all your support.
