marketing

5 Reasons Business Cards are Still Relevant

I just returned from the Women in Sustainable Ag Conference (WISA), followed by a glorious vacation. Now that I’m back, I’m cultivating relationships with all the wonderful people I met. The business cards I acquired make this an easy task.

Which leads me to ask, what do you think of business cards? Do you still use them?

In the Be a Better Self-Promoter workshop I presented, I specifically mentioned the importance of business cards. I greeted the attendees at the door with my card and asked them to leave theirs behind after the workshop. Even though some believe business cards are dead, here’s why I see lots of life in these small, printed exchanges of information.

1. Personal Touch

Yes, technology is all around us but there’s something truly personal about giving and receiving business cards. The tactile-ness of a card says you care enough to go the extra mile and give something of yourself. When receiving a business card and you take a moment’s pause to look at it—perhaps even comment on it—it says you care about the person doing the giving.

2. Tangible Expression of Your Business

When designed well and according to your brand, a business card speaks loudly of who you are. I had my cards printed on a heavier grade of linen stock and I love how it feels in my hand. A quality card reflects a quality business.

3. Physical Reminder of Who You Are

One of my attendees approached me afterward with a question on web design. She gave me her card and wrote her question on the back so I could respond later with more information. There’s no way I would have remembered otherwise.

4. Quick Exchange of Information

When attending events, conferences or meetings, there’s no quicker way to exchange information than business cards. Yes, you could get their email and type it into your phone, but that’s certainly not as fast. Plus you have to look away from the person to do so. How rude.

5. Opportunities for Repeated Connection

The more ways we can connect with people, the better relationships we can build with them. The physical act of exchanging business cards is a wonderful debut to digital followups in the future. Those followups then become a permanent way of managing contacts. Unless they’re exceptionally creative (I am a graphic designer, after all), I don’t keep my contact’s business cards. Instead, I make a digital input and have all the information I need right at my fingertips.

Need new business cards? I’d love to help you with a great design and advice on cost-effective printing. Drop me a line!

Expanding Our Octoberfest to Minnesota

We certainly love our local brews. However, a few weeks ago my husband received a birthday gift of assorted Oktoberfest beers from outside our WiscoBeer realm. They say it’s good to expand your thinking, so in preparation for our upcoming Octoberfest Brewery Tour we’re “working” to expand our palettes. Yes, sigh, it’s a tough, tough job.

This year we’re also expanding our brewery tour. In addition to our annual celebration of sipping and scenery, we’re including the Women In Sustainable Agriculture (WISA) Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.

What a great conference this will be—fabulous women from across the country gathering to exchange ideas, find resources, and network. I’m super proud to be amongst them and presenting the workshop Be a Better Self-Promoter. Do join us!

But For Now, Let’s Talk Beer!

The Mississippi River region is truly glorious in October. After sampling the Twin Cities’ great selection of brews, we’re heading downstream to Fountain City, a cozy community nestled between the river and Wisconsin’s towering bluffs. Here we’re planning a few days of river exploration, state park hiking, and, of course, more sampling.

So Many to Sample

To the delight of beer enthusiasts everywhere, the number of craft breweries continues to grow. Each year as I plan our tour the number of venues seems to have doubled from the year before. Most interesting is the creative entrepreneurship of these small businesses; like, for example, the symbiotic partnership between taprooms and food trucks, which is a tasty win-win for breweries, food trucks and customers alike.

This all leaves us with a hardly-unfortunate dilemma: With so many breweries in Western Wisconsin/Eastern Minnesota, how does one choose? I’ve decided to prioritize our sampling to 1) interesting ambiance (I do like my historic architecture, you know) and 2) if the brewery was featured in Taproom Travelers videos (again, gotta love that creative entrepreneurship).

Promo of My Own

In the spirit of practicing what I’ll be preaching at the upcoming WISA Conference, may I present my 2019 Octoberfest Brewery Tour poster!

Each year as a personal exercise, I design a poster commemorating our tour (check out more of them here). This keeps me in touch with the industry and brings an added element of fun to our travels. Posters are great keepsakes for any event.

Perhaps you have an event you’d like to promote? Or maybe a new line of beverage you’d like to brand? Drop me a line!

Out and About with Fermentation Fest

News flash!

Fermentation Fest event guides are hot off the press and heading out to exciting venues throughout Wisconsin. This 24-pg, can’t-miss guide is bubbling with interesting articles, art, class listings and city map—all the ingredients necessary for two weekends of culture convergence at Fermentation Fest. You don’t want to miss the Fest or the guide!

I’ve got to say helping promote Fermentation Fest is one of my favorite projects of the year. It’s a melding of interests, from food and art, to agriculture and travel. This means artists, chefs, poets, foodies, farmers, cheesemakers, brewers, musicians, performers, and so many more people all come together for an autumnal celebration of good life. I’m very proud to design for it, very honored to be part of it.

In the weeks ahead I’ll be delivering guides to various venues (I love promoting my clients!). Check back to this page often for an updated listing of where you can find them. And don’t forget my social media because I’m also big on featuring interesting venues.

Here’s where I’ve been so far. Yep, all the way to northern Wisconsin!

#GetYourFermFestGuide2019Here

Listed in order of cities are venues where you can find Fermentation Fest guides. If you’re not in these areas, check out the Fermentation Fest website or join the mailing list.

Deerfield Coffeehouse, Deerfield
Milwaukee Street Traders, Delafield
Fitchburg Public Library, Fitchburg
Sequoya Public Library, Madison
Willy Street Co-op East, Madison
Willy Street Co-op North, Madison
ZuZu Cafe & Market, Madison
Willy Street Co-op, Middleton
Good Harvest Market, Pewaukee
Roots Coffee Bar, Oconomowoc
Soleil Lune Yoga Center, Oconomowoc
Firefly Coffee House, Oregon
The Chocolate Caper, Oregon
Landmark Creamery, Paoli (Belleville)
Stevens Point Area Co-op, Stevens Point
Cafe Coco, Washburn
South Shore Brewery, Washburn
Tribeca GalleryCafe & Books, Watertown
Downtown Grocery, Wausau

See you at Fermentation Fest in October!

Lots of Summer Ramblings: Strawberry Moon to Strawberry Festivals

Several years ago the bulb in our yard light burned out. It was one of those dawn-to-dusk lights set high on a line pole and even though my husband’s job is to regularly climb such poles, he just never got around to climbing ours.

At first, I’d go out at night and it seemed unnervingly dark. We don’t have immediate neighbors so nothing but the celestial sky lit our yard. Oh, but let me tell you, there’s no going back. The event of that burned-out bulb has totally heightened my appreciation of the night sky and I’m now a moon-gazing habitué.

Given that, here’s to a happy Strawberry Moon (Tuesday night) and upcoming Summer Solstice (Friday night). I love them both. With the full days of summer ahead, it’s a wonderful time of festivity and adventure.

Speaking of Strawberries…

They’re finally here! We live on a windy hill and it seems my patch is always a bit behind. But they’re here now and as delicious as ever. Just look at how red and juicy they are, unlike those so-called “strawberries” you find in the grocery store.

Hey folks, shop your local farmers! Eat real food!

Strawberry Festivals and More

One of my tastiest childhood memories is of a strawberry festival we attended while camping in northern Michigan. If I recall, it was a community church serving shortcake piled mile-high with strawberries and cream. Oh, so good!

Quite often such festivals are benefits for a specific cause (like these upcoming festivals here and here). Joining the celebration not only creates fun memories but also supports grassroots working together at its finest.

Food festivals have become one of the fastest growing forms of tourism and there’s a good reason why. They offer a sensory overload of the landscape, ethnicities, history, and food cultures of their given community.

Food lovers love food festivals; ask me how I know!

Which Leads Me To…

When it comes to festivals, I’m proud to help promote two Wisconsin biggies: The Soil Sisters in August and Fermentation Fest in October. These are annual celebrations that each draw thousands of people and have great social and economic impacts on their rural communities. Needless to say, a lot of organizing and marketing goes into these events.

Do you know of a festival looking to grow in its success? I’d love to help. Let’s talk about what makes a good festival and how to get the word out to all those fun-loving, destination travelers!

Yesteryear’s Brewery: Today’s Small Business

While enjoying last year’s Octoberfest Brewery Tour, I came across the book Badger Breweries, Past and Present. Definitely on the rare list, it’s a detailed account of all the breweries known to have existed in Wisconsin. Look at how many it shows for my small town alone.

Badger Breweries: Past and Present

According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, nearly every town in the 1800s had its own brewery. A town’s brewery was its heart, providing steady employment, commerce and togetherness. It was also its fingerprint, each with a unique history and terroir.

While most of these breweries have died long ago, we’re now savoring a renaissance with the craft beer movement. These new breweries—most of them small and independently owned—strengthen communities just like the old days. But like an egg in our beer, their innovative owners have been bestowing neighborhoods with food venues, tourism and charitable causes.

As interesting as beer history is, what I really want to talk about are small businesses. This week is National Small Business Week and in the same way those small, 19th century breweries were the lifeblood a community, so small, locally owned businesses are today.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), more than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and they create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year.

Maybe you want to become one of those owners! Maybe you want impress your fingerprint into the community. The SBA has great information online to get you started, everything from funding to launching your business.

And if you’re looking for help branding and marketing your new business, please keep me in mind!

Earth Day and Double Duty Composting

Today, on Earth Day 2019, I’m thinking back to the roundtable discussion I was honored to lead at the MOSES Organic Conference. It was on marketing and it overflowed with interesting conversation. Today though, two particular points come to mind: composting and responsibility.

As we discussed innovative ideas to promote our farms, a woman whose name I missed (someone help me, please, I’d love to contact her) mentioned the composting campaign they’re doing for their CSA farm. They give buckets to their members and encourage them to bring food scrap compost to the farm each week where it will help to create fertile ground for next years’ crops. And I, whose marketing brain spins 24/7, suggested she be sure to put her farm name and website on the buckets.

Seriously though, isn’t a composting campaign a great idea in so many ways?

Full Circle of Sustainability

This year’s Earth Day theme is Protect Our Species and from bees to trees, good soil is vital for sustaining all of God’s creation. Composting is a small way to make a big impact on the enrichment of our soil. When we return scraps of food to the very soil from which it was taken, we complete a full circle of sustainability.

How cool is that for CSA members to participate in this full circle!

Responsibility + Ownership = Good Marketing

Marketing gurus tell us that allowing customers a sense of “ownership” is proven for building customer loyalty. We discussed this in our roundtable and how responsibility enables that sense of ownership.

The CSA farm’s composting campaign allows members to share in the responsibility of improving its soil for more nutrient-based produce. The result? These members become proud owners of the vegetables they helped to grow and they talk about them with their friends. Word of mouth marketing at its best!

What About You?

I’ve been composting for years and, gee, it’s such an easy way to put food waste to good use. Now, after touring the facilities of my newest customer, The Farmory, I’m inspired even further—maybe composting with worms?

What about you? Are you a business looking to heat up your environmental stewardship? Or a gardener wanting healthier soil? Earth Day is a great time to start composting—actually Earth Day celebrations last all week so you have time to find yourself a bucket.

So let’s get going and may the joyous rotting begin!

Want to learn more?
Soil health is a big conversation these days. Two recent and interesting articles are Compost, like the Earth Depends On It, from the Willy Street Co-op Reader and the Dirt Issue (Spring 2019) of Yes!

A Wolf Moon Welcome

Happy upcoming first full moon of the year!

Interestingly, not only will this be the Wolf Moon, it’s a Super Wolf Blood Moon. Super Moon, in that it’s closest to the earth in its elliptical orbit; Wolf Moon, because that’s the name given to January’s moon; and Blood Moon because of the reddish tint that’s going to appear when, yes, a lunar eclipse occurs. 

Barring cloudy skies, here in Wisconsin this stargazer’s phenomenon should appear this Sunday, January 20, between 10:41 and 11:12 p.m. You can bet I’ll be outside watching for it!

Back when people named moons according to the seasons, our northern ancestors hunkered themselves inside near a fire while wolves howled distantly in the January cold. Wolves are a common metaphor for hunger, yet families kept this wolf—hunger, that is—from their door with the food they’d put up earlier in autumn. 

These days, while in the cozy warmth of our homes, we’re browsing garden catalogs and dreaming of the spring months ahead when we can plant those first seedlings. The plans we make now shape the crops we grow in summer and the food we put up in fall, which in turn keeps “the wolves from our door” next winter. 

Preparedness: It’s ongoing through the seasons

For self-employed farm entrepreneurs, winter is time to plan your seed purchases. It’s also time to promote your farm and sign up members for the upcoming growing season. 

Next month is the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) Conference and I’m presenting a workshop that offers great ideas for promoting your farm. The workshop is Marketing & Branding 101 and will be Saturday, February 23, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We’ll talk branding, because you have to brand yourself before you can market. We’ll then discuss marketing and how social media has become the easiest and most cost effective way to promote your small business. 

Hope to see you next month in La Crosse!

Branding or Marketing: Which Comes First?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We’ve debated this question for generations, have we not? Thankfully, when it comes to branding vs. marketing, the answer is much less scrambled (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Regardless of size or industry, successful businesses practice both branding and marketing. But it’s the order in which they approach them that really matters.

Branding first. Marketing second.

Branding and marketing are often interchanged but in truth they’re completely separate entities. Branding is determining who you are. Marketing is telling who you are. You must know who you are first, then you can tell who you are.

But what is a brand?

Your brand is not your product. It’s not even your name or logo specifically (although those develop through branding). Your brand is the whole of who you are, what makes your business (product or service) what it is. It’s the image of your business in the eyes of your customer.

In the third (episode 61) of our In Her Boots podcast series, Lisa Kivirist and I discuss the elements of branding, namely the Five W’s and an H—who, what, when, where, why and how. What is your business? Who is your target market? How do you want to be perceived? Answering these questions and more lays the foundation for your brand. They convey who you are.

Once you’ve examined yourself and determined your brand, you can then go forth and visually present your business. You can create your logo. Hang your sign. Begin your marketing!

Those Five W’s and an H

In the corporate world, much time and expense is used for brand strategizing. Small businesses commonly don’t have that luxury, but we can build a brand nonetheless. I’ve come up with a fun questionnaire to get you started. These are the same Five W’s and an H questions I ask new clients in our initial interview.

Once you complete the front side, flip the sheet over and continue asking and answering your own questions. Your goal should be 50 questions minimum! The more you brainstorm, the more questions come to mind, and the clearer you see your business!

Check out my questionnaire. It’s Free!