Rick Rash, owner of Valpak of Metro Phoenix, recently joined a radio show in his market as the “Business Leaders Spotlight” guest of the week!
Rick has owned Valpak of Metro Phoenix since 2007 and has been with Valpak for almost 25 years! With a strong sales background, Rick has a lot of information to share with all business owners. Listen below as Rick shares his knowledge about direct mail and digital marketing with Valpak and why direct mail is not only here to stay — it’s only getting better!
Highlights from the Money Radio Interview:
Mark: Now, for people listening and going, “Wait, Valpak, Valpak, Valpak, I’ve heard it,” let’s explain what it is. I mean, it’s direct marketing, right?
Rick: Right, right. Well, so it’s direct mail advertising. You got the envelope. Everybody refers to it as their value pack.
Mark: Right.
I always get a kick out of that. You know, you’re hard-pressed to find anybody who’s not aware of what it is, right? But it’s a product that allows small businesses to target the closest 10, 20, 30 thousand homes, send out their message in an offer, and try to get those people to come in.
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Mark: So once a month we get it in our mail. We open it up. There’s a ton of things in there. And the one thing I like about your advertising, I want you to maybe explain this, because I feel like there’s a mindset behind it, but simplicity, right, like it’s almost like a little billboard. You open it up and there’s everything, right? You don’t have to read the fine print. It’s all right in front of your face.
Rick: You’re right. And the simpler, the better. We work real hard to consult with our customers. Let us do the design. We don’t want to put too much information. They want to say their whole life story, right? But the less, the better. Great picture, give the image, give the impression, good offer, that’s all you need.
Mark: And I think for a lot of small businesses, this is a great . . . and you said value earlier, value pack, what is Valpak, but maybe a great value for them to get that word out. Word of mouth is, you know, half the battle.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. I mean, how do you get found these days, right? I mean, it’s so competitive. The world has changed so much. What do you do to make sure people know where you are or even know you are there?
Mark: When you put these together, and obviously, you have a great team, you want to talk about how many? You must have a ton of employees, right, that help put this together?
Rick: Well, actually, our headcount here in Phoenix is like 20-ish, right. But the production facility is back in St. Petersburg, and that’s a pretty large staff, and they’ve got an amazing facility.
Mark: So do the actual ads go out from St. Petersburg?
Rick: Yes.
Mark: Got you.
Rick: We sell them, design them, upload them. They print them, insert them in the envelopes, hand them off to the post office, and it ends up here.
Mark: Are most places more regional? Like, you know, for instance, I live up in the Northwest Valley, you know, Happy Valley Road, Lake Pleasant Parkway area. So when I get mine, there’s a lot of the area’s dentists and different places in that area. And I would imagine that’s obviously the mindset. You don’t want to send me something to where you live in North Mesa. That makes no sense. Right?
Rick: Yeah. So the market is divided up in seventy-six 10,000-home zones. So you can pick one zone, five zones, the whole market, wherever you want to do.
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Mark: We are visiting with Rick Rash. He is the franchise owner of Valpak right here in Phoenix, Arizona. For more than 50 years Valpak has delivered direct marketing throughout all these different neighborhoods throughout the United States. And Rick’s company does it here in Arizona.
I ask you this, and it’s not a knock on the business model. I mean, I don’t think the mail is going away any time soon. But I feel like so much is digital now. Now, you guys have a digital presence, right?
Rick: Yeah. So the world has changed so much, right, and, you know, the things where we’ve evolved is you’ve got valpak.com, which is the envelope online. There’s a Valpak app. So you don’t have to even get your envelope. You can get whatever offers you want. Just get it on your phone, on your mobile device.
But locally we’ve had to adapt also. You know, the needs of our customers have really changed. The Valpak envelope is our bread and butter. It’s our legacy product. But what our business is really all about is helping small businesses grow, right? Well, what are their needs now? They also need a good digital presence. They need a website. They need social media. They need reputation management. So, we made the decision a couple of years ago to build a full in-house digital agency, and now we serve those needs for our customers also.
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Rick: …One of the things that’s changed in the world that makes it so difficult and confusing is that the consumer’s decision path, their pathway to making the buying decision has changed. What did you use to do? You saw an ad. It was something you liked. What did you do? You called them up. Well, what do you do now? You look at it, you think about it. Then you pick up your iPad or your phone and you go to their website. You check out their reviews, right?
Mark: Right.
Rick: And then you call them from their website. And then that business owner says, “Well, how did you find me?” “Oh, I went to your website.” So it’s so hard to track and get proper lead attribution, but it’s just the world today.
Make sure to listen to the entire interview for Rick’s expertise in the field of direct mail marketing and contact your local marketing expert today and learn how you can advertise with Valpak for as little as pennies per household!
