As the owner of a printing business, you’ve got to keep your organization moving forward. The only real way to do that on a consistent basis is through a marketing approach that reaches your targeted demographics in a positive way. When your marketing is consistent, your growth rates will be more consistent as well. No matter what you create as a printer, you won’t create anything if you don’t have leads turning into customers.
The first step in this process is to position yourself as the best option in your community for printing services. When people see you as the expert in your niche, then you’ll have positioned yourself in such a way that there is an expectation that you should be seen first for a printing need.
Great Printer Marketing Ideas
1. Create a Follow-Up Program
Customers don’t stop being customers once the printing job has been completed. Come back to your customers to see if your product was able to exceed their expectations. If it didn’t, then take that feedback from them graciously and apply it to the next job. When you take customer feedback seriously, your customers will take you more seriously too.
2. Increase Your Communication
A printing business must be focused on person-to-person communication if it wants to be able to experience success. That means every conversation you have with a customer or a lead must have the goal of strengthening the relationship so it’s better after the contact than it was before it. With this as the emphasis, a brand loyalty to your printing business will begin to blossom and grow.
3. Be the King
In order to be the king [or queen] of your community, you must make people feel special because if you don’t make people feel important, you’ll be forgotten. It doesn’t take much to make people feel appreciated either. It can be as simple as a “thank you.”
4. Get to the Trade Shows
Being a printer means showing off your quality designs and that means you’ve got to get yourself to trade shows. If you’re great at what you do, then people will flock your way. If you don’t get people, then you’ll know it is time to make some changes.
5. Sponsor People In Your Community
Crowdfunding is nice to get but funding someone on your own is even better. If you’ve got a few extra bucks in your marketing budget, try finding a local project you could sponsor in your community that could make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe it’s a novel that someone is trying to write or it’s music that an artist is trying to record. Be a producer and you’ll get instant word of mouth marketing.
6. Write Guest Columns
Bloggers are always looking for good content and so are many local newspapers. The best kind of content is free content, so offer to write a few hundred words on a guest basis in return for a link or mention of your printing business. You’ll get the additional exposure and the media provider will get fresh content. That’s a win-win!
7. Create Invoice Brochures
Stuffing invoices seems like a tedious task until the results start coming in. You’ll get two streams of revenue with this practice: you can sell your printing services to create invoice brochures and you can create your own to put into invoices. Either way, people have to open up their invoice to pay the bill and that’s an opportunity for exposure.
8. Sponsor Blog Posts
Bloggers that are growing in popularity often need sources of revenue to keep going and a blog sponsorship does just that. You can sponsor the entire blog or just a post if you prefer and then you’ll get exposure with every hit. You can even promote that blog or blog post on your own as an added bit of value to those who follow you on social media.
9. Step Up Your Value
Value today comes in more forms than just a quality printing service. The best printers are marketing themselves through information that they proactively share with people who follow them online or sign up for their company newsletter. Information that has good quality and interesting content to it will attract a brand loyalty that is priceless.
10. Direct Mail Still Works
Part of being a printer means showing off your skills to your community and a printed postcard in the mail can do just that. Include your pricing structure, talk about how awesome your graphics are, and focus on what sets you apart from your competition.
11. Your People Sell Well
Your employees are out in the community every day and that means you have a chance to further your brand awareness every day as well. Even if all you do is sponsor an employee softball team for the local league, you’re still providing others with an opportunity to get to know you a little bit better. When your prospects know what you stand for and they see that you make your community a priority, then they’ll be more willing to make you a priority in return.
12. Have a Customer Appreciation Week
Customers love to feel appreciated and having just one appreciation day seems to lack sincerity. Have an appreciation week instead where you feature something new every day to show your appreciation. It could be a cookout or discounted services or raffles – as long as people see that you care and that you’re trying, it can be virtually anything.
13. Brag About Yourself
If you’ve done something fantastic, then share it with your community in the form of a press release. Local reporters need ideas for fresh news and nothing sells papers better than a community interest story where someone found success. You’ll get free exposure with an interview, the paper or television channel will get viewers and corresponding advertiser interest, and even the readers or viewers will experience a sense of entertainment from the process. Everybody wins.
Although millions of people visit Brandon's blog each month, his path to success was not easy. Go here to read his incredible story, "From Disabled and $500k in Debt to a Pro Blogger with 5 Million Monthly Visitors." If you want to send Brandon a quick message, then visit his contact page here.