“Content, content, content. That’s all you guys ever talk about.”
Yeah, well, that kind of is true. After all, in this series alone, we’ve covered:
Today, though, we’re going to look at the reason behind why we focus on content and show you how everything works together to achieve one thing: more print orders for your printing company.
Your Content Invitation
Imagine for a minute if your only strategy for growing your business was content. Think it’d be enough?
The thing about content is it’s only the first step in acquiring and keeping prospects and customers. If you only ever focus on content, you might be extremely valuable in the way of providing knowledge and information to your audience, but you’ll probably still be struggling to sell printing.
That’s because content (and your content net) is only the invitation. It’s what opens the door to create relationships and build trust. But, if your invitation online leads to an order roadblock, you won’t ever get any actual return on investment from all of your content.
Here’s a little story to illustrate this point further.
The Story of Anne the Print Buyer
Anne, like many other online consumers, is a cautious online shopper.
It’s not that she’s fearful of shopping online, per se, it’s just that she wants to feel comfortable knowing a company is credible and trustworthy before doing business with them online.
So, when Anne recently decided to get some new brochures printed for her insurance company, she started by entering some simple questions into Google. Questions like:
- Are brochures still a useful marketing tool?
- Brochures vs. sales letters. Which are better?
- What size should my brochure be to mail?
Anne selected a search result for her question from the top few results, which led her to a blog from a printing company. Although she did pick up a nugget or two of information from the blog itself, she grew even more impressed as she started to look around this printer’s website.
She found a content library filled with print, design, tech, and marketing tips, as well as an entire page full of different white papers on sales and marketing topics that could really help her out with her business.
“Wow,” she thought. “These guys know what they’re doing! I’m going to look into ordering my brochures from them.”
Anne found a product page on the website that listed the products offered by the printer and was hopeful when her eyes caught the word, “Brochures.” She slung her mouse over to click to begin her online order and…
Nothing.
She clicked again.
Nothing.
“Wait a second,” Anne thought. “You mean I can’t actually order my printing through their website? Why would they go through all this work to get me to their website to order printing when I can’t actually do anything when I get here?”
Content + Online Order Forms = More Sales!
Anne’s story is precisely the reason your efforts to sell more printing can’t stop at content.
Content is what will bring them in, but it’s your e-commerce solutions, your offering of online ordering, that translates that content into more sales.
Content without an online order form on your website means you’re probably credible, trustworthy, knowledgeable, and… struggling! You could be missing out on all of those potential customers you snagged in your content net because you have a massive roadblock in their way: no way to order from you online.
Online order forms without content on your website means you’re providing a way for customers and prospects to order printing, but they have no compelling reason to want to order from you or ever return to your website. They don’t know you, they haven’t built up any trust with you, so they have no desire to take a risk and order online from you.
“We Go Together Like…”
Like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, and bacon and anything, content and online order forms work best when they work together, helping you to sell more printing and increasing your bottom line.
