Social Media Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

The Hidden Cost of Not Marketing Your Print Business

“Marketing your business does not guarantee success, but the failure to market your business will guarantee your demise.” That quote comes from our late founder, Mike Stevens. Mike knew and understood the importance of marketing a print business. As a printer himself, Mike also knew that printers are highly likely to push their own marketing to the back burner in favor of helping other companies work on theirs. The Doom Loop In late 2010, Mike wrote about what he called “The Doom Loop,” a sort of twisted marketing logic that ultimately leads to business failure. “The marketing doom loop happens when you allow yourself to think that you do not need marketing when business is good and cannot afford marketing when business is bad… If you allow yourself to think like that, either way, you lose.” The truth is, there is a cost to not marketing your business — some of which can be pretty substantial. The Hidden Costs of Not Marketing Your Printing Business 1. You lose opportunities. Although one of the most apparent downfalls of not marketing is missed sales opportunities, the not-so-obvious downfall is the enormous impact this could be having on your business. Why? Because there’s

Twenty years ago, it was easy to figure out who your competition was. Why? Because your competition was another locally owned business just like you are. In almost every case, your competition was the printing firm located just down the street, or maybe it was a big commercial printer located over on the other side of town. Back then, it was relatively easy for you to know who your competition was and have a pretty good idea of how big they were, what kind of equipment they had, and how good their print quality was. You could pretty much know everything about them because they were local folks just like you were. Ordering Printing: The Way Things Were Everybody had a lot in common back then. There’s a pretty good chance you all used the same paper suppliers, the same press repairmen, and even had the same utility companies. And, knowing so much about local competitors made it easier to compete against them. Back then, when you wanted to grow sales or increase market share, all of your marketing efforts were locally focused. All you had to do was to try and come up with a better way to tell

Imposters online can make your life miserable. If you miss the signs and end up welcoming them into your connection circles, it can only mean one thing – bad news! Take a look at the questions below that you can use to help determine the truth from a lie. Social Media 1.) Is the profile picture featured a legitimate photo? If the photo is left blank, contains an avatar, features a model, or is simply low-quality, be suspicious and ask yourself if the connection request is worth the risk. 2.) Have I checked their username? Fake profiles will typically feature foreign usernames or usernames that contain numbers. While it would be almost impossible to tell if an account was fake simply by the username, it could be one more warning sign when combined with everything else. 3.) Does their bio make sense? Before connecting with anyone online, please do your due diligence to find out what they’re all about. If their bio features suspicious links or incorrect English (grammar, not spelling), you’ll want to steer clear. 4.) What type of content have they shared? If their account doesn’t have any recent activity, or they tend only to reshare content and

Social media marketing is an essential tool for helping you sell more printing. While you might already have your “hat in the ring” on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, many printers have yet to take advantage of the many benefits Instagram marketing can provide for their printing firm. Why You Need to Consider Instagram for Your Print Business Instagram marketing is no longer a mere trend for the “young’uns.” Rather, it has grown to reach over 1 billion users with 95 million photos and videos posted daily. If that weren’t enough, check out these other powerful Instagram marketing statistics: According to Forrester.com, Instagram initiates more engagement — reaching 4% of followers, while Facebook typically reaches .1% of followers. Instagram is an impressive tool for research. Roughly 70% of Instagram users have used the platform for brand research at some point. (Iconosquare) A typical Instagram user will spend 28 minutes per day on the app. With numbers like those, you may start to wonder how you can use it for your benefit and how your business can stand out in such a vast sea of competing content. But, keep in mind that beyond the numbers, Instagram allows you to:

A new year brings fresh hope for change, and with it, the excitement needed to take on a new challenge. In the past few years, challenges have been all the rage. A quick search online and you’ll find challenges for all sorts of things, such as fitness challenges, financial challenges, skills challenges, and more. So, doesn’t it seem like there should be a challenge for printers? Absolutely. Below are 5+ challenges to help you better your business in the coming year and sell more printing. Ready to make 2021 your best year yet? 1. Conduct a Business Assessment First things first, you have to know where to start. How is your print company doing at meeting the needs and opportunities of your print buyers? How about your internal team? What are their struggles and opportunities? Take the time to write some of these things down on paper. Determine the things you have that are working well, not so well, and those solutions you need to implement to wholly meet your buyers’ and your team’s needs. 2. Think Bigger Thomas Edison once said, “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” While it’s tempting to remain daily “in” the business,

Social media is an incredible way to touch the lives of a variety of people and potential buyers that you may never meet in person. Or, as Michael Hyatt says, “Social media is the greatest leadership tool ever invented. It gives you the opportunity to amplify your voice, extend your influence, and create a tribe of passionate followers who want to hear from you.” Just imagine having enough influence on a person through social media that they feel they know you and trust you well enough to then place an order with you online. What an incredible way to have influence! 7 Tips to Help You Spruce Up Your Social Media If you’re looking to garner that kind of influence and spruce up your social media in the new year, check out these X tips below. 1. Embrace a People-First Mindset The heart of social media lies in engaging others, investing in relationships with your followers, and, ultimately, making the human connection with those you have the privilege of connecting with online. While it’s tempting to click and post with no real thought involved, challenge yourself to spend some designated time each day, perhaps as little as ten minutes, giving

You’ve updated your website. You’re posting social media content. You’re even sending out email newsletters and direct mail. But, you’re still not seeing the website traffic you’d like to. What’s the deal? While increasing traffic to your print website will always be an ongoing goal, there are a few things that can easily get overlooked. And, don’t worry. Most of these oversights are not major, time-consuming ordeals and can quickly be turned around to benefit your business. Here are a few, often overlooked, strategies that can have an impact on your website traffic. 3 Things You Might Be Overlooking that Are Affecting Your Website Traffic 1. Forgetting to Add Text to Your Social Media Posts While linking to relevant articles and posting visually compelling content on your social media channels are important, the response will most certainly fall flat if there’s no invite for further conversation. Conversation is what drives engagement on social media, and you can’t be social without other people. To start the conversation, be mindful to include some text to invite your audience to join in a conversation with you whenever possible. For example, start adding a question or an engaging statement to your post, like this:

Today, millennials make up 50% of the workforce, but are they buying print marketing? Well, see for yourself. Take a look at these statistics: 50% of millennials will ignore digital ads, but only 15% ignore direct mail 90% of millennials think direct mail advertising is reliable 57% have made purchases based on direct mail offers 87% of millennials like receiving direct mail The truth is in the numbers. But what about your print business? Are you struggling to reach the younger generation? If so, these seven tips will help you make the connection and load up your sales pipeline. 1. Go Where They Are – Social Media This new generation is as tech-savvy as ever, but the goods news is, you don’t have to search far to reach them. They’ve spent their lives (not minutes, not hours, lives!) on social media. Before you groan, remember, this means that social media can provide you with an instant connection to your audience. Yes, you want to get prospects and customers to trust you, but today, that’s not enough. You need to get them to like you, and social media is the place to do that. Takeaway: If you want to be an

Most business owners understand the necessity of social media. Social media offers you an easy way to connect to your audience on a more personal level, whether your buyers are across town or across the globe. Though it can be work, several benefits make it worthwhile, including: Social media helps your business establish a reputation. Social media creates an ongoing conversation with your audience. Social media allows you to learn more about your print buyers. So, why can creating and maintaining social media accounts be so draining? There are really two main reasons: time and not knowing what to post. How to Save Time with Social Media To help with the time aspect of social media, consider a monthly social media subscription service. This easy, effective, and relevant tool allows social media to become a no-thought process for your business, and all it requires is about a minute a day and a couple of clicks from your mouse. This type of time-saving solution is great when you’re short on time, just getting your feet wet in the world of social media, or you want a constant steady stream of things to post when you’re out of ideas. >> Check it

If you’re struggling to get the word out that you’re ready, willing, and able to help others with their print marketing needs, here are some must-haves and must-dos to help drive traffic to your website using social media and email marketing. What to Post on Social Media Social media should be a melting pot of engaging content. A good rule of thumb when posting to social media is to follow the 10-4-1 Rule. This concept was made popular by social media gurus Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey Cohen in their book, The B2B Social Media Book. The 10-4-1 Rule breaks down like this: For every 15 posts you post to social media: 10 – should come from outside sources, or in other words, other people’s content. This would be the type of content that you get delivered to your inbox each morning through the social media subscription through Marketing Ideas For Printers. 4- should be your own content. This could be your own blog content, website content, or fun and unique “behind-the-scenes” types of things. 1 – should be a link to a landing page or a more blatant sales pitch. These are the posts that direct people to “Click here

« Previous Page — Next Page »

The MI4P Process

Say Hello

Who We Are

What We Do

Downloadable Resources