Sometimes offering innovative solutions to your print buyers and selling more printing can be as easy as a simple formula. If you’re struggling to capture the attention of your audience and are looking for new ways to shine the light on your printing business, check out these two solutions that, when combined, bring you the increase you’ve been looking for. Dynamic QR Codes QR codes have been around for a while. These small, but mighty little boxes of code magic have helped businesses around the world gain brand visibility and drive traffic to their websites. One famous QR code that you might be familiar with is that of CoinBase and their legendary Super Bowl ad this year. The ad was amazing simple and incredibly effective, featuring one QR code that bounced around a black television screen and changed colors. Add in a little 80s arcade music, and wham! All of sudden you have not only the winner of the “Super Clio” for best Super Bowl commercial, but also 20 million users to CoinBase’s site within one minute! Dynamic Versus Static QR Codes While many are familiar with QR codes, not as many are familiar with the differences between dynamic and


Having a great website starts with your home page. Just as a magazine or postcard gives you only a few seconds to capture the attention of your audience, the same is true of your digital doorstep. ”Your website is likely the first impression a potential customer will receive about your company. It’s almost like a first date. The customer simply needs to know that you have something they want and you can be trusted to deliver whatever that is.” – Donald Miller So, what can you do to ensure you grab and keep your print buyers’ eyes on you? Get started with these tips for a home page that is impossible to ignore. 5 Tips for an Effective Print Website Home Page 1. Stand out from your competition. Whether you create a website from scratch or you use a customizable website design template, your goal should be to make your website as unique to you as possible. Most of this uniqueness will come through your copywriting and images, not necessarily from your overall look. Here are a few things to keep in mind to ensure your copy is on-point: Skip the printer jargon and focus on using the same words


“Oh, I just love spam! It hardly takes up any of my time or causes me any inconvenience, and I find it all really interesting!” – said no one ever. Let’s be real, the more accurate (and universal) answer to spam is: UGH!!! Meet Your Nemesis: The Spambot While online print ordering allows you to level the competitive playing field and expand your reach, an unfortunate side effect of the internet age is the increase in online scams and spambots. On your print website, these spambots most likely make themselves known through a surge of fake customer accounts and an unwelcome onslaught of bogus account emails. But, what exactly is a spambot and what can you do to get rid of them? What is a Spambot? Besides being a royal pain, a spambot is a computer program that performs repetitive tasks and typically tries to disguise itself as a real user. These repetitive tasks usually include things like creating fake emails or accounts on forums and messaging apps. Creating a user account on your print website only involves filling out a few fields, such as your print buyer’s name, email address, etc., making it relatively easy for a skilled programmer


Every business needs a website, but have you ever stopped to think about why? Or stopped to evaluate if your print website is as effective as it could be? Having a website creates “…a window through which your business says hello to the world,” says blogger Amit Kalantri. And it’s true, especially when you consider that: Nearly 90% of people use the internet to find small businesses (yes, even print businesses), 84% of people think a website makes a business more credible, and 30% of consumers won’t even consider a business if they don’t have a website. (Ouch.) So, the question becomes, if the internet is where your print buyers are searching for you, are they finding you there, and are they satisfied with what they find? 5 Reasons Your Print Business Needs a Website If you’re still thinking that what you’re doing has worked up until this point, so why change, you might want to review these reasons for why a website should be the cornerstone of your print business.  1. A Print Website Paints a Picture of Who You are as a Business As a printer, you know how important it is for a person to have a business


Is this you? You’ve invested in a great website. You’ve worked hard to streamline the customer buying process. You’ve even got more website visitors than ever before. But there’s just one problem. Your print buyers aren’t buying anything online, leaving you to wonder, “What’s the deal?” Abandoned shopping carts plague even the best businesses. Here are five tips to help you better understand why it happens and what you can do to fix it. 5 Tips to Reduce Abandoned Shopping Carts 1. Don’t Take It Personally You should know right from the start that you are not alone in your abandoned shopping cart woes. According to Listrak, the average rate at which an average consumer abandons their shopping cart before making a purchase is 81%. Wowzers! To say that another way, even if you are doing everything PERFECTLY, 4 out of 5 people (including your print buyers) will leave their carts and never return if for no other reason than they got interrupted or distracted. What you can do: It’s essential to accept that not every print buyer who puts an item in their cart will buy from you, so be ready to move on without taking it personally. 2.


Nowadays, waiting on hold for as little as 30 seconds can feel like an eternity. But, while no one likes to be put on hold, there is an easy way to make the wait seem shorter and much more enjoyable for your print buyers: by using an advertising on hold system. What is an Advertising on Hold System? An Advertising On Hold system provides you with a cost-efficient, convenient, and effective way to reach a truly captive audience with a message that is specifically for your print business. Not only can your on-hold message provide useful information about your company, including the products and services you provide, but if you spice it up with interesting facts and tidbits, it can serve as a source of entertainment for your print buyers while they wait to speak with you. An advertising on hold system isn’t about placing your customers on hold. It’s about holding on to your customers! 7 Benefits of Using an Advertising On Hold System Using a type of advertising on hold system is an ideal way to communicate with your prospects and customers because you’re already engaging your target audience. Here are seven additional benefits to consider: 1. It


Good website design for your print company could mean the difference between getting an online order and being passed over for a competitor. But why? Isn’t a good website design like art? Isn’t it relative and dependent on the eye of the beholder? Not exactly. Your website design has to accomplish three critical things: Your website design should create a great, easy-to-use user experience. Your website design should translate competency. In other words, a good website design = a competent print business. Your website design should help to create trust in your print buyer. Here are seven best practices you can follow in your website design to help you get there: 1. Color Harmony While it’s true that you can print any color in the rainbow, it’s not necessarily a good idea to use them all on your website. Sensory overload can backfire and send people running to a more professional-looking printer. Let photo graphics provide the ‘full-color’ on your website, and keep your color palette simple and inspiring. “Good design is good business.” – Thomas Watson, Jr. 2. Let Them Scroll There’s no need to pack everything into the top portion of your website anymore. Times have changed. Remember,


Knight defending castle representing ADA Website Compliance Check training

Imagine your typical day. You arrive at work, ready to conquer the world, but then the mail arrives, and you get “the letter.” It’s a demand letter from a law firm, alerting you to legal action being taken against you based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). ADA compliance challenges have historically focused on brick-and-mortar properties. Attorneys would issue the challenge after making an on-site visit to the property to find and identify the basis for a potential challenge. But, everything’s changed with the internet. Now, these attorneys don’t even need to make a physical visit to your property to issue their challenge; all they need to do is drive by on Google Streetwise to look for potential violations to challenge. The internet also changed what can get challenged. Attorneys are now not only challenging physical properties, but they’re challenging digital properties as well. That’s what led to this simple email we received from Dan: Several businesses in our area are getting threatened with ADA lawsuits because their websites are not ADA compliant. Is our website compliant? Defend Your Digital Castle Dan explained the rash of ADA website compliance checks that have hit businesses in his area over the last


All printers want to sell more printing, but many tend to overlook the impact that white papers have on reaching that goal. What are White Papers? A white paper is an “authoritative report or guide meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision”. They provide an in-depth study on a specific topic. What’s great about providing your print buyers with white paper content is YOU are the authority in that definition, and you’re using that authority to help your audience solve their sales or marketing problems using print. The Benefits of White Papers for Printing and Marketing Companies Along with addressing or solving a problem for the reader (which is a benefit in and of itself), white papers offer many other benefits as well. White papers help generate leads. White papers help you be seen as an industry thought leader. White papers are typically geared towards a B2B focus, building powerful corporate relationships that help shore up your bottom line. White papers give you an edge over the competition when used as a valuable resource to your print buyers. White papers help influence the buying decisions of your print buyers. A 2015 Eccolo Media


websites for printers, website layout, content for printers

As the Marketing Director here at Marketing Ideas For Printers (MI4P), there’s one question I get asked a lot: How do I get more traffic to my website? It’s a valid question. With numbers like 1,630,322,579 websites created in 2018 alone, it makes sense that printers would be asking how to make their website unique. Sometimes that question is followed up with an additional question similar to, “Rachel, could you take a look at my website and see what could be improved upon?” Recently, a prospect asked me that very thing, and I agreed to offer any insight I may have on their website. While the geeks at MI4P can look at a website and tell you how everything’s working from a technical perspective, I tend to look at websites from a human perspective (like your prospects and customers!) What I found when reviewing their website was a key component was missing. A key piece so critical that I had to write about it here to make you all aware of it. The Good First, let’s start with the good things I found. This printer’s website was well-designed, informative, and for the most part, easy to navigate. You could tell


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