websites Archives - Page 6 of 13 - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

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

SEO For Printers, Printing, SEO, Marketing Ideas for Printers

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t as scary as you might think. In a nutshell, SEO is simply the process or steps you can take to make your website rank higher in the search results. The ultimate goal is to make it easy for website visitors to find answers to their questions and make it easy for search engines to find those answers for your visitors through the content on your website. The following guide will walk you through how the websites provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers (MI4P) have already been built on a solid SEO foundation. If you’re looking to bump up what’s already there, keep reading, and you’ll discover some additional tips on how you can take your SEO to the next level. How Your MI4P Website is Positioned for SEO Success Your MI4P Website is Responsive Because a responsive website is compatible with all devices, whether it’s a desktop, mobile phone, or tablet, having a responsive website means you have a website search engine’s love and [BONUS!] you avoid Google’s Non-Responsive Website Penalty. Your MI4P Website is Properly Formatted All of the content on your website is formatted to include Heading tags (or H tags), skim layers, and

Customer Retention For Printers, Marketing Ideas For Printers

Customer retention is the foundation of any business, including yours. If you want your print business to thrive, it’s essential that you have the tools available to your customers to easily order from you again and again. As the late American engineer, statistician, and business consultant William Edwards Deming once said, “Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product or service, and that bring friends with them.” Are your print buyers boasting about ordering online with your company? If not, it’s time to consider tools that will propel you forward on your quest to instantly boost your customer retention. Laying the Foundation for Retention For printers, customer retention starts by finding ways to make yourself “sticky.” For your print buyers, sticky means they have: An easily accessible order history A no-fuss way to quickly reorder what they’re looking for Reduced decision making, not having to know all of the details because you (the printer) already have them stored with each product for reordering Here are three tools available to you that will help you create just the kind of “stickiness” you’re looking for. Check out the webinar below! Want more great tips like this? Sign up

“How do I get them coming back for more?” As a print owner, chances are that thought has rattled around your head more than once. Let’s face it, getting print buyers to order printing from you and then continue to order printing from you isn’t always easy. This is especially true when you consider how your competitors are just a click away screaming and flashing their wares as cheaper, better, more convenient, and any other flashy adjectives they can throw your way. But, don’t let that discourage you. You DO have some powerful weapons at your disposal. One of those heavy hitters is Private Label Websites. The Sticking Power of Private Label Websites By providing a custom, branded, print-buying experience for your corporate customers that they can then pass along to their print-buyers, you’ll create a steady inflow of print orders through your website. “I went from about twelve orders a month ten years ago to averaging 180-240 orders per month from online storefronts. Plus, 90% of the storefronts I’ve set up for customers have been used longer than eight years.” – Gary Chmielewski, Northern Ohio Printing What’s in it for You? As with anything in life, there is some effort required to

Sales can be a little like parenting. There’s love, hate (ok, dislike), joy, pain, and the very real possibility that you’ll pour everything you have into it and things still won’t turn out how you had planned. But, as with everything, that doesn’t mean your best course of action is to throw in the towel, give up, and hope for the best. Instead, you research, you learn how to make a better connection, you seek advice, and many of us straight up pray! There’s not much more we’ll offer when it comes to parenting, except as Red Green says, “Remember, I’m pullin’ for you. We’re all in this together.” When it comes to sales, however, here are a few tips to help you increase your chance of making a connection. You Scratch My Back. I’ll Scratch Yours. Sales are really just a simple exchange of goods. Sometimes you’re the giver, and sometimes you’re the receiver. If you give something, it’s human nature to expect something in return. If you receive something, you feel obliged to reciprocate. Many won’t admit it, but most of us have a mental tally going as to whether our next step with a particular person is

Making emotional connections with your customers and prospects can have a tremendous impact on your business. If your brand can generate an emotional response, you will sell more, gain greater customer loyalty, and be able to charge more than other companies that are selling an identical product. But, how do you do it? Using emotions in marketing is the latest topic covered in the White Paper Content provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers. “A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.” – Scott Talgo Your Mission is Gaining Trust Emotional connection is the key to gaining and building trust. If your marketing fails to connect with your audience and make them feel something, you will be quickly forgotten. To create a connection, you first need to understand what’s motivating your buyers. What are they hoping to achieve? What feelings are they searching for with your product or service? Typically, there are three things that motivate all buyers: trust, confidence, and empathy. When you develop your message and brand to speak to one or all of these, you’ll have a message that sticks. Tools, such as targeting benefit triggers or choosing certain colors in

By the end of 2019, it’s estimated that there will be 224 million digital shoppers in the United States alone. That statistic is shoppers, not orders. How many orders do you think 224 million shoppers place annually? A lot — as in that’s-a-whole-lot-of-numbers-math-is-hard kind of a lot. But, if you think about it, online order numbers like that shouldn’t surprise most of us. We’ve all been known to engage in a seek-and-destroy online shopping experience while in our pajamas using our weapon of choice: our index fingers. That tactic seems to make way more sense than actually getting off the couch, driving somewhere, and becoming a participating member of the retail world in person. Seriously, why would you do all that work when what is needed is right at your fingertips? Since more and more people are opting for online shopping, it’s pretty easy to conclude where your focus needs to be for selling printing. It needs to cater to your online storefront. The Pricing “What Ifs” For many small businesses, one of the biggest hold-ups for selling online is the debate of whether or not to put your product pricing on your website. After all, there are so many “What ifs…”

What makes a printed piece leap off a page? Some say it’s the dimensions of the designs, the vibrant hues of the ink, or the dazzling gloss finishes. But part of the beauty is the way the layout itself captures your eye. When white space is appropriately utilized (or eliminated completely), the contrast can be breathtaking. But often clients don’t understand the technical details of planning for appropriate margins, through the use of full or partial bleeds. A Common Mistake Worth Correcting One of the most frequent amateur design mistakes is allowing for insufficient bleeds before sending a project to print, causing the effectiveness of the design to be weakened or essential parts of the layout to be cut off unexpectedly. This month’s print tip, added to the Ideas Collection of every website provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers, coaches your clients on the basics of bleed techniques in print. The August print tip article trains your customers on eliminating unwanted white space and understanding trim and fold markings as you build a print proof together. Though today’s software offers default values for creating bleed margins, here are a few tips to coach clients on when to use them: Bleeds

Most companies, printers included, haven’t spent the time to define their sales process or the stages a prospect goes through before they buy. Even still, there are several more companies who have discrepancies in their sales process depending who you ask. Defining this process isn’t an easy exercise to go through, but it’s very necessary. And, having it well-defined will help you grow, follow up with sales opportunities, and streamline your sales process. But, what does that have to do with MQLs and SQLs? MQL VS SQL An MQL is defined as a Marketing Qualified Lead. It’s a print buyer who’s still a prospect but has indicated a level of interest in buying some sort of printing or services from your print business. This person is deemed likely to become a future customer after some nurturing. An SQL is defined as a Sales Qualified Lead. An SQL is a print buyer who started as a prospect and has shown high levels of interest in buying printing from you. They’ve shown that interest through a set of specific actions and are highly likely to then convert into a paying customer. This is someone who’s ready to speak to you about something

The Golden Touch Do you have anyone in your life a bit like Midas? You know, where everything they touch turns to gold? It seems favor follows them at every turn and they garner respect wherever they go. While not all of us possess that charismatic charm, it is possible to grow in our delivery. And that starts with compelling communication. Creating the Framework for Ideas that Stick How is it that some people can share their ideas in a way that resonates so well with their audience, while others can drop a great idea that falls completely flat? This month’s marketing tip, available on every website provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers, offers your clients a framework for creating memorable, useful content for their flyers, business cards, banners, and more. This framework starts with five key questions: Does your content make people: Pay attention? Understand and remember it? Agree/Believe? Care? Be able to act on the message? Bringing in Emotion Businesses want people to remember the idea — so it’s essential to make it feel concrete. When readers care about an idea, they are one step closer to buying into the overall concept, and ideas become more “sticky.” Frame

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