First and foremost, look at your website. Make sure your design is eye catching and easy to maneuver. Make sure that you have attractive pictures or illustrations that get your customers attention. Customers don’t care about your new press or copier, so don’t clutter your homepage with your proud new pictures. People like to see people. Especially people like you. If you can, stay away from stock photography and hire a professional photographer to take pictures of you and your staff. Tell your customers how you can solve their problems, don’t sell them on the fact that you do great stationery. Sell them on the fact that you can solve what ever problem or need they have.

A second marketing strategy is to promote you service. Get yourself noticed. Send out flyers, business cards, post cards, etc. Hey, you sell direct mail, why not use it to promote yourself. Get yourself noticed on the web as well. Become entrenched in various social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Delicious, etc. The more access/touch points you have for your customers and prospects, the better off you will be.

Number three, get set up with a good email marketing program. Web applications like Constant Contact are a great way to send marketing materials as well as track your success. Constant Contact also offers autoresponders.  This automated form of a marketing keeps your customers and prospects informed about your services automatically. You literally write the messages and autoresponders send them out on set schedules. Once you set it up the first time, the program does all the work for you. Using an autoresponder to send out advertisements of your product is fast and convenient. Everything is done by email.

Try developing a catchy slogan for your comapny. Think about it, how many slogans can you name, and how many products to you remember because of that slogan. This is a great marketing strategy because it is a way for people to easily remember your business. If they remember or recognize you, they are likely to use you.

Another powerful marketing strategy is the use of SEO (search engine optimization) tactics. I will admit that there is a lot of speculation and false information buzzing around about what is effect SEO. Many place will sell you there SEO services for a couple thousand dollars. I stay away from those people. Buy a book like SEO for Dummies or subscribe to a training service like Lynda.com and do what you can on your own. Effect SEO takes a little work, but most printers are capable of doing the legwork themselves. Using SEO correctly will attract more people to your site. More people on your site means more exposure. More exposure means more leads. More leads can turn into more sales. Get the picture?

Finally, the last marketing strategy is to have great public relations. With good public relations, your business will prosper through word of mouth. Allow customers to submit feedback of your business. Place positive feedback and testimonials on your website. It makes your business look good and customers tend to prefer to use businesses that have positive feedback.

A killer marketing strategy will cost you some time and money, so don’t be fooled by thinking you can do it for next to nothing.  But if you look in the right places and follow some good advice, your marketing strategy should leave you coming out on top.

Joe Kern  is Vice President of  Marketing/Customer Service at PagePath Technologies. PagePath was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Plano, Illinois. PagePath’s MyOrderDesk is an eCommerce solution that combines, Web-to-Print, automated proofing, pricing, reordering and more. It seamlessly integrates into a printing organization’s existing website or can be used as a standalone site. MyOrderDesk is known throughout the printing industry as the leader in Web-to-Print software.

Class registration, $49 per class, will give participants access to the live webinar classes as well as the recorded video of the session and any slide deck or class materials. To register for a class, click the links below. If you have any questions on the classes themselves, feel free to contact Joe Kern at 866-770-7569 or by email at jkern@pagepath.com

Facebook Marketing 101 for Printers

Next session, Janaury 15, 2010 at 1:00pm Central

Twitter Marketing 101 for Printers

Next session, Janaury 22, 2010 at 1:00pm Central

Blog Marketing 101 for Printers

Next session, Janaury 29, 2010 at 1:00pm Central

Today’s post is a guest post by Margie Dana. Margie is well known throughout the printing and buying community as an independent marketing specialist who focuses on improving the printer-buyer relationship. She was a corporate print buyer for 15 years. In 1997, Margie founded her first business (www.printconsulting.com) to shine a light on the printing industry. She’s an accomplished copywriter, marketing specialist, and popular public speaker. You can reach Margie at (617) 730-5951 or send an email to mdana@BostonPrintBuyers.com.

1. You’re in the Communications Business.

Whether or not Twitter is a flash in the pan or here for the long haul, it’s currently gaining popularity among adults. (According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 1 in 5 Americans use Twitter or another social service.) It’s a very popular way to communicate digitally. Try it if only to know what it’s like. Take part in the digital dialogue or risk being left behind.

2. You Can Build Relationships for Business.

Find & follow other print buyers as well as designers, paper pros, printers, mail specialists, direct marketers, and on and on. These relationships can and do yield value. You’ll get questions answered, discover new resources, and learn about events, books, articles, and news items that are meaningful to you.

3. You Can Keep Up with Industry Changes.

Breaking news in and around print and the graphic arts, as well as the ‘bigger picture’ of Media, is reported on Twitter. If you follow the right people as well as the right media outlets, you will regularly be in the know.

4. You Can Add Value for Your Employer.

The role of the professional print buyer is changing radically. Now is the time to actively add value as you evolve to reflect current business trends. Being on Twitter will open your eyes to new ways of doing business, new ideas to bring to your firm. If you’ve chosen your followers wisely, they will all have something to offer you. And if you’re looking for employment, you might get some solid leads. If nothing else, people in the field will get to know you.

5. It’s Free, and It’s Easy.

There’s really no excuse for you not to give Twitter a shot. Participate as much or as little as you want. I visit it a few times each day to see if there’s news or posts or events or fresh ideas that intrigue me.

I find that being on Twitter gets me outside of my own head. Tweets by folks I follow expand my world cumulatively – 140 characters at a time. I learn about all kinds of creative ways to be a professional communicator as well as a professional in communications. If this old dog keeps learning new tricks, you can, too.

Imagine this: Your best friend comes to you one morning and tells you she’s had it with her telephone. She’s throwing it away because it doesn’t help her with traditional handwritten communication.

Crazy talk, right? Your friend doesn’t need a different tool for traditional communication, she needs a new approach to communication.

Traditional B2B marketers who resist social media aren’t much different. They resist social media because it doesn’t work when they use it as another outbound marketing channel.

Instead of rejecting social media as a channel, traditional marketers need to reject their outbound approach to marketing.

Traditional marketing — outbound marketing — is about buying attention. You figure out where your target customers hangout, then you buy access to them. You fill the pages of trade publications they read with print ads. You interrupt them with unsolicited phone calls at their office. You send out mailings that they throw away.

These tactics are incompatible with social media. If your Twitter account is simply a product information broadcast, you won’t have many followers. If you don’t share any helpful, interesting or fun content on your Facebook account, your pages will get little traffic.

On the other hand, if you reject this approach to marketing, and use social media as part of an inbound marketing strategy, it will become a core part of your marketing mix. If you engage with your industry’s community on Twitter, if you share top-notch content on Facebook, and build relationships on LinkedIn, social media will work for you.

“Wait!” you say. “We’re a B2B operation! We don’t have social-savvy customers like B2C companies.”

Lame excuse.

No question, social media grew out of the consumer space, and B2C examples of social media success are easy to find. But take a step back. Look at the value that businesses get out of social media. You’ll see it’s not specific to B2B or B2C companies. Consider the three main benefits marketers get from social media:

1. Listening — Every company needs to listen. Doesn’t matter if you sell solder paste, CRM software or fencing supplies. You need to listen to your competitors, your customers, your prospects — your community. Social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook make this easier.
2. Reach — Reach is important to any marketer. It’s the number of people you can communicate with directly via email, telephone, or any other channel. You need this whether you’re selling to consumers or businesses. Social media tools media it easier to build.
3. Nurturing — Nurturing is another critical marketing task for all companies. Regardless of what you sell, you need to build trust with potential customers and educate them about your company and your products. Social media facilitates the development of personal relationships at scale. This makes it an ideal tool for nurturing in any business.

How do you use social media at your company? Have you found it useful in a B2B context?

I think they have some valid questions. I would be interested to know your opinion on this. What do you think?

Ok, it is time for us to brag a little, and challenge a little. PagePath Technologies has been working very hard lately on developing tools and resources that will help those in the Print and Graphic Arts Industries, and we got noticed.

HubSpot TV, a weekly live videocast talked about PagePath Technolgies’ recent launch of TwitterPrint.net. See the video below.

Our challenge for you today is two-fold:

• First and foremost, what are you “doing right”?
• Have you thought outside the box recently about your sales and marketing efforts
• Have you reached out to your customers today and figured out how to better SERVE them.

Second, have you joined twitter yet, or increased your Social Media Marketing presence? If not, we can help. Within the next few weeks, PagePath will be launching our Private Social Media Coaching Sessions. Watch here for details.

Oh, and by the way, you can watch the full episode of HubSpot.TV on the web here, or subscribe via iTunes. Great people, great content! Special thanks to @KarenRubin (follow her on twitter, she can use it) and @MVolpe (follow him too) from HubSpot.

Today’s post is a guest post from Laura Beulke. Laura is the owner Vertical Printing & Graphics. VP & G specializes in short-run printing and mailing orders. Laura has used Twitter successfully and wants to share her story with other printers. You can contact Laura for more information at Laura@VerticalPrinting.com or follow her on Twitter at @VPG_Printing

I started using twitter in January 2008 and really didn’t know what it was all about. I followed a link from another social media website and started my account. I looked around a little and found a few people I was interested in and that was about it. I would visit Twitter initially once per week and look what others were posting and then I posted a few things too. Then it hit me around June 2008 this would be a great resource for gaining new clients from all over the country. So my addition became an addiction!!!

At that point I started doing some serious following and was also posting several micro blogs per day. It started off with a little bit of advise here and there, and I would offer some special rates.  I had an idea to give away post FREEBIE’s, where I would give away a little bit of printing or a product. That is when Twitter SNOWBALLED for me. People started to retweet my specials and FREEBIE’s that I offered and before you knew it I had hundreds of new new followers.

I have also done sponsorships for various blogs through connections on twitter. This has brought a fair amount  of attention to both my website as well as my twitter account. In less the 6 months I have gained over 3000 followers and I have built relationships many of them. They have given me some GREAT referrals as well. I am not only a twitter addict now, but I am also a twitter queen (at least I think so).

I make Twitter a part of my daily routine. I post a different special each day, as well as  positive tip about marketing. This is where I have gained a great amount of success. I get new followers everyday and also find that several of my followers take the time to RT (retweet) my specials (some do it everyday.) This is the reason I have been successful at developing new business from this thing we call Twitter.  Follow this up with great products, person to person customer service and building long lasting relationships is and you too can be successful.

Thanks to Twitter I have added clients in 10 additional states, making it 37 states now that Vertical Printing & Graphics, a little boutique printing & graphics company in Encinitas, CA can say they service.

I was talking with Bill Farquharson the other day about creative marketing tactics for printers. In the conversation Bill brought up a video that a friend of his produced and uploaded to YouTube. As I watched the video, I was impressed by the simplicity, as well as the creativity in getting the message across. It was effective, and it grabbed my interest. I imagine that it did not take very long to produce (since my degree is actually in video production) and if marketed correctly, it can be a cost effective way to get the word out about their product.

With a video camera and $100 (or less) of video editing software, you can do the same. Videos on the internet have the ability of going viral if done right. How many of us have watched laughing babies time and time again, or clips of a bunch of guys imitating David Blaine the magician. Be creative, convey a message and have fun. Here is another video from a printer that I enjoy.

So go out, make a video, and let me know when it is on YouTube so that I can post it on this blog. Happy Friday!

Today’s post is a guest post from Robert Crabtree. Robert is CEO of Distributor Growth Partners, a full service marketing/design firm and print distribution company. Information about DGP can be found at www.distributorgrowthpartners.com

Today in the PSDA (Print Services & Distribution Association) Listserve, there were questions about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) providers, price ect… This turned into a discussion about many things, but most importantly, does it work and is it for me. Here is my take on SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

I’d say it does matter but it is not for everyone. It very much depends on the nature of your particular business and the level, at which you want to play. SEO and SEM is much more than just one or two initiatives….as I often say, “You Cannot Bake A Cake With One Ingredient.” Real SEO and SEM will combine multiple efforts and strategies based around a solid plan. It’s not just keywords and pagerank.

I run into competitive firms all the time, that typically don’t know alot, they just throw around a few buzzwords and that’s all. There is no silver bullet and many promise just that. They can’t guarentee anything either but they will claim pretty much anything to get your business. If anyone guarantees ranking for you, they are flat out not telling the truth.

Of course no one understand all the intricacies of the Google algorithm — maybe not even any one person at Google. But someone whose core focus is on what helps a site present a “strong signal” to Google can make a big difference. And a fresh set of eyes alone can be extremely valuable.

What a good seo will do is not talk about Search Engines and lists of keyphrases but will work at understanding your business, identifying your uniqueness, studying your target market(s), your competitors, your market position and your website to ensure that you will end up with not only high solid positioning that’s going to work for the long term – but an excellent increase in business. For this…..you can expect to pay a lot. But then that is not your average seo! You might try looking for a real Internet Marketing Consultant that will care about your business as much as you do.

The bottom line, SEO and SEM make the most sense for companies who have a niche product, solution, industry focus, or companies that have an ecommerce website. If you don’t fall into one of these categories, Organic SEO makes much less sense for you. Don’t try to optimize for “Business cards, full service printing, banners….yada yadda….” You’ll get run over, sped too much and not produce the almighty ROI.

You know your business, but if you do not have the marketing skills and time to get that knowledge out of your brain – then their are folks who can do that and make it all happen for you, but make sure you don’t jump into bed with the first smooth talking Keyword Guy.

No marketing platform has ever offered the kind of global access to potential customers that the World Wide Web does. But how do you get your message heard? Here are five guidelines to follow as you develop your online marketing campaign.

Interact

Web 2.0 – the new, feature-rich World Wide Web – is all about participation. Prospects don’t just want to visit websites and read promotional copy. They want to get involved, to express themselves. The explosion of the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are a testimony to this. Give your customers an opportunity to interact with your company. Build a page for your product on Facebook, and let your loyal customers sign up as fans. Give visitors to your site a chance to review your products, or encourage them to review you on other sites. Listen to what your customers are saying. You may just learn that your company appeals to a niche you weren’t even aware of.

Post Informative Content on Your Website.

Web surfers are looking for information, not ads. Posting brief, informative articles about your products and the market they serve can attract the attention of surfers and drive them to your site. Find out the keywords your prospects are searching and integrate these keywords into your articles. You can find a variety of keyword analysis options by typing “keyword research tool” into your favorite search engine. Don’t overdo it though: stuffing your content with keywords makes your copy difficult to read and might just get you banned by the search engines.

Build Your E-mail List With a Free Report.

Again, a great segment of the web surfing population is looking for free information, and you should give it to them, even if information is what you have to sell. Offer visitors a brief but informative report on some aspect of your business in exchange for their name on your mailing list. They’ll be glad to have the free information they were looking for, and you’ll have another name for your list. But won’t you lose business if you teach everyone how to do it themselves? Not a chance. You won’t be giving them an exhaustive textbook that bestows the benefit of all your experience in the field. You’ll give them a brief overview, just enough to get started with. From reading your report, they’ll often see just how much they don’t know about printing and decide to buy printing from you.

Start a Blog.

This is another great way to provide good information for your customers and give them a chance to interact as well. A blog is a website designed to be added to on a regular basis. On it you can post interesting information about your field and your products and encourage your readers to comment on your posts. Readers to your company’s blog will see how passionate you are about your industry and will be glad of the chance to post their commentary in a public forum. Since you can provide a link to your company website on each new post, posting regularly will build the number of inbound links to your website, which is an important factor the search engines look to when determining page ranking.

Stay in Touch.

Blogging, e-mail, social networking, all of these make it easy to stay in touch with your customers, and to make sure your brand is in their sights and minds when buying time comes. Post regularly to your blog and follow up on comments. Send out regular e-mails. Offer your customers even more information if you can and not just a list of products and what’s on sale. And again, don’t overdo it. Customers who get tired of seeing your marketing materials day after day will put you on their spam lists. If you offer helpful information on a regular basis, though, they will be eager to hear from you.