Old vs New Marketing: The 4 Digital Marketing Tactics for Next Gen Printers

There are two reasons why graphic arts companies must understand digital marketing. First, it can provide new marketing options to promote your existing products and services. Second, it can create new products and services that are complementary to your existing services. This is the second of a two-part series that talks about the value of traditional and new marketing.

Email Marketing

Of all the digital marketing solutions, email marketing may be the easiest to try yourself and add to your portfolio of services. Why? Because it does not require the time commitment, expertise, or investment of many of the other services. In addition, it is a natural extension of direct mail marketing and part of cross media or omnichannel marketing.

That does not mean that email marketing is not without its own challenges. It is one of most polarizing forms of marketing which means that people either love it or hate it. Those who love it point to its low cost, effectiveness, personalization, trackability, flexible design, and time savings. Those who hate it talk about spam, blacklisting, government regulations, undelivered emails, file size issues (small), design constraints (multiple devices) and low effectiveness.

Source: Email Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 Report

There are regulations you need to know (CAN-SPAM laws) that talk about getting permissions or how to offer opt ins and opt outs What is most important to know is you don’t want to send from your own email address because you can get blacklisted, so use a service. The leading service providers are: ConstantContact, MailChimp, AWeber, Drip, GetResponse, ConvertKit, and Active Campaign.

Video Services

If offering videos services is not something you’ve considered complementary to your existing services, think about this. In the old days when we wanted to demonstrate our capabilities, we would print a brochure with our equipment and services but today companies make videos. Companies used to write down their standard operating procedures (SOPS)and print them in books and today these are created as video SOPs.

The entry price point for video is becoming more accessible simply due to the quality of the cameras in smartphones, the abundance of free software and the number of students who have experience in editing video. If you’ve never considered offering video services, you should.

According to the Fourth Annual State of the Video Marketing Survey by Wyzowl:

• 81% of businesses will use video as a marketing tool which is up from 63% in 2017
• 65% of those who don’t use video say they plan to in 2018
• 97% of marketers say video has helped users increase understanding of products or services
• 76% say it helps them increase sales
• 76% say it helps increase traffic

Franchise printers such as AlphaGraphics and PIP are talking about video services on their webpages. The Minuteman franchise has posted a press release on how one of their franchises recommends using video. If you’re interested in seeing how printing companies promote their video services, check out the jakprints video channel.

Blogging

Blogging requires a low capital investment such as an investment in a WordPress license but the greatest investment in time, which is a minimum of four hours a week. However, if you enjoy writing and have a lot to say, it is not as much of a burden. If you’re a good writer and tell interesting stories, blogs can drive people to your website, create or reinforce your brand, motivate companies to link to your site, increase your search engine optimization, position you as a thought leader, and generate sales.

If you are considering blogging, here are few keys to good blogs:

• find a conversation voice, as if you are standing face to face with someone
• tell a good story, organize it with an introduction, body, and conclusion
• make it practical or useful – people love when the information is actionable
• keep the story or message up to date, not an old high school story
• spend a lot of time on headlines and keywords – they are critically important for SEO
• find an infographic that you can use to draw attention when you push people using Twitter or LinkedIn
• try to make it a relatively quick read that builds anticipation and momentum
• the key is engaging the audience which requires a “call to action”, such as filling out a form to download the white paper, or emailing a question for a chance to win a gift card

Creating Websites

In the old days, you had to be programmer or a hire a large company to build a web page, but that is no longer the case. Today, if you have the patience to master one of the online do-it-yourself web page building sites, you can build a site.

There are pros and cons to using these website building services.

Pros:

• no coding
• it can be free or inexpensive to build
• you can buy the domain name rights, as well as email and blogging licenses

Cons:

• you must work within their template design constraints
• you may not be able to move your site if you want to leave

The top DIY sites are WIX.com, SiteBuilder, websitebuilder.com, web.com, hibu, sitey, bluehost, startlogic, justhost.com, networksolutions, Sitelio, site123, 1&1, hostgator, and BigCommerce. Of course, it is important to manage customer expectations with these tools because customers will pay a fraction of the cost and only get a fraction of the functionality.

Why Adopt Digital Marketing?

There is overwhelming evidence that traditional/analog products and services are declining while digital and new value-added services are increasing. Companies that do not demonstrate expertise and offer digital and new value-added services are essentially dying a slow death. To avoid a slow and painful death, add digital and new value-added services such as those in this article.

Not sure how to start your digital marketing plan? We cover that in our article “What Printers Need to Know to Create a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy”.