Resources for Printers & Mailers

In the last 2 weeks, I’ve witnessed and spoken with printers who are reporting fantastic results. Here is a summary of what four of them have done.

We've all done it. Summer slowdown arrives, and we join in. But perhaps when you consider the marketing benefits that summertime offers, you may want to reconsider. At the very least, you may want to maintain a steady marketing course and ease back on some of your other efforts.

At the end of the day, it's all about trust. Most often, people will give the job to the company they feel has the greatest amount of competency and then come up with ways to justify not giving it to someone else. The most effective way to influence your brand is to produce content that reflects your expertise. This means content that is better, more relevant and more sophisticated than any of your competitors. Use this content for both inbound and outbound marketing efforts.

Here are some things I would absolutely do. I would make sure that my website was better than any of my competitors. I'd obsess about this, plan quarterly meetings to discuss improvements, and make sure new content was being added at least monthly.

If you haven't already, now is the time to set up a G+ page for your business. It's not just about social media effectiveness it's about SEO. As mentioned in several of my previous articles, SEO represents a great opportunity for print providers to extend their marketing reach and cultivate new business.

Sorting through old files, I recently came across a copy of my January 2004 Marketing Briefs newsletter to printers. I was struck by how different (simpler) things were then. No mention of SEO, social media, content marketing or even email (we launched that in the Spring of 2004). At the same time, I was struck by how much things had not changed. These are the same fundamental ideas that need to be at the core of your marketing strategy today. Planning and commitment to execution have always been the keys to marketing success.