Have you revisited your marketing strategy lately?

Over the past few weeks on this blog, we’ve been focusing on different ways printers can use some of the extra time they may have due to the COVID-19 economic slowdown. The idea behind this series is that there is value in taking a little time when business is slow to revisit business strategies, plan for the future, and set yourself up to thrive when business picks up again.

We’ve discussed Prospecting Print Sales While Working Remotely and Planning for Re-Opening Marketing Needs. In this blog post, we are tackling marketing strategies. Specifically, how can you use this time to take a critical eye to your current marketing strategies and start thinking about how those strategies might evolve?

For many printers, marketing strategy isn’t high on the totem pole of priorities. But the value of a well-thought-out marketing strategy for bringing in new business shouldn’t be dismissed. So, how can you better market your solutions and cast a wider net?

Stay In Touch and Stay Visible

Many businesses right now are juggling two seemingly opposite goals: focusing on the here and now to ensure that their business stays afloat and planning for growth once business picks up again. Because no one is selling as much as usual, the main vector of competition has switched to the attention economy. That’s the reason your inbox may be consistently filled to the brim with marketing emails from every business you’ve ever frequented even though commerce has slowed down.

The name of the game is staying visible. So, now is the time to kick your normal messaging output up a notch. Take stock of how you typically communicate with your current and prospective clients, how often, and through what mediums. If you’ve only put resources into one medium or haven’t experimented with different cadences, now’s the time to explore. Here are a few marketing channels that can be particularly effective for print providers:

• Paid Search: Running ads on auction-based systems like Google Ads and Bing Ads can seem intimidating if you’ve never dipped your toe in before. But once you get a few ads up and running, you’ll find that it can be a great way to passively pull in a steady stream of people who are looking for exactly what you’ve got to offer. And most of these systems allow for geographical targeting, so you can put them to good use whether you’re looking for more prospects locally, regionally, or nationally.

• Direct Mail: One of the most effective ways for printers to stay in touch with their current and past customers is direct mail. It’s a no-brainer way to show, not tell, people what you can do for them. Pull out all the stops and create an eye-catching direct mail campaign that reminds past customers why you’ve won their business before.

• Magazines, Websites, Wherever Your Clients Are: Every market has its own circuit of popular trade magazines, industry news sites, and email newsletters. Figure where your prospective clients are getting news, tips, and commentary about their industry and see if there’s an opportunity to enact a marketing campaign in those places. For those who serve a lot of local businesses, this could mean looking into advertising opportunities with your local business-related newspapers. For those in industries like healthcare and finance, there is no shortage of active industry-news websites and trade magazines out there.

Sharing Over Selling

One of the more profound effects of this time we’re living in is that people and companies have stepped up to the challenge of being more helpful, more proactive, and more collaborative. That’s why so much of the messaging from local and global companies right now is taking a tone that strikes a delicate balance between supportive and self-promotional.

As you start to reshape your marketing messaging, think about how to give as much value as possible to your prospective customers before asking for anything in return. How can your digital press be used to make a difference for your prospective clients in this current environment?

Communicate your message with a focus on informing, rather than selling.

Revisiting Your Marketing Core Message

The real advantage of having this time to slow down and revisit your marketing strategy is to think big picture about what kind of message you want to send. What do you want people to remember about your company? What’s your mission statement and how can you communicate that in everything you do and say?

These questions are more important than marketing channels or methods you decide on. Those factors are vital, of course, but the foundation of your marketing strategy is what you’re trying to say, not how you’re going to say it.