4 Ways Printers Can Maximize Their Digital Marketing Strategy
Every competitive business needs a solid digital marketing plan. Printers are no exception. Though the rumors of print’s death have been grossly exaggerated, the doors opened by digital communication cannot be closed. The internet has revolutionized how companies reach customers.
Printers who want to remain relevant and ride the wave of industry change must learn to tame the beast that is digital marketing.
So, how does a printer make the most of modern digital tools? There’s no one answer, but we can look at a few tried and true channels and methods.
Showcase Your Successes
There’s a saying in writing “show, don’t tell.” This is a principle that works equally well in the print industry when it comes to attracting new clients. Sending out direct mail campaigns that show off your flashiest capabilities, that’s a prime example of showing, not telling.
There are many ways to apply this principle to digital marketing. One of the simplest and most effective is creating case studies. Case studies make for powerful marketing collateral that can be used and reused in paid search campaigns, email marketing, as lead magnets on your website, on social media, etc.
The best case studies strike a balance between telling a story and providing evidence with data. The more compelling data you can include, the better. Marketers are easily swayed by arguments that revolve around ROI. The steps to achieve this can look something like this.
Step 1: Identify a customer of yours that has had a project that exemplifies your best qualities as a print provider.
Step 2: Break that project down into “story” components. What problem were they trying to solve? How did you help? What were the results?
Step 3: Collect data and examples from that project that illustrate the main points.
Step 4: Compile the story of the project, the results, and the supporting data into an easy to digest format. This can be anything from a web page to a PDF to an infographic. To see an example, see check out Propago’s case studies.
Once you’ve got your collateral, it’s simply a matter of applying it to various marketing channels to see what gets you results. Let’s dive into one of those channels now.
Play the Paid Search Game (This Helps Local Too)
Paid search programs like Google Ads and Bing Ads are the bread and butter of digital marketing. It’s where the most eyeballs are seeing ads relevant to what they want to find. It’s also where the most competition is.
But don’t let that scare you. Paid search might seem intimidating at first, but once you get it set up, the work is mostly a matter of optimizing and making minor changes to ads and bids.
Even though paid search is used to reach people all over the globe, don’t underestimate its usefulness for winning local business. Think about how people use search engines to find what they’re looking. If someone needs an oil change, they’re going to type “oil change near me” or “oil change [city name]” into Google. Likewise, if someone is researching their options for print services, they’re going to do the same thing. And local keywords are much, much easier to compete for than their generic counterparts.
Social Media Presence
When it comes to social media, marketing becomes more passive, compared to paid search. Social media is a more often an inbound tool than an outbound one. By creating an active social media presence, you increase your chances to be noticed by the right people.
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are great places to show off some of your successful campaigns, connect with other people in your industry, and promote your newest capabilities and tools. Do enough of this on a regular basis and you’d be surprised how often it can serendipitously lead someone to contact you out of the blue.
Social media is a great way to keep in contact with current and past customers as well. There more ways you have to stay on the screens and in the minds of past customers, the greater the chance of repeat business becomes.
Dive deeper on social media best practices in our post Using Social Media to Connect with Print Buyers.
Simplifying SEO
SEO for print service providers is a big topic and it might be the focus of its own blog post down the line. But, for now, let’s touch on the big things to know.
- SEO is how your website ends up in front of potential customers when they’re searching for a printer online.
- Like paid search programs like Google Ads, SEO is a highly competitive arena.
- There are no magic tools or methods for getting your site to the top of Google results.
- In fact, in recent years, Google has increased the complexity of their algorithms and put into place rules that penalize websites that attempt SEO “cheats” like keyword stuffing.
So, where do you start with SEO? It starts with content. You need to make sure your website is filled out with solid copy that describes what you do. Consider a blog as well. Google likes consistent, high-quality content. That can be a tall order, but it’s a habit worth building.
For keywords, just like with pay per click programs, local keywords are highly effective. They’re easier to rank for and will get you in front of the right prospects.
The other main aspect to consider with SEO are links. The first step in ensuring your website is optimized is to make sure every page is linked to. If not, Google’s bots are going to have trouble even finding all your content. Cultivating backlinks from reputable sites is the next step.
This is just scratching the surface but it should give you an idea of what to start working towards when building a print service digital marketing strategy. It’s not something that happens overnight but rather a collection of channels and tools that you build upon and test through trial and error.
