How to Nail Web-to-Print for B2B Customers
According to a new report by NAPCO, roughly 90% of commercial printers with annual revenue over $5M offer customized web portals to their B2B customers. As the pace and scope of commerce have grown quicker and more demanding, organizations are increasingly relying on their solution providers to match their pace.
Web-to-print, and specifically, web-to-print solutions designed for B2B use, are instrumental for printers looking to match the pace of today’s fast-moving marketers and brands.
The side effect of this is that B2B and B2C print markets are starting to look more and more alike in many ways. Thanks to the explosion in adoption rates of web-to-print among printers in the past few years, it is now commonplace for B2C and B2B customers alike to buy print via an online storefront.
This is great news for B2B print and marketing asset buyers because it means they are now finally getting all the massive advantages of convenience, self-service control, transparency, and speed that the average e-commerce shopper has been enjoying for well over a decade.
But it is a mistake to think that just because B2B web portals mimic certain traits of B2C e-commerce, that B2B web-to-print doesn’t have its own unique set of challenges and opportunities.
Let’s take a look at 3 of the key capabilities that distinguish a powerful, B2B-focused web-to-print solution.
Provide Brand Compliance for Corporate Peace of Mind
The ability to offer end users the freedom to personalize marketing assets while maintaining strict brand compliance standards has been growing in popularity.
The marketers of large organizations know the importance of ensuring branded materials have a consistent look, from font type to company colors. This is the key benefit of using a modern web-to-print solution. These brand compliance features can ensure that the products you offer adhere to the exact branding guidelines, for instance by using the correct Pantone colors. All products are organized with a portal where a controlled set of users can design, order, and approve while staying within brand guidelines.
The NAPCO industry report mentioned investigates the prominence of several customized web portal features that printers say are important to their customers. One-third (33%) of surveyed printers report increasing customer demand for the ability to “personalize marketing and communication assets while maintaining brand compliance”. Another 35% say brand compliance has been and remains a common customer demand.
If you want to stand out from the competition in the eyes of large organizations in compliance-heavy industries such as healthcare or finance, ensure you have a solution that can provide strict brand compliance with ease.
Support ALL of the Customer’s Marketing Assets
B2B web-to-print has a tall order to fulfill. You need to be able to offer the centralization of a customer’s complete range of marketing assets. Think about how that compares to other online ordering services. Amazon lets users order almost any product imaginable but their product personalization options are slim to none. Staples offers some limited personalized print, e.g. business cards and posters, but their product line is limited. B2B web-to-print must do it all.
With a powerful B2B web portal as their platform, organization members can very easily acquire the marketing materials they need when they need, from customized variable print materials to branded print-on-demand items, to apparel, promo, digital assets, and more.
It should come as no surprise that NAPCO’s report lists this component of customized web portals as highly important to enterprises and large organizations. From the report: “As organizations’ demand for centralizing marketing assets beyond print, including promotional items, apparel, and digital assets in one online storefront/portal increases, respondents value a web portal’s ability to order and manage all types of customer marketing and communication products, from print to apparel to promotional products to digital assets”
48% of survey respondents call this particular trait of their solution “Highly Important” while another 40% label it as “Moderately Important”. Printers are addressing this growing demand by offering web portals that give the ability to order and manage ALL types of customer marketing and communication products.
Empower the Customer with Robust Reporting & Analytics
Marketers and brands today run on data. Data is king in the modern age of marketing and communications. It follows then that these organizations are going to want their solutions provider to give them access to as much data as possible. As a marketing solutions provider to these tech-savvy businesses, don’t forget that data IS part of the solution you should be providing, not just the assets themselves.
Because of all this, it’s no wonder that, from the NAPCO report on web portals for B2B, 82% of printers who offer web portals agree that robust reporting tools are instrumental in meeting the expectations of large customers.
What can you take away from this? If you want to not just meet but surpass your customers’ expectations, give them as much information and capability as possible on your web-to-print platform. On a site level, make sure navigation is simple and clear. Give users immediate feedback when they place orders with confirmation emails. Whenever possible, lean on the side of self-service functionality. For print jobs, this can look like visibility into inventory levels, shipment options, and lead times.
The big takeaway here is perhaps best summarized by one of the concluding statements found in NAPCO’s web portal industry report: “Commercial printers looking to pursue larger clients, grow share with existing clients, expand product offerings, and build strong customer bonds competitors cannot easily break should consider adding customized web portals or expanding current offerings.”
To capitalize on the opportunities within the ever-growing market of customized web portals for brands and enterprises, it’s important to understand the particular needs and demands of the organizations and brands best suited to these solutions.
Get the full report for free to discover even more insights about the current state of customized web portal technology: Customized Web Portals: New Path to Print Profitability
