Optimizing Your Print and Digital Communications

In the modern marketing world, companies are looking to effectively leverage both digital and print forms of advertising and optimize them to adequately reach new customers and help the business grow. To accomplish these goals, optimizing the communications can go a long way to improving ROI and making sure that each marketing campaign accomplishes what it set out to do. Here are three things that all companies should keep in mind when they set out to optimize their campaigns.

The audience

The campaign will only be as effective as the people it is able to reach. It is important to know who the ideal customer is and where they can be found. New movers, for example, will probably be best found through direct mail. On the other hand, customers who are planning a wedding might best be found online. Conduct surveys and do research to make sure that there is little mystery about who the customers are and how they can be reached.

Do not neglect the data

Data is critical when running a successful campaign. It is important to monitor each step of the campaign and know exactly how effective it is. If those newspaper advertisements did not bring in any new customers, for example, it would be a waste of resources to run the same campaign. If the direct mail, on the other hand, was enormously successful, then it should be expanded next time around.

Integrate mobile devices

Mobile is critical no matter what type of campaign is being run. Make it easy for customers to find the site and make a purchase by using personalized URLs, QR codes, hashtags, and direct links. The harder it is for customers to find the site, the more likely they will be to abandon the entire endeavor.

Optimizing print and digital communications can help to improve ROI and generate more leads per dollar than before. Keep these three tips in mind and get started planning a marketing campaign for success.

Cross Media Marketing and Your Printing Services

Building your brand as a printing company locally and online is possible with the right marketing campaigns and techniques in place. Understanding how to implement cross media marketing to boost the sales of your printing services is a way to take your business to the next level of success.

Launch an Official Website

Building an official website for printing services that you provide is necessary to captivate a larger audience, whether you are working locally or providing services remotely online. Having a website is not only a way to attract new customers, but it is also essential to build your brand and professional image within the market. Maintaining a modern and accessible website helps to boost professionalism while allowing you to create a reputation for yourself as a reputable provider for printing services.

Develop Your Online Presence

Develop your online presence with official Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts to promote your work and spread your portfolio with social media. Using multiple platforms is a way to quickly boost your reputation while gaining traction and additional followers who are interested in your services.

Offer a Newsletter and a Local Subscription for Followers

When you want to provide local mailing lists as well as online newsletters, offer both options with your official website and when promoting marketing material with social media. Offering potential customers the option of subscribing online or off is a way to quickly increase your subscription list to help generate potential leads and future clients.

Utilizing online and offline marketing methods is a way to reach a wider audience regardless of your target demographic. The more you implement cross media marketing methods, the easier it is to generate leads and gain followers and fans who are genuinely interested in the printing services you have to offer.

 

How Print Marketing Has Changed

Marketing is the lifeblood of any successful company. However, the digital revolution has forever changed the way this is done. Print marketing is one area highly affected by the changes brought forward by the digital revolution. Fortunately, a wise marketer can use these changes to his or her advantage.

But in today’s modern marketing era, a change has come.

In the past, print marketing involved leasing space in newspapers or magazines. These advertisement were effective because so many people read the publications. Today’s e-readers and tablets have all but replaced the newspaper for younger readers, though older citizens still prefer the traditional method. Fortunately, print marketers can contact online publications and advertise there. E-magazines typically target a specific demographic just like traditional publications. However, e-magazine subscriptions are on the rise while traditional publications are struggling to keep an audience. One reason for the decline of traditional publications is their cover price. Since the e-magazine is sent electronically, expenses such as paper and ink don’t affect the price.

Fortunately, most e-mags have reasonable advertising rates and they’re more directly advertised to the target demographic. If a company advertises in LIFE magazine, there’s no telling who’ll see the ad. if the same marketer advertises in Under the Juniper Tree, he or she is far more likely to reach a young adult audience. Someone wanting to reach an older audience should stick to traditional publications as many elderly people prefer the newspaper over the Internet. The people being targeted by the advertising campaign really determine where the ad should be placed. This has always been the case for print marketers, and the digital revolution has provided another avenue to reach new costumers.

 

Generating Sales Leads With Direct Mail Marketing

With all the hoopla surrounding online advertising, many businesses abandon other forms of marketing and pump all of their resources into Internet platforms. This is a big mistake. Despite what those online “gurus” say, print marketing isn’t down for the count. A meticulously planned direct mail campaign can generate leads and have new customers kicking down your door.

Direct mail marketing is so effective because businesses can:

  • target their demographic
  • customize adverts to fit their needs
  • integrate it with other forms of advertising
  • measure results
  • reach people who don’t use the Internet

Marketing campaigns have a better chance of generating leads when they are targeted towards your ideal demographic. Direct mail allows you to zone in on your target market so you can choose where your mailers end up.

Direct mail is versatile in that it can take the form of letters, post cards, coupons, catalogs or brochures. You can customize the color, size and style of the mailers to reflect the message you’re trying to convey to customers. You can even address potential customers by name as a way to capture their attention faster. The best thing about direct mail is that you can reach the 20 percent of the population who don’t have Internet access.

Direct mail is easy to integrate with radio, billboard, television, online and other types of media and print advertising. This helps to boost your lead-generating prowess so you can reach larger audiences. And with direct mail, you can measure your results by tracking how many mailers you send out and how many people respond to your advertisements.

Before you think about scratching direct mail off your list, remember that no matter what’s going on in the virtual world, people still check and sort mail in the real world. This means your direct marketing mailers have a good chance of landing in the hands of people who will purchase your products.

 

Ways To Build Brand Loyalty

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Brand loyalty: for many companies, it’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Customers who are loyal to a brand can ensure the future of that company for years to come. But where does brand loyalty come from, and how does one develop it?

Give Consumers What They Want

It may sound obvious, but an article in Forbes.com recommends that companies who wish to build brand loyalty start by offering relevant, well-made products. Don’t sacrifice quality for a good bottom line. Customers will return for products that last, work harder, perform better or offer value that just can’t be found elsewhere.

Innovate

The world does not stand still, and neither should your company. It’s not enough to develop a single product or service that customers want. Do more. Make more. Develop more. Companies that offer a stagnant product line will eventually lose the interest of their client base.

Develop a Corporate Identity People Like

People like to buy from companies that have attractive corporate identities. There are two ways to build a favorable corporate persona:

  • Give your brand likability. Whether your company’s identity is based on trustworthiness, respectability, ingenuity or overall quality, your corporate goal should always be focused on building that identity. Smart marketing is one part of this equation, but equally important is living up to the name your company builds for itself.
  • Philanthropy. In this day and age of social awareness, consumers like to buy goods from companies that do the right thing.

Listen to Your Customers

It sounds easier than it is: solicit feedback from your customers, and then listen to what they have to say. If you’ve recently released a product or service that your customers are unhappy with, customer feedback will guide your company down the right path. Take action before you lose customers. If your customers are demanding a new product, make it. This type of behavior strengthens the bond between your company and your customers, makes customers more likely to recommend your products, and gives them incentive to return.

Which Social Media Networks Should You Be Focused On?

While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn seems the surefire way to social media networking success, which one REALLY gives your company the highest success rate for your company’s needs?

The print and mailing industry effectively attracts new customers with social media marketing, a strategy that works hand in hand with printed marketing materials.

Companies are not finding that one method is better than the other in fact, according to a study conducted by Pitney Bowes 76% of small businesses reported “both mediums work effectively together enhancing marketing capabilities and social media presence”.

Benefits of Social Media Networking

Using social media marketing allows a company to connect directly, to the target audience, giving an inside advantage to see who is buying and more importantly how to best reach them.

Another benefit is finding out what customers think of your competitors, who consumers prefer and who they do not. Companies learn a lot from this strategy for example:

What consumers are buying and who they are buying from
How consumers value your products, along with competitors
Value and interest in other products-what makes them different, more appealing
Allows companies to plan more effective business strategies
Working Together To Achieve Success

Once a company has this knowledge, using it to effectively attract a target consumer audience becomes easy to reach. By creating a marketing plan tailored to the needs of valued customers, while attracting newbie’s!

While Facebook and Twitter remain the most popular and useful for media marketing, combing the efforts of both social media and print material has proven successful.

If you’re social media site focuses on; a target audience, brand identity and generates calls to action with consumer response, then that is the site to focus on!

Marketing Automation and What It Can Do For You

It is more important than ever before to make your business competitive in any and every way possible. One of the best ways to increase the competitiveness of your company is through cost-effective marketing strategies. One area that has been gaining significant popularity in recent years is “Marketing Automation”.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a blanket term used to describe software and processes that increase the amount of useful data companies have on customers and prospective customers. As the name would suggest, marketing automation is best utilized for processing large swaths of information while identifying data (such as potential customers or specific buying habits) that should be reviewed and analyzed by an actual person. Marketing automation is most commonly used in the sales process as a way to find, sort, and follow up on leads. It is also commonly used to in conjunction with social media platforms to find relevant data, trends, and statistics.

How can I use Marketing Automation in my Business?

There are several marketing automation software companies currently offering solutions to a wide range of companies, from small startups to huge conglomerates. At its core, marketing automation software should help identify which sales leads are most worthy of follow up by a company, and should provide a way to automatically remind those responsible for sales calls when to make such calls, as well as what information to bring with them to the call itself.

Marketing automation software should also integrate into a company’s existing social media platforms. Whether a company uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of the other smaller platforms, marketing automation software should be able to take data analytics from those platforms and condense it into a report that a company can use to make decisions about its marketing strategy.

Customer Service Steps You’re Overlooking

Customer service is about more than just delivering the product while not being rude to the customer. To truly wow the customer and build brand loyalty, you need to create the image that you’re willing to go the extra mile on every transaction. Here are some simple ways to wow your customers and turn them into champions of your brand.

Make how you deal with customers part of your business’s culture. Many people in customer service positions can turn downright rude when things get busy. You don’t necessarily need to create an overly cheery image — many businesses do just fine with a no nonsense approach that creates an image of efficiency. Whatever you decide the culture of your business should be, drill it into your employees so much that they won’t deviate from it even during the most stressful times.
Create the perception that customers are getting something for nothing. 5 Guys Burgers and Fries famously dumps an extra scoop of fries into the to-go bag after filling their standard fries container. Customers think they’re getting something for nothing, but the extra “free” fries are already in the budget. Find something similar you can do in your business.
Get feedback from your customers. Many people who aren’t completely satisfied won’t complain on their way out, but also won’t come back. Ask them how everything was and address any problems before they walk out the door. If the same complaints keep coming up, be sure to retrain your staff or find other ways to fix the problem.

Content Marketing Tips for Retaining an Online Audience

For most business owners, building relationships is a lifetime learning experience. The skills may vary depending on geography, culture, business area and personal preferences; however, a successful result levels the playing field. A strong reputation for consistently achieving a healthy business-client synergy is usually synonymous with a stable revenue and business stability and growth.

Content marketing is an avenue of relationship building that emphasizes each communication delivered online as a step toward converting a prospect to a customer or retaining a client. Fortunately, most people already understand the business-client principles that govern the interaction, but applying them to content marketing is rarely discussed.

Trust

Building trust with a customer is essential and a product or service should be represented accurately by advertising and marketing. Content marketing can have a journalistic, or objective, style that relates facts, figures and statistics that explain a product or services details and compares the profile to a competitor or industry standard, highlighting a unique selling proposition that gives the buyer an advantage. If a content marketing article, blog post or email marketing campaign gives a prospect or customer a clear indication of the outcome of a purchase with evidence to support the claims, no buyers will be misled or disappointed.

Courteous Communication

Courteous and consistent interaction anticipating the needs of the client is also important because it reflects a strong business acumen and gives the potential buyer an opportunity to understand a business’s approach and product or service to fully explore the evaluation stage of the buying process. Content marketing should be released frequently enough to keep the business in the mind of the prospect, which is approximately weekly for an email marketing campaign and once or twice per week for a blog post or article.

Rewards

Rewarding loyalty and continued patronage is an important step for reputation management and client retention and referrals. An email marketing campaign could deliver a promotional offer, complimentary follow-up consultation or other type of bonus to a loyal customer, which simultaneously promotes retention and closes the circle of trust.

What do Unsubscribes Mean?

In this digital world we live in, it is important to have the option to unsubscribe from different things online. This is why you should know what this means as well as how it will work. It will help you to improve your experience when using the Internet.

What Does Unsubscribe Actually Mean?

Essentially, the meaning of unsubscribing is opting out of information from someone. This could be a person on Facebook or a company that keeps sending you annoying junk mail. This is why if you find that you are seeing things that are frustrating or offensive, save yourself the time and annoyance and simply unsubscribe. You will no longer have to see the information which will make things easier on you.

How to Unsubscribe?

A common misconception people have with emails is that companies will continue to send them junk mail, even if they no longer want it. Companies are actually required to have an opt out feature where people can unsubscribe from future mailings. If you take the time to look at an email, you will see this feature somewhere. Often, you will have to look at the bottom of the email to find it in small print. Just click and follow the instructions.

When using sites, such as Facebook you will need to use their procedures for unsubscribing. Looking at the help feature on the website is a good way to find it. Otherwise, you can always contact support.

It is also important to note with this that the procedures for unsubscribing are different with each company. Some may take you off their list for future mailings immediately and others may take several days to do this. You will want to read the message that comes up after completing the unsubscribe so that you will know when the messages will stop showing up.