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Building your presence

22 September 2019 Stuart Nimmo Customer Engagement, Marketing planning, Print Marketing, Print tools No Comments

Turning prospects to customers is the art of marketing. Understanding the needs, wants, desires of your potential customers is the key to harnessing the right results. Print is one of the under-spoken about tools in the marketing toolkit, so let us unpack it a bit more.

Ask any marketer about the customer journey, and you’ll get a wealth of knowledge and they will all agree on the vast number of touchpoints it takes to influence a customer to say yes.

A useful premise to remember is marketing is educating your customer about your “Product”. Ask any educator about how people learn and they will tell you about Visual Auditory and Kinaesthetic learning styles. Everyone one is different, to how they learn and what they respond to. This does mean that any marketing strategy needs multiple touchpoints of different content medias which engage with potential customers.

Of course, the relevance of this is essential. Knowing and understanding your customers is key. A useful place to start is by creating a pen portrait or profile, think about; age, background, family/home life, work/income, social circles, any other relevant factors.

Touchpoints:

Websites – yes you’re reading this blog.
Social media – we can guess a social platform directed you to this link.
YouTube
Events /tasters/roadshow stalls (face to face) – ensure your audience go away with the right physical call for action, from sign up cards, flyers or something more substantial like a brochure.
If B2B, then business networking can also help you build trust with your potential customers too. See our blog on getting you remembered
Partner promotion – cross-marketing can be very powerful when the right partners are identified and a mutual win-win is achieved.
Print advertising, can be very effective when placed in the right publications and combined with editorial material to back up the advertisement content.
Direct mail – let your creativity run here, the objective is to create an item which will engage for the greatest amount of time, which has total relevance to the recipient. See our blog on Direct Mail
Poster or banner placement, this is the drip feed to the conscious. Again creativity is key, challenge people to look twice, use wordplay to excite the reader. Think about placements in more unusual places to catch people’s eyes.

It’s worth looking at the retention of information span of any touchpoint used within a marketing strategy. Digital communications tend to be more “instant” of the minute whilst print is renown for having a longer user engagement lifespan. The impact and the potential cost and the resulting in a return on investment. Assessing these factors should drive the priorities within your marketing plan, or the mix you use to drive your audience to engage more with your business or product.

Revisiting the customer pen portrait will also provide key indicators towards the tone of voice (language) of your communications, along with a visual style which they will respond to. This will also form part of your brand proposition and identity. If you need further assistance on building this further we can direct you to relevant specialists.

Word of caution, critical friends are essential at this point, getting individuals who understand your product/business to review you customer pen portrait, quiz your understanding of their habits, will significantly aid you in getting this right. Equally asking key allies to review independently or ask questions blind which will help you confirm these essential marketing points.

So how does print engage with this, we are experienced in supporting small businesses, ensure that your products visual identity matches and works with your audience. We’ve got substantive experience in tailoring promotional materials to fit your budget and ultimately your price point. We have loads of tools for promotional print, from the obvious to the more subtle for brand awareness. Print is a tool that can drive traffic to your other communication channels to improve the customer journey for your potential customers. Along with solutions to help you sign and brand your “place” to ensure maximum visibility.

Whilst as a printer, we’ll happily guide, support and ask questions to ensure your marketing buck, is getting you the best bang, we don’t do marketing strategy or other media. We’re fortunate to know many professionals who can help you. These professionals are the full source professionals who work across different media to maximise the impact and delivery of your marketing messages.

Marketing basics…

12 September 2019 Stuart Nimmo Customer Support, Marketing, Print, Small business No Comments

It’s often underestimated, the knowledge that us printers have of marketing. We’ve been a significant part of the marketing toolbox for many years. Equally, we’re not a dead marketing method, like some would proclaim, just a time-served tool in the chest of marketing concepts.

I’m privileged to meet many business people, whether walking in through the door, or at business networking events. One of the things that does stand out, is how much tunnel vision startups are to their marketing strategies. Siting cost as the driver, it seems even the smallest of tangible tools can be overlooked, stating social or digital works due to it being cheap or free. Which makes for an interesting return on investment, as something for nowt doesn’t always ring true. All businesses rely on the need for growth, growth isn’t an easy win, it takes dedication, inspiration, and investment of all resources.

At the start of my career and even during my vocational education, the basics of marketing were drummed into us. Understanding your customer is key, having a “pen portrait” of who what where is essential, it then drives the following 4 P’s

Product – The first of the Four Ps of marketing is “product”. A product can be either a tangible product or an intangible service that fulfills a need or want of consumers. Whether you sell coffee or provide beauty treatments, you must have a clear grasp of exactly what your product is and what makes it unique before you can successfully market it. The pitch, tone of voice, visual identity should reflect the ideal customer and make it a potential part of their mix.

Price – Once a solid understanding of the product offering is established, making some pricing decisions is the next critical step. Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand, and marketing strategy. Similar (in concept) products and brands need to be positioned differently based on varying price points, while price elasticity considerations may influence our next two Ps. Geographical implications also play critically on this.

Promotion – We’ve got a product and a price now it’s time to promote it. Promotion looks at the many ways to spread the word on the relevant product information to customers and differentiate your particular product or service. Promotion includes advertising, public relations, events and taster sessions, face to face networking, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more. Methods of engagement are critical here. If you’re looking for a faster conversion, the tools and techniques used will change. The adage people like people, like themselves, always improves the conversion rate, due to if they like or do it, then I should. Face to face engagement should always be supported by relevant collateral to support the engagement. Each touchpoint on a customer journey will build the future potential to buy.

Place – Professional marketers will often say that marketing is about putting the right product, at the right price, at the right place, at the right time. It’s critical then, to evaluate the ideal physical locations are to convert potential clients into actual clients. Today, even in situations where the actual transaction doesn’t happen on the web, the start of a sales journey has many points of contact including web, referrals and many more before potential customers are engaged and converted to a sale.

So how does print engage with this, we are experienced in supporting small businesses, ensure that your products visual identity matches and works with your audience. We’ve got substantive experience in tailoring promotional materials to fit your budget and ultimately your price point. We have more tools on our promotional print chest than you think. From the obvious to the more subtle for brand awareness. Print is a tool that can drive traffic to your other communication channels to improve the customer journey for your potential customers. Along with solutions to help you sign and brand your “place” to ensure maximum visibility.

It’s your choice…

5 May 2019 Stuart Nimmo Environmental No Comments

It’s your choice…

It’s your responsibility…

It’s your world.

We are acutely aware of the resources we use within our processes. We endeavour to offer credible options to deliver eco-friendly solutions wherever we can. However, it’s down to you, to what you want. You make the decision.

Paper… we have a wide range of papers, with different accreditations for sustainability. We can help you learn more about the different grades of sustainability within paper production. Ask us and we can carbon offset your paper by planting additional trees.

Ink, we have options for printing with Soy-based inks, it’s a different process with a different result, but design for the process and you can still achieve great results.

In a world where we are obsessed with laminated finishes on business cards, do you need it, how often, once you’ve got back to your office desk, do you file them in a box or index, and then it’s done? Do you need it? One true case study, we were challenged by a pub-restaurant to find a better solution to their menus where the laminate was peeling off, we specified a polyester material which we could directly print on, which it’s matt characteristics matched the current matt laminate. Interestingly they now have fewer re-prints in a year, their menus have stayed more presentable for longer, plus they can be recycled straight into plastic (unlike a laminate which is like your Tetrapak, which is currently unsupported in most recycling facilities). So a win-win solution.

Garment printing, we have a choice between different transfer print methods, which either sit a vinyl/plastisol on top of the fabric, or sublimation which fuses a dye into the fabric. The offering of water-based inks might be another option which can increase the eco credentials. You can choose a fabric with different eco properties, however, do your research, is it what you expect. (One of our team has done a bit of research into this). The garment printing sector is currently seeing a vast evolution of options to enhance the eco-credentials within the sector.

Posters and banners, again the choice is yours, looking at the technology you use, the banner cases, the mechanisms, can be key to the sustainability. Are you better-having something with inter-changeable graphic skins? We use a latex ink, where some of our competitors might use a solvent based ink to print the graphic.

We also have a policy to prolonging the lifespan of production equipment, minimising the initial carbon impact of these pieces of equipment in there manufacturing.

It’s also worth remembering that print-based marketing has a smaller carbon footprint than digital marketing since carbon emissions are only produced once during the creation of the product. Meanwhile, carbon emissions occur every time someone uses a digital device.

Ultimately, asking about the anticipated lifespan of your product is the key. If it is short term, then thinking about the options might be wise. The world we live in is changing so much, the younger generations are keen to see accountability towards sustainability. Can you afford to ignore their value sets, especially if they are a key to growing your business or organisation?