Branding your business is the only way you’re going to grow
your customer base. Over the years, marketing focus has shifted toward online
marketing, leaving direct marketing in the dust. Yet there are still sales to
be made. According to marketingdonut.co.uk,
“the most common response rate is between 1% and 3%…” That list will go up with
warmer prospects.
Here’s the kicker
though: Your existing customers are the hottest
leads you will ever have for any marketing campaign you ever do. Yet, they’re
possibly the most neglected because your sales team are too busy chasing new
leads, without nurturing the relationships you already have.
A multifunctional printer used with just a little out the
box creativity can create hypnotic results. To give you the best possible
advantage to boost brand awareness, we’ve a few stunning stunts to ensure your
MFP can pull off exponential growth for your business.
Feast your eyes on these 5 ideas and give each some serious thought
1) Colour brochures
Outsourcing colour brochures can be downright expensive.
Considering that most print companies have minimum order quantities, you would
need a sizeable mailing list and a formidable budget to print and reach each
person.
Before nodding in disagreement thinking you can save print
costs by printing black and white; you’d have better luck advertising in the
local press.
People enjoy, crave
even, and expect colour because it tugs on their emotions. Red strikes the
stimulation nerve with its visual impact, while blue evokes a sense of trust.
For those of you who don’t have graphic designers in-house,
here’s an interesting
read about the psychological properties of colour.
Knowing more about colour, you’ll be better prepared for
this next one…
2) Compliment slips
The majority of businesses in both B2B and B2C sectors know
the importance of compliment slips. (Shame
the public sector doesn’t use these) They are the only piece of printed
paper that allows you to personalise marketing material and “with compliments”
provide your customers with a direct point of contact. The typical size is
around 10 x 21 cm, so you can get three compliment slips per A4 sheet.
To get full mileage from them, keep in mind these few
things:
a)
Make your logo prominent (in colour too) at the top
b)
Include your business details to the bottom of
the slip, contact information and the services, or product range you specialise
in
c)
If you plan to (and you should if you can) personalise the slip further with a
handwritten note of gratitude, then leave plenty of white space for writing.
Besides, you’ll save on ink/toner costs too!
The only thing to be careful of is type fonts. If the font you use to design your material is not installed on the printer, it won’t print what you think it will. The font you use in the design needs to be installed on the print driver. Not all fonts are supported by all colour copiers.
Speaking of fonts, environmentally friendly fonts “could
reduce your toner usage by as much as 50%…”
That’s #4 on this list of tips
to make your Laser toner last longer.
3) Branded Return Address Labels or Envelopes
Every item you mail out is an opportunity to impress.
Chances are you’re underutilising what your printer can do and that’s to
customise your envelopes to help your business stand out. For a small business,
printing labels or even adding a branded return address label on the reverse of
your envelopes can be enough.
For larger businesses though, you’ll find it far too time
consuming to have your administration department peel and stick labels to
thousands of envelopes. The time investment alone would butcher your
operational costs. Just as franking
machines save time and cost by printing pre-paid postage to your envelopes,
MFPs save time and money by printing directly to the envelope and you can brand
it too.
Use the black ink for type text and jazz it up with your
colour logo. You can add it to your labels or direct to your envelopes,
depending on your mail volume.
You only need a quality printer with a feeder tray supporting envelope sizes, and duplex if you want to print your return address on the reverse as well.
If you are still printing on labels and it’s only due to a
lack of know-how to print to envelopes, this
guide from Microsoft should walk you through what to do. It is a long one
so for others who know how to use mail merge and data entry for mailing lists,
but don’t quite grasp customising the envelope with a company logo, chron.com
has a distilled version to do that here.
4) Stationery
Don’t knock this idea on the basis that you can’t print
pens. Stationery covers a host of things, and some you may be paying for when
you could have all the tech you need to produce some of your own stationery
right onsite.
- Do you order custom letterheads?
There’s no need! You may even find you can invest in a higher-grade
paper, better finish, and still look back counting savings. With printer
services ranging around the 10p per copy range, the likelihood is that you’re
overspending. You don’t even need a top of the line colour copier to produce
decent looking letterheads. Considering the advanced technology MFPs have;
letterhead printing is stupendously basic in comparison.
- Do you use note pads and/or desk pads?
Have you ever walked into someone’s office and noticed the
paper neatly presented on the desk? Large branded desk pads, fully loaded with
a the entire year’s calendar down one side, the other with the week’s schedule,
and the middle used for scribbling notes down from telephone calls? Or maybe
you thought it was professional looking until you noticed they’d been doodling
stick men while they were on the phone. The point is that it is branded. It
sticks out, and you can’t fail to miss the desk pad. Nor will you fail to
notice the branded note pad being used during meetings.
The right printer is all you need to bring these print
possibilities in-house. To be more specific about the type of printer feature
you need for these types of jobs, it needs to bind the pages together somehow.
How is binding done?
Either by long or short edge binding, centre binding, or by saddle-stitching.
Check out thefinishing solutions of the Kyocera KM8030 photocopier to get an idea of how
powerful binding is for business printing. If you’re in the London area, why
not book a demo to see it in action.
- Are you still ordering business and appointment cards?
You can kill two birds with the one stone on this one.
Business and appointment cards. No business should ever run out of business
cards. It’s like an unspoken rule of business. You just don’t do it because
anyone meeting for business purposes expects to be handed a business card.
People attend seminars, live training workshops, networking events etc. and if they aren’t handed a business card they’ll be stumped and left pondering if they said something wrong.
Business cards warm people to you, and appointment cards are
(or should be) the follow up. That is
unless you’re a dentist or optician, in which case you should be going through
a lot more appointment cards than you do business cards. Nevertheless, the one
printer can take care of both. Just don’t get them mixed up when you’re networking.
5) Direct Mail Marketing (the smart way)
There’s a lot to be said about direct mail marketing, but
many businesses just don’t seem to get it. Do you need to buy cold or warm
data? It might even feel like playing the postcode lottery. Blast the lot or
what? Not to mention split testing to refine the campaigns for future marketing
performance.
Like most forms of advertising, it gets complicated fast
because it’s overanalysed. You only have to look to your Facebook analytics, Twitter
analytics, or web analytics to find yourself immersed in data overload for
hours, or even days.
There is an easier way. Instead of marketing, try using your
printer to communicate with people rather
than solely computers on the network. Use it to produce monthly newsletters to
communicate with your customers. Crazy
what these machines can do, eh? Perhaps you already have a mailing list for
which you send a weekly email newsletter, maybe even frequent updates via
social media or even blogging.
Your existing customers are your hottest prospects and your
biggest spenders. They deserve the best from you and that includes giving them
space to enjoy some down time, without being hard sold. There is no need to
hard sell warm prospects and existing customers. The trust is already
established or else they wouldn’t be permitting marketing communications.
Whatever your industry, back your expertise up by providing
top of the line information to your customers. It doesn’t have to come directly
from your company. There’s this thing called other people’s content, or OCP for
short. You know, like what you’re reading here. Think for a minute if someone
in your professional network is actively investing in advertising online or
offline. Do you think they would say thanks for the share? If they’re spending on any of the areas
outlined above, it’s safe to say they’d thank you for letting them know about
what may be hidden features their MFP has that could benefit them.
The same goes for your customers. Shift your focus from trying to outsmart your biggest competitors and start competing for your customers’ attention.
Offer them value. Engage with them on social channels. Poll them occasionally to find out how your company is doing. Deliver the survey results in your next newsletter. Update your website regularly and repurpose the content into a monthly printed publication, because not all your emails will be left for reading later. You have a far higher chance your tangible newsletter will. People can read that on the train to work, on their lunch break, stuck in traffic, or nighttime reading.
The newsletter gives your audience the convenience of
choosing when they hear from you.
In conclusion
Multifunctional printers can:
1.
Print colour brochures and bind them
2.
Print professional quality compliment slips to
further personalise your business
3.
Brand all outgoing envelopes with your company
logo, return address, and mailing address. Or for smaller print volumes, brand
address labels with your company logo
4.
Print your office note pads...
Desk pads
Business cards
Appointment cards
5.
And to peak brand awareness and grow your
business - you could print your own monthly newsletter.
If you’re currently paying for any of those services,
perhaps it’s time to assess your print requirements, volume, environment, and
cost. The savings could be significant if you only put your MFP to better use.
If your current MFP(s) doesn’t have the functionality to
perform any of the duties needed in the ideas above, speak to a member of our team,
because there’s likely a lot more that you could do to cut print costs asides
from what’s listed here.
What ways are you using your MFP to help business growth?
No comments:
Post a Comment