Moving your marketing activity online can be one of the most powerful steps you’ll take, and trade printers are leading the way, reports Helen Dugdale
For many SMEs, the world of digital marketing can still seem like uncharted waters. Even the mere mention of ‘SEO’ can send sales or management into a frenzy. Sarah Knight from Mash Communications, who offers training in digital marketing and content creation, suggests those just stepping into digital should first take time to understand it.
‘People think it’s a big scary animal, it’s not. It’s effectively just the same as any other form of marketing. It’s just a way to find your audience and on different devices. For a B2B audience, businesses need to ask themselves ‘What does our website look like, is it fit for purpose?’; ‘Does it give the right information for the right audience?’ Then they need to look at their audience and find out where they are and look at the relevant platforms to reach them,’ she advises.
Like any form of marketing, it’s about trial and error, as Emma Thompson, group marketing manager at Precision Printing and online brand Where The Trade Buys, has found. ‘It’s so easy these days for digital marketing to be ignored purely as we often get bombarded with emails that just clog our inboxes. That’s why you need to understand your audience and give them the content that’s relevant to them,’ she suggests, adding, ‘content marketing works well for us, as we are providing useful information for our resellers to repurpose’.
For Dave Scott, deputy managing director at Cheshirebased Chapel Press, the market is changing, and digital marketing is now more important than ever: ‘The way we go after clients, the way we communicate with them has all changed. You can’t stick to the old ways. There is a place for digital marketing alongside traditional marketing and they work best together. In a changing market, if we were to ignore digital marketing, we’d potentially be ignoring a whole load of clients,’ he confirms.
For trade printers Flexpress, based in Leicester, marketing via digital channels has enabled substantial growth that can easily be tracked, as managing director Steve Wenlock explains: ‘Flexpress is growing at around 20% per year and all of the growth is coming through our website. In addition to raising awareness, digital marketing allows us to exploit the benefits of webto- print, such as self-service estimating, ordering and automation.’
Rave reviews
Rotherham-based Route 1 Print claims to be the ‘largest online trade printer in the UK’. It also seems to have mastered the secret of digital marketing. The website is well-stocked with engaging content and with a live feed of glowing reviews straight from Trustpilot applauding ‘great service,’ ‘fast delivery’ and ‘outstanding quality’. Christie Round, marketing team leader, reveals why online marketing works so well for Route 1: ‘Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to communicate with prospects and clients on a platform they prefer or like to use. It speaks to prospects at their level, but also allows you to have a two-way conversation that isn’t as simple in an offline strategy.’
As Sarah Knight continues, digital communications are about the story and working out what you’re trying to say and how you’re trying to say it. ‘The challenge is that it’s a crowded market, so you have to find something that only you can own and talk about all the time. Then you take that online. It’s just telling the ‘who you are, what you are and why you do it’, on different channels.’
It’s not magic
Focusing your marketing on online isn’t just about writing some social media posts, cobbling together a video or going crazy with the keywords. Digital marketing requires a strategy and the capital to invest in it to do it properly.
For the team at Chapel Press, embracing digital marketing also meant a new website and looking at the firm’s whole marketing proposition. ‘This is just the beginning for us. There is an awareness now that things have to be multichannel. When we say ‘trackable’ for us that means when we add in social media, we get a better response. We’re good at print marketing, which we can turn around quickly, but when we add in social media, we hear back from clients who mention where they saw it; generally with print it’s only the person you dropped the pack off to that gives you a response,’ notes Mr Scott.
What often happens in SMEs is the marketing budget is minimal and they’ll pay for a little of something, instead of looking at the bigger picture,’ comments Ms Knight. ‘Businesses need to look at what they want to achieve in the next year, and the next six months, this is how they’re going to get there. Because no matter what anyone says, there is very little digital that provides a quick win.’
Ms Thompson from Precision says that anyone who thinks the sole use of organic traffic to their website is going to convert to sales is hugely mistaken. ‘Digital marketing for Where the Trade Buys is key to the business and should be for everyone in the print industry; how else do you get traffic to your site and get to know who your online audience is? Print is evolving, so understanding your target audience, and being able to create content that ranks highly that suits them, is crucial.’
Route 1 Print uses a variety of online marketing methods, including email and Google Ads. Ms Round offers reassuring advice that digital marketing can be ideal if a business is testing the water with a small budget and is looking for a traceable return. ‘We find that digital can be low-cost to fit any budget as well as letting you collect data to better understand customer behaviour and what they are looking for. Week on week we see a strong ROI from digital channels. In marketing, it is well known that email will provide a strong ROI, but it also has benefits for brand awareness. Emails keep your brand visible at a point which is at the customer’s convenience.’
Social media – yes or no?
As Ms Thompson explains, social media for trade print suppliers has always been and will continue to be a difficult area to exploit. ‘You need to remember the majority of our customers are resellers, the last thing our customers want is their customers wondering why they are following us. This doesn’t stop us from having a presence on social media, but I would not say social media is the main drive behind traffic being steered towards Where The Trade Buys. We’ve recently been working on content for a YouTube site, and we have a fleet of ‘How To’ tutorial videos which appear to be doing some good work for us.’
Just because it seems everyone else is posting to every platform doesn’t mean that you should. It all comes down to the audience you’re trying to reach, as Chapel Press learned. ‘We found that Facebook wasn’t for us, so we use LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. We need to improve on how we use them. We’ve just bought a photo booth so we can take more photos of work and build a better presence on Instagram. We have a new press and we’ve created a time-lapse video of it being installed, so when it’s finished, we’ll share it on Instagram and Twitter,’ says Mr Scott.
SEO – the Emperor’s new clothes?
The three letters that marketers are constantly bandying around, SEO, stand for search engine optimisation. It seems everyone has their own take on why is important. ‘SEO creates awareness which is hugely important but only part of the story. When prospects visit your website, they’ll use it to evaluate you against your competitors, often on price. As we’re not generally the cheapest, we use a series of approaches, including printed samples, that helps the client to evaluate us and work out how we may be able to best serve some of their needs. SEO on its own won’t win business,’ says Steve Wenlock.
‘SEO is fundamentally all about three things: attract, engage and convert. You can have the best products, the best-looking website but without SEO in the background, you don’t have much at all. SEO has allowed us to understand how our customers search and the keywords they use to locate products or services of interest. We get to see what interests them and in return, we hopefully get to reap the benefits of the conversion,’ shared Ms Thompson about her experience at Where The Trade Buys.
‘It’s about optimising your story and amplifying what you say. It’s about making sure that your story is preferable to Google more than anyone else’s. You do that by other people telling your story on your behalf through third-party endorsements. You want people to find your story and you want to fuel that story. It’s about what people type in to find your service. Think about it like this, people type in ‘I need someone who can print a 12-page student newsletter by Thursday’. This is a ‘long tail’ search and you need to answer those questions in your content on the website. So, you’re answering the problems that people are asking [about] and that’s your search strategy right there,’ concludes Sarah Knight.
