This is a great time to do an end-of-year review and start defining your strategy for 2024. This has been a big year full of opportunities to offer creative print marketing ideas (including new products) to your customers, create bundles that link popular products together to add value, and suggest enhancements to typical products like business cards, marketing collateral, and signs.
How Far Have You Come?
As you look back on the year, do a quick self-assessment to see how far you have come!
Embracing New Technology
How would you rate your approach to new products and technologies to grow your business? Print options have come a long way this year. Your 4over team has been promoting their Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) options for unaddressed marketing mail, new flexible styrene formats that are perfect for reception kiosks at events, and the entire Majestic line of business cards to help your customers add texture and shine. If you haven’t been offered these options, add them to your product menu for next year!
Building Bundles
How was your average order value this year? Have you seen it grow by offering print bundles? Have you adopted the process of always offering one more option when a customer places an order? It works for Amazon. It works for McDonald’s. It can work for you.
If you have an active upselling program, keep it going! If you have not begun a proactive sales approach, it’s easy to get started! Bundles can help get the conversation started and on average, do increase the average order value. The team at e-commerce giant Shopify says that bundling increases the perceived value to the customer.
To start, create a few bundles for the customers you serve today. Practice with them, fine-tune them, and then add more options. Your 4over team can help you find the right product to pair from their wide range.
Serving Customers
It is easy to overlook how important customer service is to your business. Every interaction has the potential to cement your relationship or to push you down their list of preferred suppliers. It comes down to how they are treated and how attentive to their questions and concerns you are as a business. Even when customers become friends, the requirement to listen and respond never goes away.
- Have you tested how you deliver customer service to your customers?
- Do you poll them regularly?
- Have you asked the simple question: Would you recommend us?
Talk to your team and your customers to ensure that every order is considered important. How would you grade your business?
How Far Will You Go?
Expanding your business during the upcoming year should include a combination of marketing ideas that help to increase your wallet share with current customers while attracting new ones. Start with your current customers and what they buy. Your customer records should help to identify the top five or ten products purchased, and what is less popular.
- As you review what they buy, what could you offer that would align with those products?
- Is there an opportunity to build a set of bundles that would help them expand their messaging?
- For customers who buy only business cards, what could you cross-sell to create a perfect bundle?
- Would promotional items like hats or notebooks help them to tell their story?
It might be signage that could help, especially wayfinding signs to direct people to their office or shop. Brochures and presentation folders are also popular options.
Promotional product buyers may not be focused on marketing collateral, but if you build a bundle that links them, they could become your next big print buyer. Mugs, cups, and hats paired with business cards and marketing brochures are the perfect option.
And don’t forget, there are always upselling options like upgraded substrates, interesting ink options, and enhancements like foiling and coatings. Offer a roll of stickers or labels! They have millions of uses.
Don’t be afraid to step outside of your core group of customers to find new opportunities. Talk to your 4over team to stay up to date on new products and services to add to your catalog.
