Getting new customers is a challenge for every business—even more so in printing where the demand tends to be driven more by the customer than the provider. It’s hard to entice customers to buy printing products they’re not looking for, or to purchase printing when they don’t have a need for it.
That being said, we have five marketing ideas for printers looking to expand their client base and offering.
1. Go old school
After two years of people spending a lot of time at home and ordering products online, we’re seeing a return to socializing and shopping in public at the same time. Take advantage of this trend by offering your customers print products that focus on the IRL (in real life) experiences.
If you’re already offering business cards, a simple marketing idea for a printing company would be to introduce paper loyalty cards, coupons, appointment reminders, save-the-date cards, and even thank you cards. Some of these ideas have gone somewhat out of fashion over the last few years with many providers switching to digital versions, but there’s nothing like having a physical card.
To make it more enticing you could offer a package deal where you offer, say, loyalty cards and a number of stamps as an easy “getting started with loyalty cards” pack. The upside is that you can reuse your current processes, cardstock, and layouts since these cards and business cards tend to be the same size.
2. Focus on home shoppers
You could also take the opposite approach. With a large proportion of us still working from home (at least partially) you could start offering products that particularly target your customers’ at-home customers. One of the best marketing trends for print resellers to target is promotional flyers for hyper-local food or grocery delivery services.
You might say that you already offer flyers, but the key here is offering flyers that can have different discount codes applied to the same design, in effect producing printable flyers or printing on-demand in low volumes.
The low volumes are key here, as these businesses, especially the local grocery delivery services, tend to operate on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood expansion strategy so would ideally want to place orders for a few hundred, as opposed to a few thousand fliers—usually offering a geo-fenced new customer promotion.
3. The return of large events
If you’re asking yourself how to get customers for your printing business, tapping into the lucrative and re-emerging live conference and meetup world is a good idea. These events tend to be large and attract both a lot of exhibitors and visitors and therefore require a lot of promo materials.
If you’re in a larger city that might host a lot of these events, it would be a good idea to do some targeted online ads promoting your flyers, posters, or other promotional materials. Chances are large exhibitors will have established suppliers that will ship directly to their venue but smaller companies might prefer to get their printing done locally to avoid shipping costs and potential delays for large distances.
If you’re not in a large city but would still like to break into the conference and events space, consider what your customers’ needs are. These tend to be quick turnarounds efficiency, good value, and guaranteed delivery shipping.
While you, of course, have to keep the quality of your printing up to standard, these events are expensive for companies to run or attend, so having the materials get there on time is much more important than having them be exceptionally well printed, but a day late.
Also, with conferences and events not really being a thing for the past two years, there is a lot of pent-up demand waiting to be served.
4. Experiment with new cross-selling strategies
It’s always good to experiment with cross-selling strategies for your printing. A good marketing idea for printers is to try offering printing on something they’ve not printed before—if you do mugs, try glasses or if you do t-shirts, try hats, etc.
You can also apply this to your paper printing. Try new stock, finish, or embellishment. Just like fashion trends change, so do printing trends. You’ll always have your classics like standard flat flyers and folded brochures, but have you tried offering square flyers or business cards—how about upgrading to Majestic?
If you’re trying to capture new customers, experiment with cross-selling. Offer promo items with their print orders, stationery with their business card order, flags with their banners, etc.!
If you are printing with us at trade.4over.com, be rest assured that you will find the largest range of printing products that you can offer to your customers. So, we are in it with you in this experimentation!
5. Go ultra-low-volume and on-demand
If you’re looking for a really hip idea—another side effect of working from home has been the disappearance of “company swag.” A great marketing strategy for printing companies is developing a solution to this problem.
What used to happen was that a company would get a lot of notebooks, pens, t-shirts, and mugs made and have them in a storage cabinet in the office. This ‘swag’ would be given to new hires in an effort to establish company loyalty and boost employee engagement.
With everyone working from home this has all but disappeared, as companies have focused on getting laptops and other work-essential supplies to their employees. Also, nobody wants to use their house as a corporate swag storage space, so ordering in bulk isn’t really an option anymore.
That being said, there is still demand for these branded goods so pivoting to a model where you print and ship branded company gear to new hires in lots of one has the potential to generate a lot of revenue. Just keep in mind that you’ll want to charge more for your printing as you’ll also be handling the logistics.
There you have it! Five marketing ideas for printers to accelerate your business in 2022 no matter where you are or what you print. These marketing ideas can truly launch your business into a new orbit of sales and revenue this year.
These strategies are also likely to ensure that you not only expand your product basket and services for your existing customers but also reach a wider untapped audience.
4over is always here to help you grow your business and deliver for your clients. And as a trade-only printer and promo provider, 4over will never compete with you—the best measure of our success is yours!
4over LLC is one of the largest wholesale trade printers in the US, with multiple production facilities across North America. A trusted source of print fulfillment since 2001, the company helps large franchise printers, single print shops, print brokers, graphic designers, photographers, and every type of print reseller in between grow profitable businesses by offering a vast selection of quality products at guaranteed trade-only prices. With capabilities such as gang-run offset, digital, grand format, and promotional printing, plus state-of-the-art equipment, 4over offers every customer savings, selection, and scale. Not yet a 4over reseller? Register Today!
