Econoprint Blog

Sean Kelley

I have met a lot of clients, big and small, and talked to them about their websites. It is amazing at how many organizations have no idea what is going on with their website. I am not talking about who’s handling it, or what is posted on the site; I’m talking about who is going there? What are they trying to find? How they’re finding the site? Simple web statistics are not being monitored. They either don’t have tools installed on the site, or they do but they don’t look at them consistently. It’s the billboard mentality. I am sure that a billboard vendor can provide statistics on how many people drive down the Beltline during a given day, but they don’t know much more than that-maybe they do. Yet, organizations spend big bucks on outdoor advertising.

I love to talk about a small client of ours. They own a small retail store in a small, local community. We did their site and installed Google Analytics. Let’s face it, it’s a great tool and it’s free. Yes free. We gave the site 3 months to get crawled by Google and then looked at their statistics for them. We realized that much of their online traffic was coming to their site on Sundays. Their business hours were basically Monday through Friday, standard retail business hours. We asked them if they ever considered being open on Sundays, even if it was for limited hours. They had not, but were open to trying it given the information that their website, and visitors, provided to them. They opened a few hours on Sundays and soon realized that 65% of their weekly sales came in on Sundays! They now realize how valuable that information was and adapted to what their customers wanted.

So ask yourself, where is your website traffic coming from? How long do they stay on your site? What information is your web visitor looking for? Are they finding it? What search terms are they using to find your site? Does your company handle purple widgets but visitors are looking for yellow? Maybe visitors end up going to your competition for yellow widgets. Wouldn’t it be nice to offer yellow widgets, especially if the cost is low and the demand is there?  Information is powerful. Gather that information and use it to improve your business now. If you don’t, your competition will.

Sean Kelley

I was in business some time ago. It takes a lot of work and a good amount of capital. One of the things you need, we were in the retail sector, was a sign. We wanted a combination box and neon sign that everyone could see. It would look cool and light up in the dark, a beacon for everyone to come in and buy stuff from our store. It was going to make us legit. Being a new company, we had to weigh cost.  Signage can go for $5000.00 easy. That was over ten years ago, and that dollar amount was on the low end. You want it to be professional. Sure you can easily get a vinyl banner and paint your own info on it, but who would want to shop there? It’s a retail business, a store, we wanted to be legit. It’s not a vegetable cart on the side of the highway. Our store was visible from a major state highway. You could see the sign at night when it was all lit up. We’d get a lot of traffic seeing that sign, but it was indirect. It was passers by. They were on their way to a Green Bay Packer game and probably never really cared that we were located where we were unless they actually needed, or wanted, our products.

Then there’s a website. It can be as pretty as you want. It can provide more information than your signage. A lot more information. A good web vendor can make the site look like a vision of your company. It can portray your company’s image. It can provide visitors information that a yellow pages ad, newspaper or magazine can’t. Restricted by  a 1×2 inline ad? Not on your website. Can you provide a tutorial or display all your product images in a magazine or newspaper? You can, if you have the money to throw at it. My guess is that it won’t be very cost effective. Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and check into it yourself.

Back to signage and your website. How many people are able to see your website? A publication will tell you that their circulation is ‘x’ amount of subscribers in ‘z’ and ‘y’ demographics. The Yellow Pages will tell you about their circulation and provide you a extra little bonus by putting a little entry in their online version of the mighty book. How many people that find your company found it using the Yellow Pages? Can Yellow Pages provide this info for you? A website can provide you with statistics. You can find out how people are finding your company website. You can find out how long they’re spending on your site, how they’re entering your site and where they are right before they leave. You can find out what keywords they use to find your site and when they visit the site-this may be good to know when you want to run specials. You’ll be able to determine what sections of your site they’re going through and much more. Anyone in the world with an Internet connection could find your business at any time. How powerful is that?  Do you see why a great website is worth the investment? Lights don’t burnout on a website. It stays up 24×7. Instead of cars passing along a highway and seeing your beacon of light off in the distance anyone in the world can see your website.  It can offer more to visitors in 30 seconds than a sign can in 10 minutes. Visitors can really learn about your company. This saves you time by catering to customers that actually need your product or service. Web visitors can also look at their leisure, they don’t have to wait until 9am to call you and ask for information about your company because they can find it on your awesome website.

You’ve spent the money on the sign. It does the job. Just remember how much money you spent on it and what your return is on that sign. Now imagine the return from a website. We often work with clients that know the value of their website. Imagine if you sold one item, or landed one more client, through your website. We have clients that could pay for the site from just that one sale. Would that justify the cost of the website as a marketing tool? You do the math.

Sean Kelley

I used to work for a Fortune 500 staffing firm.  I placed web developers and web designers with some of the areas most reputable corporations. Part of my job was to market information technology people. These IT professionals were well-versed in website-related skills that often included technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, .NET, php, Ruby, SQL, Flash, and more. I would then contact companies in the area about these candidates mentioning their skills and how they saved a previous employer time or money. Always remember the value of return on investment.  Often the bill rates for people with these skills were quite reasonable. Some of these IT consultants could pound out websites for clients in a reasonable time frame and an equally reasonable cost associated with them.

Why do I bring this up? Because I thought hiring an individual to do the company’s  website made the most sense…back then.

Now I have evaluated the roles of web vendors. They have a lot to offer and you should be aware of this. You could get someone to do the site at an hourly rate, but it’s one person. Typically that one person is good at development or design, but rarely are they good at both. Oh, and don’t forget their knowledge of Search Engine Optimization. You may end up with a higher front end cost to use a web firm, but in the end it ends up being less. You won’t have to reevaluate things after the work is completed when you go with a firm. You don’t have to be let down by the limitations of the individual. Firms can often lean on more than 4 different staff members, each one with a different set of web skills. You want a designer, we have one. You want a developer, we have one. And please don’t mistaken one for the other. Both come from different worlds and perform different tasks when tackling your website. You need someone that knows more about how Search Engine Optimization works? The web firm should be able to provide that. The web firm has a presence. We give you the attention that’s needed. Again, if your project coordinator is on vacation, there’s someone else that’s able to help you.  Companies that have been around won’t disappear on you either.  That’s important if you entrusted them with the keys to your online web kingdom.

Some things to consider when interviewing a vendor for your next web project:

1. How many people will be waiting on me hand and foot?
2. How accessible is your staff?
3. What is your background, or what are the backgrounds of the members of your staff?
4. How long have you been in business?
5. Where is your office? (will be able to track someone down if you need information regarding your site?) This speaks to the accountability of the vendor.
6. Do you have a portfolio? This will give you a look at their style. Some client site all look the same. You want to be unique.
7. How do you assess your rates?  This will allow the vendor to tell you why/how they cut corners or what you get when you pay a bit more. Cost can be justified.

These are just a few questions that will give you a starting point in determining which web vendor is best for you given your current situation.  A well-informed customer makes wiser decisions and will save you time and money.

Sean P. Kelley

Marketing is evolving. Things are changing and technology is at the forefront of that change. How do you keep up? Customers are being reached in different ways. It’s important to keep in touch with your customer base. One good way of doing that is through email marketing.

Email marketing can help you keep in touch with not only your existing clients, but also your newly developed business relationships. Anyone can send out an email, but email marketing from experts like Econoprint will lend their insights to help you get results. However, there’s only so much a firm can do. Emails have to look professional, be enticing, and have a purpose. One of the most important pieces of a successful email marketing campaign is the email list.

You have to build the email list. Purchased email lists have low returns. We’ve spoken to clients first hand about their experiences with purchased lists. They can be very costly, sometimes reaching $30K for then thousand email addresses. It’s only when they see less than .5% open rates do they scratch their head and wonder why. It’s not a numbers game. Sending out to more people that don’t want your email is not going to lead to revenue conversion. You are better off sending the email to a few hundred faithful customers that want to hear from you than to send it to those that wonder where the email came from.

A few methods to build a list include:

• email sign up on your website
• trade shows
• current client contacts
• retail can benefit by having a email sign up on their counter
• VIP/Discount plans - customers sign up for discounts, trade off? They provide their email, you provide the discount.

I speak to companies that have 3-10 people in their sales force yet 85% of their client database lacks email addresses! Opt-in lists are key, and having a compelling product or service that your target audience is interested in goes a long way.

Get the clients you want. Reach the clients you have. Establish those relationships and grow the list. Recipients will be more apt to opening the email. They will read the contents. They may reach out to do business with you, And that’s the name of the game. You will have a better email campaign because of it.

Patrick T. Whelan

It’s a constant refrain in marketing circles-don’t stop marketing! Times are tough, but keep your marketing program strong.

This was also the message from all four printing company owners who sat on a panel for a recent webinar. Here’s my take:

• Your brand is determined by what the marketplace perceives it to be. Not by what you want it to be.
  If you’re trying to establish your brand as that of a marketing services provider, you had better be proficient at marketing your own services.

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Heidi Tolliver-Nigro

We all know that, in order to transition to the marketing services provider model, printers need to learn today’s marketing applications like 1:1 printing, personalized URLs, and multi-channel marketing. But expertise doesn’t fall out of trees. How do you get up to speed?

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Rene Huston, Econoprint

Everyone knows first impressions are everything for a business and it starts with your logo!  With Econoprint’s team of award winning graphic designers you can count on a professional logo design to make a memorable positive impression.

Let Econoprint help you get ahead of the competition!  Call today to schedule a free logo consultation.

Adrianne Tritt, Econoprint

How much did the Yellow Pages cost you last year? Did it pay off? Yellow Pages listings are often the biggest marketing expenditure a business makes in a year, but business owners can lose thousands of dollars on ads that don’t work or are in the wrong directory or shouldn’t be in the Yellow Pages at all.

I recently attended a seminar held by marketing consultant Vicky Jones and wanted to share some of what I learned.

My first suggestion would be to come armed to your meeting with your Yellow Pages rep! Know your budget and your expectations before you meet. If you don’t, your meeting will be about their goals instead of yours. Their goal is to sell advertising space, and they have lots of ways to get their goals met – pricing strategies, and bundled offers, and ideas for advertising in the white pages and even the edges of pages. It varies from directory to directory, and it’s confusing. Your Yellow Pages rep will show you research (conducted by the Yellow Pages industry) and will give you advice about how big your ad should be and where it should appear, but the advice is always making sure the Yellow Page’s rep meets his/her goals, unless your goals drive the agenda of the meeting. If you develop an ad with the right message, the right design, and choose the right directory, you can get results.

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Rico Goedgen, Econoprint

Sometimes it is easier to say what it’s not. It is not a new logo or name. It is not a new tag line. It is not new ads and color schemes. Branding is the process of establishing the emotional connections with your target audiences. Notice the plural, because the emotional drivers may be different with certain segments. You might view your benefit statements as the foundation of your branding opportunities.

A brand is about your promise; what is it, can you keep it, and do your customers care? Strong brands create a clear difference, one that is important to their customers and can be repeated over time. The point of differentiation should be unique, you don’t want to be a me too voice. Think of tires, Michelin has taken the position of being the safest. A competitor will want to be cheaper, longer lasting, better ride, anything but safest. A strong brand has a consistent message, in particular, the internal focus on delivering on the customer promise. Brands are build around consistently delivering customer value.

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Rene Huston, Econoprint

Social Media is the latest trend in online networking. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Linkedin are the top four favorites. I’ve found Linkedin to be a personal favorite.

Linkedin is the world’s largest profession network with over 40 million members and growing. It allows you to effectively leverage company and personal brand and business development. Linkedin connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a network of professionals.
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