August 01, 2008

President / CEO 48HourPrint.com; Topic: Leveraging the Internet for Marketing Success

 

How to Leverage the Internet for Marketing Success

Years ago, most companies depended on growing a sales and marketing department from the ground up to create opportunities for product promotion. Feet on the street, print advertising, trade shows, conferences, speaking engagements, direct mail and word of mouth were many of the vehicles used to convey key messages to prospects and retain existing customers. With the Internet, it's a whole new world now.

For young, emerging businesses with a limited budget, the Internet provides excellent opportunities for promoting a product or service line.  In a relatively short time, the Internet has exploded with promotional opportunities.  For many companies, especially those that do all their business online, the benefits of the Internet significantly outweigh the benefits of all previously employed sales and marketing tools.

At 48HourPrint.com, for example, our online print business has grown from start-up status with no revenue in July 2003, to annual sales of over $20 million in five years.  During the past few years, the company has also been ranked as one of the top 400 printers in the United States, with industry surveys placing us in the upper 10 percent of the most profitable printers. 

How did we accomplish this?  The Internet and technology are the backbone of our growth strategy and have given us the tools to take a staid industry, commercial business-to-business printing, from the era of Ben Franklin to the twenty first century.  Our path to success has not been without costs, but by planning and investing strategically, as outlined below, we have been able to economically leverage our marketing dollars.

Know Your Customers

The first step in this process is determining your customers' profiles, buying habits, items or services they want, how they want them and what they don't want.  Many companies start this process inside their company and work toward the customer, assuming they know what their customers want and how they make purchases.  In reality, only your customers know these things, which need to be learned directly from them.  It is never too late to employ the services of a professional survey firm to reach out to your customers and prospects to gather intelligence on how to market to your audience via the Internet.  Following this course of action will allow you to take a deep and very focused approach to your messaging.    

Employ Operational and Strategic Planning

If you are not employing a twelve-month operational plan and a two- to three-year strategic plan, you need to start now.  The marketing sections of both plans are extremely critical to successful selling over the Internet.  Based on what you learned from your customer survey, which should be conducted regularly, you will learn which products and services are in demand.  Your own research and development efforts will also lead to new product and service ideas, which should be tested in the marketplace before general release.  Then, with the intelligence that you have gathered, develop a clear strategy for sales, marketing and, particularly, media planning.  Your operation and strategic plans for all aspects of your business should be updated quarterly.

Develop a Media Plan

PPC, SEO, BR and KW are just some of the acronyms tossed about in Internet marketing.  Few of us are experts in this field or have the time or inclination to become experts.  If you elect to learn on your own, while you are getting up to speed, your competition may be passing you by because they have elected to hire or retain experts in Internet marketing, which is a science in itself.  Even if you are a young company on a tight budget, you need to retain experts in web design, email and print messaging, keyword selection (KW), web site content creation (another science), search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) optimization and reporting.

Many Internet-based companies do not succeed strictly on the use of the Internet for creating attention and awareness of their products and services, as well as their company.  At 48HourPrint.com, our Internet marketing and sales efforts-which are primarily SEO, paid-clicks and email messaging-are supplemented by print advertising, direct mail, customer service specialists for major customers, trade shows, speaking engagements and referrals. 

Although some Internet-based companies have initially grown at what seems like the speed of the fastest of wireless connections, based strictly on an Internet strategy, sooner or later they employ other means of advertising.  Even online companies such as Monster and Orbitz use print, television, radio and other means of messaging to drive people to their web sites.  It's all about creating a solid plan to drive traffic to your site.    

Keep Current with Technology

For Internet-based companies, the investment in technology is the 800-pound gorilla in the back room that gets little attention until it is neglected.  If you don't feed it, it will come back to bite you.  As we all know from our experience with personal computers, phone systems, handheld messaging devices, and so on, technology is improving every day.  Stay on top of the latest developments, or have someone do this for you, so you don't get left behind.

Having a robust web site, your face to the world, is critical.  The front end, what your customers see, needs to be easy to navigate, fast and reliable.  The back end, what drives your business process, needs to be orderly and smooth, with sufficient capacity to handle the peaks of your business cycle. 

Great web site developers are in demand.  Your best bet, again working with a limited budget, is to outsource your technology development and maintenance to a firm that matches your needs.  You don't need a team of developers for a Google-type web site.  You need a solid partner to take care of the strategic and long-term development of your site.  Having someone on board internally who can handle day-to-day issues is a good idea as well.

Measure Your Success

Last but not least, how do you measure success?  Valid measurements include the number of unique visitors who visit your site, number of pages viewed, minutes spent per view, conversion rate, return on investment for paid clicks, new customer hits, and repeat customer hits.  This information is important, but in the end, it's about return on investment.  Be sure to measure how much revenue is coming through your web site relative to your sales and marketing dollars expended.  This will give you a true measure of your Internet marketing success.

 

Raymond Pinard is the President & CEO of 48HourPrint.com, the leading business-to-business online printing company in the nation.  Mr. Pinard's impressive career encompasses both the manufacturing and service industry and includes years of corporate consulting. The former chief operating officer of St. Mary's Bank also is well known for his contributions to numerous civic and educational organizations

QUESTION: Part 1 How can I lower my printing costs in my home based greeting card business. I currently pay $85 for 250 5X7 cards (made with cardstock) and envelopes. My profit margin is very slim as retailers take 40% of the retail price.

ANSWER: I checked our pricing and a 500 piece run is $299, 4 color/4 color.  I'm not sure if you are printing just one color, otherwise the price you are getting appears reasonable, with envelopes.  I suggest that once per month for the next three months you select a different local printer and get an estimate from them.  This is good to do to keep you current vendor honest.  You only other option is to raise the retail price of the cards.  Perhaps you can position them as a premium product and ask for a higher retail price.  

QUESTION: Part 2 Also, a related subject: I would like to use recycled paper but the prices are very high. Why ? 

ANSWER: Prices for recycled paper are high for two reasons.  The processing cost to reconstitute recyclable materials into quality raw product is usually more expensive than processing what we call "virgin paper", non-recycled new stock.  Second, the demand for recycled stock is high, and supply is low, thereby commanding higher prices. 

 

QUESTION: Have you ever considered employing a virtual CIO in order to stay current with technology in order to provide the best service for your customers?

ANSWER: Yes.  At times we have used a virtual CIO on a stand-alone basis, and we currently employ a full-time CIO with a virtual CIO outside service to assist on special projects.  I am a firm believer in outsourcing any tasks where you need a real expert and cannot afford the full-time costs or do not have a need for a full-time person.  You will often find that the outside expert has greater experience and expertise than an in-house candidate.  Experts will normally be more current on the latest technology, whereas in-house folks may get complacent and not stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest. 

You bring up another key point, "best service for your customers".  You are focused on the correct issue, customer service.  Perhaps many companies can offer the product or service you offer, but you can excel and separate yourself from the pack with excellent customer service.

 

QUESTION: In order to get to know your customers better, you explained the idea of a professional survey firm. What sort of questions does the firm ask and what information do they seek regarding potential and current customers?

ANSWER: First a professional survey firm will interview you about your business, your product and your customers.  Once they understand your business they will discuss what it is you wish to learn from your customers.  The firm will then retreat to their office and make random calls to prospective survey recipients and test a script of questions to see if the questions work in answering the questions you want answered.

After their tests are complete they will meet with you and review the draft questionnaire and explain to you why the questions are stated as they proposed and what you will learn.  Questions and survey topics can relate to products you offer, ancillary products you may want to offer, determining the characteristics of you ideal customer, pricing decisions.  Virtually, any topic can be surveyed. 

If you need a recommendation on a good firm let me know.  Remember, it is always wise to survey first, then come out with new products and service, or develop marketing campaigns, etc.  The small price for a survey can save you the cost of making poor and uninformed decisions.

 

QUESTION: Younger generations are hit with numerous ads a day, and often make purchasing decisions on word of mouth. Do you think that the internet is the new word of mouth for the future?

ANSWER: Absolutely.  The components for creating a word of mouth referral program are 1) a great presence on the internet, b) an easy to navigate web site, 3) great customer service, and, 4) great follow through on what you have promised the customer.  On the web, in addition to selling your product, you are selling trust and confidence.  Any company that can foster these traits will develop referrals.  In our case, half of our business comes in over the web, 40% comes through referrals.

 

QUESTION: One area you discussed is "knowing your customer". Businesses believe they know their customer and design advertisements accordingly, but that does not mean they are correct. Would you recommend businesses hiring account planners so a psychographic and demographic analysis can be done of the consumer before posting/sending any form of advertisement?

ANSWER: Great question.  There is an old saying, "if you want to sell what John Smith buys, you have to see through John Smith's eyes".  I have had great success in using analysts who survey a small sample of your current customer base, preferable some of you best customers who are profitable and easy to deal with.  From these surveys they can create an "ideal customer profile", from which your messaging and visual arts experts can craft the appropriate message.