Whatever business decisions you make, whatever path you choose to follow, it is always best to begin with the end in mind.

Let’s look at how this relates to your website. It is important to realize that every audience has different needs. For a website to have the most impact it must cater to the needs of its audience. Your audience is made up of individuals who, for one reason or another, need to put ink on paper. To engage your customers or prospects it is your responsibility to provide items that are of interest, such as articles on marketing, what makes an effective mail piece, how does e-mail marketing work, etc. You need to make your website an indispensable marketing and business tool.

That’s easier said than done. Many struggle with how to use their website in a manner that will make an impact on their company. To create an impactful website, you simply have to remember two things—start with the basics and have realistic expectations.

Starting with the basics. Take a look at the websites you use every day. The reason you use certain websites all the time, the reason you can’t live without them will hold the keys to making your website the best it can be. Start thinking about what you do as a consumer and what you can relate to your printing business.

There’s No Business Like Show Business

Let’s say you’re going to a movie tonight. How are you going to find out what’s playing, show times, etc? Most of us with quick access to a computer or mobile device will probably visit the movie theater’s website. While you could still look up shows and times the old-fashioned way, it isn’t a dynamic, immediate experience.

When you use a movie theater website, the entire experience is centered on you—searching for a specific show, finding out if the theater is family friendly, etc. You won’t find a page that talks about the equipment and technology the theater uses because it’is not directly related to the reason you visited the site. It won’t help you find your movie time, decide on which film to see or how much spare change to bring for popcorn.

You Can Take That to the Bank

Talk about an experience that has changed. If you need to check your balance, transfer funds, pay bills—what do you do? The majority of you head to the computer. The reason we chose to bank online is because of convenience and ease.

How has the banking industry evoked so much trust that the majority of the public has become comfortable in managing their wealth and business online? The answer is simple—your online banking experience is focused solely on your needs. Why call the bank for your balance when you can login in and see to the penny what your balance is? It boils down to simple, efficient access to everything you need to accomplish your banking tasks as quickly as possible.

Their entire focus is on you as a client of the bank and products or services you may be interested in using or buying, again a brilliant marketing tool.

Get in the Game

Where do you go to catch up on the latest sports news and scores? According to many of my male counterparts, ESPN.com is their destination for information. Whether this is your site of choice, you can learn the same valuable lessons from your sports site.

Their site is completely interactive. What’s key here is that the newscasters will say while broadcasting, “For more detail on this story visit espn.com.” Talk about a great job of knowing your audience and providing tools that keep you coming back for more.

When you visit ESPN.com, you won’t be greeted by the company’s history and you won’t get a lesson on how they hire their sportscasters. That’s not what you’re after and ESPN knows that.

Now Think of This in Terms of What You Can Do

There are no commonalities in the above examples other than that each industry does an outstanding job of catering to the needs of their audience. So how do you use your website to cater to your customers? Follow Mr. Stephen Covey’s advice when it comes to the way your site functions; “begin with the end in mind.” Ask yourself, “Why is my audience visiting my website?” Is it to place an order, send a file or to learn more about your company?

Personalize the content of your website as much as you can. Make it all about the customer, not about your business. Explain what benefits you can provide them, why doing business with you will save them time, money or headaches. The word “you” should fill every page, and “we, us, our” should be few and far between. Are you a variable printer? Try language like “personalizing your direct mail piece will increase your response rate by 40 percent” instead of “we provide variable printing services.” See the difference?

Make sure you and your customers are using the technology (tools) you have. Most people tend to use only about 30 percent of what’s available to them. Think about your cell phone—how many bells and whistles are there that you don’t take advantage of? Would they be useful to you if you did? Determine the balance between what you have and what your customers could really use.

Simply monitor your website’s statistics for a few months, determine your most visited pages and then make sure those pages are incredibly easy to access with as few clicks and red tape as possible.

Please don’t focus on reinventing the wheel. Instead stay laser focused on your customers’ needs, remember what you love about the sites you visit most and then take a look at your own website to see what you have done to keep your clients coming back. If you honestly feel your site doesn’t do anything to keep people engaged, then take steps to correct it. Remember any step from good towards great is better than no step at all.

What do Las Vegas, digital printing and online marketing have in common? Me—and happily so. January 23rd through 25th, I’ll be at the 2012 PODi AppForum at the Tropicana Resort in Las Vegas. Better still: from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday I’ll be sitting on the panel in the pre-conference session, “Honing Your Online Marketing to Drive Results.” My focus will be teaching you to design and maintain a solutions-oriented website that bests competitors’ and wins loyal clients. If you’re not headed to Vegas next week, it’s not too late to register for AppForum. And if you are going, you’ll be glad you did.

I’m eager to present at AppForum because I know what a strong, solutions-oriented website can do for your business. Your website—hopefully one that works seamlessly with your with web-to-print tool—is an investment. And I know the website features that will decide if your ROI is solid or staggering.

In addition to distinguishing a solutions-oriented website from an unfocused and unprofitable one, I’ll explain the five criteria to a great website. I’ll also let you in on three of the most common mistakes printers make when developing a website. Stick with me. I can turn your website into a major money-maker.

And what’s Vegas if you’re not throwing some money around? I’m willing to bet that your marketing isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Stop by the PrinterPresence table during the show, and if you pass my 10-point test, I’ll hand you $50 cash. Think you and your marketing have what it takes?

I’ve dedicated my career to helping printers attract leads and retain clients with online marketing and web-to-print solutions. My excitement about being featured at the PODi AppForum springs from my passion for online marketing and teaching printers to use websites that can’t be topped.

If you’re on your way to AppForum next week, join my panel and stop by to say hello. I’ll be in the Cohiba Room during the Vendor Fair and in-between sessions. At 2:20pm on Tuesday the 24th, I’ll give a PrinterPresence demo at my table. Let’s talk about developing a better website for your business!

What are you looking forward to most about PODi AppForum?

There’s really no substitute to a solid marketing strategy for your printing company. When you don’t work to engage customers and get the word out about your business, it will be reflected in your sales numbers. Simple.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve considered the pros and cons of marketing your business on Facebook, as well as the promotional benefits of blogging. Let’s broaden our scope now to help you weigh your options when marketing salespeople come knocking.

First, of course, know thyself. This is where listening to the expert in you comes in. If you have a solid understanding of your business goals and the marketing strategies that will benefit it, it will be a lot easier to decide if what your being pitched is truly worth its weight in marketing gold.

Print Ads

If a print ad salesman shows you that every printer within a fifty-mile radius is advertising with them, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Don’t forget to compare your target audience with the businesses who buy those ads. If there’s not a cross section between your demographic and theirs, why should you buy print ads for the same place?

Look for ways to differentiate your business right down to the way you market yourself. Assess your competitor’s strategy, then do the opposite.

SEO

What about search engine optimization experts? You’ve probably heard over and over—mostly from consultants and salespeople with a personal stake in SEO—that businesses need to pay for an SEO expert to drive traffic to their website. Wrong. Writing great content is really the key to SEO, and you don’t necessarily need a specialist to help with that.

If you do decide to invest in an SEO specialist, choose wisely. In this field, expertise is still pretty much self-declared, so make sure your prospective SEO expert can prove success with other print buyers.

Email Marketing

Now let’s consider that email marketing provider who promises an excellent return on investment. Email is definitely a great follow-up tool to accompany other marketing efforts, but will you invest so much in such a service that you won’t be able to afford other marketing tactics?

We must remember our business before buying into one sole marketing tactic. If you quit sending samples of your printing to your customers, what message is that sending about your faith in your product? Bottom Line—don’t blow your budget on a single marketing tactic.

Where to Go From Here

I know what you’re thinking, “So Tawnya, are you telling me to quit paying attention to the trends and ignore the experts?” Absolutely not. I wouldn’t be writing this column if I believed that. I think we need a thorough knowledge of the marketing tools available to use before we make any major decisions. And here’s the kicker— we don’t have to do all of it. We don’t have to feel inadequate if we aren’t able to do all of it. And we certainly don’t have to do something we know in our gut isn’t good for our business simply because “everyone else is doing it.”

Take what you learn from experts, partners and competitors, then filter it through what you believe will work best for your business. Keep your audience, your skill set and your budget in mind to ensure that your decision is the right one.

What ways to market your business have proven to be successful?

Last week I walked you through determining whether marketing your printing company with Facebook is right for your business. I highlighted key questions that you should ask about your customer base and availability for maintaining such a project. You’ll find that determining any prospective marketing tactic necessitates a similar self-evaluation.

But before jumping onto the (promising) blogging bandwagon, I want you to hold yourself back long enough to examine exactly what it is your committing to. If you determine that blogging is a great way to build your business and its reputation, good. Welcome to the blogosphere. But don’t sweat it if you decide that blogging won’t serve your business—we’ll move on to exploring the services offered by marketing salespeople in next week’s article.

Starting a Blog—Is it Right for You?

Blogging, like any other marketing method, works best for those who think through their business goals and determine exactly what it is they are trying to accomplish. Bloggers are likely looking for a lot of public recognition—a big following. In addition to differentiating your business, products and services, a blog can position you as an industry expert—but is that what you want for your business? Or is your printing company perfectly satisfied with a more low-key existence? Maybe you’re more interested in a steady stream of loyal customers who spend enough money to keep you in the black and that’s it—no public fanfare necessary.

A basic rule of thumb as you sort out your marketing goals and weigh the pros and cons of starting a blog—if you can’t nail down how your blog would fit into your printing company’s marketing strategy, don’t do it.

Do You Have Time?

Now if you can articulate your printing company’s goals for the blog, take a look at your available 24 hours again. Do you have time to spend blogging? You’re going to have to take precious time out of your work day to blog, so it must pay you back in some currency, whether it’s new leads or website traffic or something else entirely.

And fair or not, readers pay attention to how consistently and how often you blog. If you don’t have the time to commit to post a blog entry once a week (twice if you really want to boost your blog’s chances of success), I think you should look elsewhere for marketing with social media.

Make Sure You’ve Got What It Takes

Talent and skill are two more important considerations when exploring your options for starting a blog. Are you a writer? Do you keep a personal journal and scribble ideas every chance you get? Then you may have what it takes to be a blogger. Now consider your voice. Is your writing formal or conversational? While the former style is well-suited for some methods of corporate communication, the best blogs are in the latter style. The tone of blogging is direct, conversational and snappy. Every tone is best when it comes naturally, and it’s not easily learned.

Alright, think back to your high school days (I promise this is relevant). If English was your least favorite subject in school and you’d rather do just about anything other than write, consider a better use of your time. Even if you have plenty of updates for your audience, if you’re not interested in or capable of crafting your message into something compelling, look elsewhere for a marketing strategy. Bottom line—if you’re not a writer, you can’t be a blogger, either.

Keep in mind that for every business venture you undergo, if you don’t have the right mix of budget, talent and time to do it right, you may want to head down another route. There are so many great marketing options to choose from, why not pick the ones you’re passionate about?

Stay tuned for my article next week. I can’t wait to help you navigate the offers of marketing salespeople.

Everyone has the same amount of time in a day—twenty-four hours, that’s all we’ve got. And I bet you have lots of people telling you how to spend that time. Your family, your friends and your colleagues all have plenty of advice on what to do and how to do it. But we can’t do it all, so we need to make decisions about which advice we ignore and which we take.

Let’s begin by talking through your options for marketing on Facebook.

Should You Create a Facebook Page?

While individuals on Facebook have a profile, businesses have Pages. In fact, your teenager can probably find at least a hundred other printers with a Facebook Page.

He may show you that XYZ Printer has an amazing amount of people who “like” their page (customers show support for businesses by “liking” their page) and swear that your company needs a Facebook Page, too. To a certain extent, he’s right. Every business should have a Facebook Page, due to the amount of people who use Facebook everyday. If nothing else, you want a Facebook Page for your business to drive traffic to your website.

Now nothing against your in-house Facebook expert, but what works for those other printers may not be the best fit for you. Even though at this point every business needs a Facebook Page, not every printer needs to spend loads of time updating it and interacting with fans.

Is It Worth It?

Determine whether a Facebook Page would be worth the time and effort by comparing your business’s customer base to other printers’. Are your customers even on Facebook? If you started telling them, “Visit us on Facebook!” would they really comply? Don’t fool yourself into thinking that customers will create a Facebook profile just to become your fan. If Facebook hasn’t sparked their interest yet, your page certainly won’t, and you should rely on marketing via some other avenue.

Social Media Isn’t as Free as You Think

Don’t forget that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, either. From the outside, businesses tend to think that a Facebook Page is free marketing, but time is money and your business will pay for your social media presence one way or another. Consistency is key to effectively marketing your business on Facebook. If you intend to build a solid marketing strategy around your Facebook Page, be sure you have the time to devote both now and a year from now to keep your page updated and vibrant.

If after analyzing your audience and time availability you determine that marketing on Facebook is right for your printing company, work to create a Facebook presence that engages your customers by encouraging interaction. Facebook is a great way to stay top of mind, assuming you do it right.

Next week I’ll write about determining whether or not blogging is a good marketing strategy for your print business. Until then, do your research on your customer base and time constraints. Before heeding your teen’s well-intentioned advice, take a step back and make sure that spending a few of your precious 24 hours on Facebook makes sense for your business.

What are your thoughts on using Facebook to market your business?