'On Demand' Printing Benefits Small Businesses

Digital printing or ‘on demand’ printing, as it is sometimes known is a fairly recent edition to a very old established industry. The arrival of digital printing has revolutionised the print industry and significantly changed the way small businesses are now able promote themselves.

Digital printing has reduced the costs of small run print jobs and significantly reduced the turnaround times. This enables a small business to send their customers highly targeted, highly effective marketing messages.

Short run, full colour litho printing was an expensive option for small businesses. A large proportion of the cost was down to the time consuming and costly process of setting up a traditional 'lithographic' printing press. These set-up costs meant that it simply wasn't cost effective to print a few copies of a document or brochure, so small businesses had to think long and hard about what they would print as many hundreds or even thousands of copies would need to be printed.

The set-up process for litho printing would also mean that delivery schedules would be much longer, perhaps a couple of weeks. You also needed storage space for all your printed documents, as you had so many extras printed over and above your initial requirement, you also ran the risk of them being out of date before you used them.

So to summarize the benefits of digital printing to your small business:

• Ordering your print 'on demand' means that you only order the quantity you want
• Turnaround times for digital printing are faster than traditional printing
• Your literature, information and prices will be more up to date and accurate
• Your offers can be changed more often perhaps seasonally, instead of repeating the same offer several times a year
• You can have specific targeted versions of your literature for each group of customers instead of ‘one size fits all’
• You will get a better response rate the more accurately you target your literature and offers and you can even add scarcity value
• You can test your marketing messages by trialling different versions and then printing larger quantities of the most successful version
• You will be more environmentally friendly as you will have less old out of date literature to throw away

Digital printing has significant benefits to small business owners enabling them to get the most out of their resources and time, both very valuable commodities in the current climate. Being able to specifically target your marketing messages and change and adapt them to the constantly changing environment means you will be in the right place, at the right time with the right message for your prospects and customers.

5 Keys to Mobile Marketing

In these recession led, budget conscious times, mobile marketing may provide a more cost effective solution for your business. The addition of mobile marketing to your marketing mix for 2010 could see you boosting your sales, your prospects database and your customer list.

Before starting you campaign, you should consider the following 5 key elements:

1. Accurately target your recipients – chose your recipients with care, ensure that the audience is applicable to the offer you are making
2. Unique incentive – make a really good offer, whether it’s a discount, a free item or entry in to a prize draw
3. Re-usable option – don’t just send one message to a prospect, build your list for the future with an ‘opt-in’ for future offers option
4. Call to action – make the call to action as easy as possible, make sure they can easily redeem it by a code or click to call option
5. Testing and tracking – track the number of receipts and redemptions of your offer. This enables you to see if it was successful and if you need to make any changes before repeating it or rolling it out to a larger audience. Remember always test, track and refine everything you do and then repeat what works and scrap what doesn’t.

So, put your mobile marketing campaign to work and start promoting your business.