Advertising for Print Companies

To be honest there are a lot of places you could spend your money on advertising a print company. But the truth is that no channel will work well if you haven’t thought about the strategy behind the ads first, only then should you consider running ads. But the good news is that all you really need to know as an Advertising Strategy is who your target customers are, what their pain points are and how you solve those problems. As long as you know that then you are good to move on to the next step, the advertising channels.

• Paid Search / PPC
• LinkedIn Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Display Ads
• Video Ads
• Offline Placements

The benefit of running PPC Ads is that your ad is only going to show up when someone searches for a product or service that you provide in the areas that you designate as service areas. Sometimes these ads are called Paid Search Ads, Pay Per Click Ads or Google Search Ads. Regardless of what you call them, they are the text ads you see in the Google Search Engine Results (not the banner ads or shopping ads).

The unfortunate truth about PPC Ads is that many people try to run them without knowing what they are doing and will lose money on these ads. BUT, if you take a little time to understand the platform and the strategy you can easily generate new sales and a positive ROI from this advertising channel. Let us say it again, Print Businesses can Make A Lot of Sales by using PPC Advertising.

LinkedIn Advertising is our favorite ad channel for printers. All of the criteria that you need to identify qualified print buyers is present in the targeting criteria on the LinkedIn Ads Campaign Manager. The cost per click is typically higher than other channels and you are forced to spend at a minimum $10 per day per campaign, but the results are phenomenally better than some advertising channels that print companies can choose from.

When it comes to Facebook these ads can be a little trickier for print businesses to generate a good ROI. But, it’s a cost effective advertising channel that will 100% get you more visibility. Facebook by many print shops is viewed in general as a channel that doesn’t do very well for them. The fact is that while Facebook isn’t the best channel to generate a sales qualified lead on the first touch it is a great place to get awareness, generate multiple touchpoints and finally get leads for those who would take longer to close overall.

The targeting criteria for Facebook is more effective when trying to relate to typical consumer profile targeting such as interests and behaviors. The B2B-like targeting we love so much such as job titles, companies, industries, etc. simply isn’t very good or not available as an option.

In most cases print shops are better off just running remarketing ads on Facebook to capture leads from prospects who have already visited their website. This means the person who is seeing the ad on Facebook has recently been on the print shops website and is more likely to be in a consideration stage of buying.

These advertisements are commonly referred to as banner ads. Hey how do like that, the Digital Marketing industry copied a name from the print space (Banners). And as you know, Banners in real life can be effective at generating visibility and awareness for businesses. Digital Display Ads are no different!

The big difference between the Display Ads or Banners Ads for Printers and other advertising channels is that you are very limited to the type of targeting you’ll want to utilize. Let’s go a little more specific on this.

Display Ads on the surface look really good, because…

1. They look cool
2. Everyone says they can target your audience using them
3. Everybody does them (don’t they?)

The problem is that if you run banner ads for your print company and use audience targeting such as “People looking for Print Services”, you’ll find that this targeted audience is not real. The numbers that will be presented to you as a potential reach are about half the US population.

And if 50% of the US population is actively looking for print then we here at Pryntbase are shutting down and starting a print shop (not really, but seriously that would be crazy). So this targeting just isn’t a wise choice.

What can be effective is using a remarketing audience targeting prospects who have already been on your website. These ads will “follow” those people around online.

Print Businesses that utilize video advertisements can do very well on this channel. Unfortunately many print shops don’t have the time or resources to create the video ads to run.

Video ads though are best for generating awareness and staying top of mind with customers. They are typically bad for direct conversion generating traffic.

Video ad targeting is similar to what you’ll find with banner ads, but a big difference is that you can target specific YouTube channels or individual YouTube videos. So depending on what audience you are trying to reach, especially if you are targeting a specific industry then Video ads could be a great way to get more exposure.

Another benefit to video ads is that they can be very low cost. Visibility can cost pennies, but that obviously adds up when you have tens of thousands of views.

If you have the time, resources and budget we think video ads could be a great option for your print company.

One of the most notorious ads in the B2B space are shopping ads. The print industry is no different. Most print service providers don’t sell their products like a typical retailer where you have off the shelf products that can be advertised and sold as is with not customization and most print shops don’t have the capability to provide an ecommerce buying experience to print customers similar to a Vista Print or BannerBuzz.

The unfortunate truth though is that these online print companies have found ways to provide printed products and services in such a way that they can be sold just like physical retail products you’ll find on Amazon or Walmart. This gives them the ability to effectively run Shopping Ads.  

Shopping ads are advertisements that show up in the Google Search Results which are interactive in that the shopping experience can take place at the ad level and pulls in pricing, discounts, inventory and ratings so that the customer can make buying decisions right then and there on the search results page.

To run these ads you have to have an ecommerce site created for your print business, it must have a product feed that meets the Google Merchant criteria and you must set yourself up on Google Merchant Center and Google Ads.

The targeting is similar to Paid Search on Google, but will show Shopping Ads instead of text ads.

Here is an advertising channel that print companies can do that isn’t just digital marketing. Getting your print business placed into selling situations will typically cost you money, but can be extremely impactful. These can be physical spaces, online spaces or as collaborations.

Print Company Advertising Placements

• Events
• Co-Branding
• Webinars

Renting space at a tradeshow, local event or industry gathering is a good way to get exposure, make new connections and generate orders. There are tons of events available all you have to do is go look and you’ll find them.

Co-branding is something that can be done across every ad channel. Essentially you are partnering with another brand to host something, be seen as their exclusive partner / provider or some other collaborative reason. The goal is to be shown to the other company’s audience and be seen as a trusted printing partner by that audience because you gain an immediate credibility from being promoted by the other brand (your co-brand).

Webinars are another good place to get yourself exposure because a webinar can literally be on any topic with any type of content you choose. It’s the creative flexibility that gives a webinar power. You don’t have to run a boring, read from a slide deck, kind of presentation you can make it fun and do contests, live learning, Q&A or make it a gameshow.

The fact is that placements are a good way to advertise your print company.