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Choosing the Right Online Printer

accounts@newnorth.com (New North) — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 12:58:34 GMT

Greener Printer

Kim: Greener Printer is one of my favorite online printers because not only are they a certified green printer (using only recycled papers with soy inks and following sustainable business practices), but they also offer high-quality, affordable printing. It's the best of both worlds! Greener Printer offers a wide range of templated products such as business cards, brochures, and even catalogs. In addition, they can do custom sizes and quotes as well. Their website is easy to use, allowing you to quickly calculate printing prices, with simple upload options. My only negative for this printer is that their turn-around time is not as fast as some of those “other” online printers.

http://www.greenerprinter.com

Pros:

Lots of options
Certified "Green"

Cons:

Only phone customer service
Slow turn-around

Moo

Kim: So, I'll admit it, I've only recently come across Moo, but so far I love them! Their website not only offers great pricing on products such as business cards, mini cards, postcards, and more; but they also offer some great resources for design inspiration and printing tips. One especially cool feature on moo is their unique Printfinity technology, which allows you to print a different design on every single card in the pack! Um, did someone say, AWESOME! (oh, wait, that was me). My only negative for this printer is that while they continue to add more, their current product options are a tad limited.

http://us.moo.com/

Pros:

Unique capabilities for printing
Good resources

Cons:

Limited product offering

SmartPress

Tobin: I just recently used this printer for an online job and I was very impressed by the quality of the user experience, paper choices, and pricing. They really seem like they have a good process and system in place to make your account accessible as well. I like being able to see all my jobs in one place, and that is a nice feature. The proofing process was really easy and approvals seemed to be well controlled. I plan on using this printer for a few more projects to see how the other product offerings turn out.

http://www.smartpress.com

Pros:

Great account interface
Great paper selection

Cons:

Digital only

VistaPrint

Kim: Good, old VistaPrint. The positives for VistaPrint are their 1) speed and 2) amount of product options. The negatives for VistaPrint are their 1) speed and 2) amount of product options. VistaPrint is a great go-to, online printer when you need something fast and cheap. While their quality is not bad, it's not super impressive either. As a general rule, I only use them for postcards and 4-color digital business cards…materials that don't need exact color matching, and things that I need in a hurry. I find that lately they almost have too many product offerings, which can make it a little confusing when trying to place an order. While they don't offer live chat or email customer service, their customer service via phone has always been extremely helpful.

Tobin: I've only used VistaPrint on one occasion for some folders a few years back. The quality was well done, but price was not the cheapest, which was something to be considered for my client. Everything was done on time, and I have no complaints about the service. I get TONs of emails from them now, which is good and bad.

http://www.vistaprint.com

Pros:

Lots of options
Quick turn-around

Cons:

Only phone customer service

Got Print

Tobin: Quality and price are both above average among providers although shipping price is a bit high from some others I have used. I've never had to send any work back, but I've not been blown away by good quality either. The biggest problem I find is the turn-around time. I've sent jobs and not heard from them for a week. If you're trying to meet a tight deadline stay away from this printer.

http://www.gotprint.com/

Pros:

Many product offerings
Low price options

Cons:

Turn-around has been poor at best

Overnight Prints

Kim: I do not recommend using OvernightPrints, and will never use them again. A few years ago, I was happy to send small, quick-turn-around runs for business cards or postcards to OvernightPrints. Unfortunately the last 3 orders I sent to them all returned with errors including trim mistakes and inconsistencies on business cards, major color errors, and in one case, a client's entire logo did not even print on his card (even though the files were set up correctly). While they offer extremely low pricing, I'd much prefer to spend a little more to alleviate the poor quality and errors this company has recently been producing.

Tobin: While product is speedily delivered, quality is sacrificed. Approximately half of the business card related print jobs I've requested were received with errors and I've had to send the work back and have it reprinted. The quality of brochures and envelopes, in my experience, has been fine.

http://www.overnightprints.com/

Pros:

Quick turn-around on many types of printing
Low price options

Cons:

Poor quality of printing

3 Tips to Attract Website Visitors

accounts@newnorth.com (New North) — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 13:06:15 GMT

The traditional ways of marketing, such as unsolicited emails, print advertising, and radio advertising, aren’t going to bring people to your website or get you leads like they once did - and they’re becoming much more expensive. In case you haven’t been introduced to the latest in lead generation, inbound marketing is the answer to your lead generation challenges. No matter what the demographics and psychographics of your consumers are, they are all using the Internet to meet their needs in one way or another. Since this is the norm now, we have 3 tips for you to attract website visitors using inbound methods.

1. Optimize Your Website

Having a website isn’t enough. You have to optimize it. You can do so with search engine optimization (SEO). The better your site is optimized, meaning the more keywords it has in the right places, the more likely it is to be found on major search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo. In order to optimize your site, you have to strategically implement keywords in your page title, headers, meta descriptions, pictures and more. Remember that you cannot just add random keywords. You must understand what words people use to search for your products and services. To understand what they look for, you have to be able to relate to them. You can do so by having a thorough understanding of their buyer persona. If you haven’t created buyer personas for your company yet, read How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business by HubSpot, our partner.

For more specific tips on SEO practices, read this article: Top 10 SEO Considerations When Re-Designing and Launching Your New Website . We've done Frederick, Maryland search engine optimization and SEO around the country, and we can tell you that optimizing your website this way is incredibly important.

2. Create Great Content

So, now that you have created your buyer personas and optimized your website, you understand the specific audiences that you need to target with your content. To start your content marketing, you should blog and target these different audiences. A blog is a great way to keep the content on your website fresh, and search engines actually reward websites that do this by giving them higher rankings. Other types of content you can create are whitepapers, eBooks, guides, checklists - and the list goes on.

3. Use Social Media

When you create your buyer personas, you will have a better understanding of which social media platforms your consumers use, and will be able to attract them to your website more effectively. First, you will need to engage with them. Social listening is great and should be utilized. You can listen socially by creating Google alerts that alert you anytime your company name is mentioned, or when a specific topic that is within your area of expertise is being discussed. By engaging and showing your knowledge about a particular subject, you can gain trust and attract more visitors to your site. You can also show your expertise by sharing the content you created on social media. So when you write a blog, share it on social media. This will also give you offsite SEO, which is great for your search engine rankings.

So there you have it - 3 tips to attract website visitors. If you’d like more information on how to turn visitors into leads, please feel free to call for a no-pressure conversation at 855.473.6061 or contact us online. As a Frederick, Maryland web design company, we've worked with clients around the country to create digital marketing strategies that really work when it comes to turning visitors into leads.

When and Why You Don't Need a Blog

accounts@newnorth.com (New North) — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 13:09:55 GMT

If you are just now getting on the blog bandwagon, you are definitely on the southern side of the bell curve. But it doesn't mean all is lost and you should drop what you are doing. Blog are great tools for business. They are a great way to journal the events and happenings of your company and bring them to your customers. But for some reason, the buzz surrounding these little publishing gems has reached a new threshold and now every business from janitors to dog sitters have blogs.

Maybe we have reality TV to blame. Everyone thinks that details of their day-to-day activity should be passed on to the customers no matter how significant or insignificant they might be. Although I'm sure there is some value to these publications, I have to think that somewhere along the way the intention was lost.

These weak or misdirected posts no longer serve their businesses, and may even have a negative effect. So as I'm sure there are list upon lists for reasons to start a blog, I've decided to post a list of the reasons to not have one. If your new blog project touches on any of these, you might want to take a second look before you hit "publish".

Reason One: Date is Not Relevant

Blogs are not great tools for organization. The strength of blog publishing comes on the back of being timely. Simply put, blogs are organized in a journal format and the information is presented in that way. So knowing this, do you want a blog so you can publish timely information? Or are you just thinking about SEO and ramming content inside of your domain?

If date has nothing to do with your information, your time and money would be better spent putting your information on your web site, organized topically so your users can find it. Blogs should not be used as a general catch-all for your new Web site content.

Reason Two: My Customers are Not Reading Online

If your business is serving customers who are not regular readers online, why do you have a blog? How much time and energy are you putting into this project for minimal return or even following? Your effort could be spent better places, reaching your customers. How do you find out this information? Maybe a marketing review?

Reason Three: Business as Usual

Blogs can be insightful tools to read into the inner workings of companies. When CEO's started blogging about the internal issues of their companies, the good and the bad, popularity shot through the roof. Point being, what are you going to do that is different than your typical press release? People turn to blogs for the real-life stuff, the nitty-gritty. They can read a newspaper or watch TV for everything else.

If you've passed the test, then you are ready to get out there and add to the ever growing blogosphere. But make sure you are doing it with a more than just a surface level agenda. Good blogging is where good planning and good purpose collide.

The Two Thousand Dollar Advertising Plan for Small Businesses

accounts@newnorth.com (New North) — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 05:00:00 GMT

Please note that every business has its own needs and specialties that might benefit from some customization. One size might not fit all, but as you embark on this journey, you can use this plan as a template to start your market growth.

Time Frame

1 Year

This plan will effectively get you off the ground and moving toward more market shares within one year, but budgetary means for the next year should be under consideration in the third quarter of this plan using a percentage of sales, or other means of budget determination. You will need to think of marketing as a necessary expenditure from this point forward.

Campaign

You should develop a basic message you can use to start advertising your business. Hopefully, your business plan has illuminated your unique selling proposition (USP) . With this information you can put together a series of messages to sell your product. These messages might be related to your product's unique value, or the location of your company's new physical store front. These key messages will encourage customers to go to your store or inquire about your product. Developing these messages is exactly what a great advertising firm can do for you. But if you don't have the budget for a campaign development with a firm, you'll have to rely on your own knowledge of your product and sell your product yourself. Do not underestimate this fundamental task! Buying a single impression of media without defining your message will be like flushing money down the toilet.

Media

Choosing media wisely will have the greatest effect on your immediate success. To do this, you must have a pretty good understanding of what your goals are in this limited budget phase. You should assume two simple goals for your advertising campaign: to spread awareness, or presence of your brand to your local market, and to promote a new product or service.

So let's look at all the available media, and weigh the options...

Newspapers: Free

Your key objective for any newspaper should be purely public relations. Instead of paying for ad space, try to have the paper run a story about your store opening or promotion to bring some positive PR to your company. Down the road you could consider ad space as a budget item, but for now your objective is to get publicity. There are many free press release templates and how-to's on the web. You don't need something perfect, just be professional and persistent in trying to get this into the right hands at the newspapers. You can try a few free press release submission sites, such as prlog.com .

Local Magazine: Free

Same as above, it's too pricey initially. Take the PR approach and send news to industry magazines and blogs to help with your online presence.

Radio: Not now...

Now, radio can do lots for your company in terms of building brand awareness. With the CPM being fairly competitive, you can reach thousands of your customers for a competitive price. But that price still may eat up a considerable amount of your current budget. Radio should be used when you have gotten some road behind you in a marketing sense, and really understand what to expect and have money to correctly budget. Starting out, radio is going to be too expensive to really net you the customers that you want, without zapping your budget dry. Keep radio on the list for Y3 or Y4.

Television: Not now...

The same basic reason to avoid radio right now applies to TV. It has fantastic reach, but comes with a premium. And with a two thousand dollar budget, it's not the best use of your money. If you are interested in TV media, start studying the competition's ads. See what they are doing and how to compete beyond their level. Don't see your competition on TV? Then don't rush to be the first one out of the gate. There might be a reason this media is left alone in your market.

Digital

We live in the digital age! This horizon of ever growing new media choices makes digital advertising an attainable, but confusing place to be. I'm breaking this category down into a few subsections to help you see through the clutter.

Website: $600.00

This is an absolute must for any new business. Its the 21st century's version of the phone number. You need to have a relevant and legible URL, which you can buy along with hosting from a service such as 1-and-1 internet services . Once you have your URL and hosting package you can set up your business email account and get a simple "splash" page up with your company logo, hours, contact information and brief company overview. After that, you will want to work with a professional web advertising team to have a professional web design created and developed. At the least, you want a two page site with information about your services and a contact form and to collect customer inquires online. A smaller agency could provide this for 500-600 dollars. Again, a good part of your budget, but worth every penny as your online store front.

Email Marketing: Monthly Fee / $30.00

Once you start collecting your customers' information, you will want to start engaging them via email using email marketing. To do this professionally, you would want to sign up for a service like MyEmma , or Mail Chimp to find a plan that fits your budget. Once signed up, you can pick from template designs, or have your agency create a custom design for you. The key with this media is about relationships. You have established customers and prospective customers you need to continually reach out to and inform about your offerings. This media gives you that opportunity as well as exacting metrics to track your message and efforts. Brand awareness and product placements can both happen simultaneously, with the still most consistent ROI method available.

Social Media: Free

Entering social media can be a very powerful way to advertise your services and build some brand awareness. The rule of thumb I give to new businesses, is to monitor your involvement and pace yourself. All the tools in this toolbox, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc are all great to build brand awareness and to develop channels to communicate to your customers. But be sure to monitor your involvement, and properly invest yourself in the right channels and not over extend yourself. Overextending could be signing up for a Facebook account that you never use. This sends potentially negative signals to your friends and followers. Pick what you can successful manage and do it with an involvement that will garnish results. Each of these channels offer different types of communications and advantages. Do some research and find out which one would work best for your plans and start slow. You can always grow into it as more time becomes available.

Pay Per Click / Search Advertising: $50.00/Month

Search advertising is probably one of the most accessible types of online advertising thanks to innovation from search giants like Google and Yahoo. The SEO, or search engine optimization surge of the past six years, carries a parallel storyline to pay-per-click advertising. While you may desire to be #1 on Google, there are more important things to focus on especially if you are not selling online. But, PPC can do some very helpful lead generation if planned accordingly. There are many tactics you could use for PPC advertising that would not break the bank. Start with a very small keyword list and do some iterative experimentation on your own with search. There are lots of articles on tactics for PPC advertising. I recommend that if you do this, you start very slowly and do it after you have all of your other media bases covered. Don't forget to measure your success.

Outdoor: $200.00

You are fortunate if your business has a storefront because that means you have some free space to promote your brand and start the conversation on your wares. If not, you can look into yard signs, door hangers, etc to spread the word about your business. There are some fantastic gorilla tactics like sidewalk chalk, projectors, etc. that could be a creative way to get in to the public space. This could include sponsorship for outdoor events. Just watch your local laws, and keep your perception in mind. What ever you do, be professional and consistent. No hand painted signs unless it works for your business. Remember, everything is an extension of your company.

Your Face: $250.00

Yes, your face. Another way to think about this is networking. I know not everyone likes to network, but as you grow your business you will need to be a part of your business image. People prefer buying from people more than just faceless companies. Spend the time looking for local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce to invest some time in meeting people. If you go with the goal of meeting at least two new people, that is two more people that know you than had before.

Get Started!

With any budget the only limits are your initiative and imagination. This plan is only one path, but hopefully it gives you some idea of good place to start. You don't need thousands to become a national sensation, you can do so much more with great ideas than great amounts to money. Good luck!