Prioritizing Online Tools for Existing Customers

The dream of an online business that delivers profitable revenue from strangers is a good dream to have. It simply takes a lot of work to be successful at it. I have seen too many printers spend too much time focusing on the software and forgetting that internet traffic is not free or easy to get.

We all have experience ordering online. We all have experience searching online. Yet most printers do not currently offer a way for their existing customers to do business with them online. And because most printers service customers they know (B2B, or business-to-business), they are not worrying too much about how to be found online (SEO, or search engine optimization). 

The opposite of the “most printers” model is a pure online print business whose primary target is strangers who “find” them online. They are expending a lot of time, effort, and money to be “found online”—what I like to call “earned traffic”—and/or they are paying Google or social media channels advertising dollars for what I like to call “paid traffic.”

Traditional printers who have sales teams out trying to get new business and only do business with companies they have an established relationship with are constantly telling me, “I want anyone (strangers) to be able to order from my website.” There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Every business owner is constantly looking for ways to grow their business. It’s only a problem because it requires a lot of changes in the way you do business in order to successfully execute on it. Buying online ordering software is the easiest part of the puzzle—but is should not be done until you tackle the harder, much more fundamental changes that would have to happen to your business.

First and foremost, before you spend any time, money, or effort on a project to allow strangers to buy from your print business online, answer one really important question: “How will strangers find your website online?” This sounds like an innocent question but it isn’t. There is no such thing as “if you build it, they will come.” Traffic on the Internet is expensive. What do I mean by that? It is expensive to get traffic online; you can either invest in strategy, content, and expertise to earn traffic through SEO or you can pay Google for search advertising. Internet traffic is not free; internet traffic is not cheap. So until you know how you’re going to get traffic to a website that allows strangers to order from you, don’t spend one dollar building it.

The other thing to think about if you’re a business-to-business printer today is, what will your current customers think if strangers can order from you online and they can’t? One of the most frustrating things about being an existing customer of any business is when you feel like the business is prioritizing new sales over your existing business. It's a good way to have revenues go in the wrong direction. I always tell printers that it's better to provide existing customers with online ordering before you go after strangers because your current customers should feel they are the most important.  

Online ordering means software rather than customer services agents is submitting orders into your business. For many print businesses, this can be very disruptive. At first, it feels a little weird because orders can now come in at 3 a.m. when nobody is physically working at the plant. Getting your team used to online ordering should start with your existing customers.  

Many printers come back with, “I’ll create a whole new site/brand/business division so that I can operate independently from my current business.” In many ways this is a good idea, as it keeps the direct-to-strangers business separate from the business-to-business operations. It just takes a lot of effort to run another business. And if you’re creating this business from scratch you will have exactly zero online traffic to start, so you’ll have to build it via online advertising dollars or a great SEO strategy.

The primary point of this whole article is that an online strategy to get business from strangers does not begin with software. It begins with a marketing strategy and budget for driving traffic online. You can start working on that without buying any software. You can do research. You can seek advice. Then you need to decide what products you want to sell. Then you need to decide your online pricing. All of this can be done before software. When I explain even part of this process to printers, they usually come back with, “We don’t have time for all that.” Exactly. There is no “easy button” for creating a successful online print business.