This is a very common issue facing many PSP’s and MSP’s. They’ve invested in the technology and understand how it will help them internally, but now they have to ‘sell it’ into their clients.  Hopefully, many PSP’s have already gotten buy in from their clients, but if not, a marketing strategy is needed for the solution.  A marketing strategy you ask? Yes. A marketing strategy for your own salesman to not only sell your products and services but also sell the additional value that your new web-to-print technology brings.  Especially in a B2C endeavor and focus, a simple, but effective tactic is to allow your potential visitors and customers play with the solution itself, in a ‘sandbox’ so to speak.  Meaning, open up some screens and templates and allow your visitors to create and even generate (a low res, of course) PDF or image.  The interactivity alone, will help them to engage your organization.  Using a simple tactic like this with a focus on capturing an email address perhaps will help you build your visitor community and start to show a ROI on the front-end of your endeavor.

This is just a simple example of a web-marketing tactic utilizing web-to-print technology for selling the solution into your potential visitors.

I’ll provide another tactic for use on the B2B side next time. Comments?

Many believe that brands will become less important as digital technology marches onward. They will surely be disappointed. In fact, it is likely that branding will become more important in the digital age. With more media and more brands, consumers have to more to filter out. In order to cut through the clutter, marketers will have to work harder to build brands that inspire loyalty.

Read this whole post.  I think it makes a lot of sense for print service providers to review this posting to understand how this will impact the entire marketing effort, including the print procurement aspect.

The answer: Know your customer.

The question is what type of control is the most valuable for a print buying user? The answer is, like most things, ‘it depends’.

For many print buyers having the ability to simply have  a web form with text boxes so they can type in information, preview and submit is not only the bare minimum of what they need and want, but also is self-explanatory enough to ensure that minimal errors or questions arise. Thus from a purely functional standpoint, a PSP (Print Service Provider) can upload, enable and configure templates to fit their clients needs.  This seems to be the most simple and efficient approach.

The alternative, is design online.  What is the difference? Really the true difference is the control that is given to the print buyer. In a simple template personalization approach, mentioned above, the user can’t really alter or change anything. They can only type in their personal information and preview.  In comparison, a true online design tool, like Group Canvas, allows the print buyer to have a Photoshop-like editing tool to allow them to move elements of the template around, upload or insert an image, change or add new text, fonts and sizes.  The advantages are numerous, but like many things, the more control you give your print buyer, the more help you should be prepared to offer.  Although this is a general rule, some print buyers and even more so as we move into the era of ‘everything online’ are capable or handling the technology and minimal question and errors will arise after an initial use.

So, to summarize, in a Web-To-Print solution, which type of tools are right for you, really depends upon, what types of tools are right for your users.  Hope this has been helpful.

A pretty common response I formulate in my mind is, “what would you tell a print buying customer?”.  Luckily, the tools are available to do exactly that.  As most PSPs are evolving into marketing service providers (MSPs), they can utilize the same tools that they would offer their clients.  (VDP, Purls, Email…).

Not only using the same technology for yourself makes sense from a financial perspective, but it makes it that much easier for your sales reps to sell this offering to you current and prospective clients.  After all, you are practicing what you preach!

Hope this has been helpful.

Which leads us to the next question; What type of w2p personalization is right for your customomers? Do your customers have strict brand guidelines with only text variations? Do your customers need the “1 hit wonder” and just want to find a nice design, upload a logo and add a phone number? These questions are critical for any provider who plans to offer web-to-print capabilites for their customers. Our professional opinion is, keep is simple silly. If your customers have only the need to innput text, then a simple web-based form editing tool or just personalizing the template will suffice. This keeps them from having to upload logos or manage assets and worry about placement on a design. Enter some new text, review and submit. Simple. While in comparison, if you have a large array of availalbe designs and want to allwo your customers to upload their logo and perhaps manage layers of the design itself, a full online desing tool would make more sense. I generally advise clients, the more power and control you give your customers, the more you should prepare for questions and corrections. Despite that warning, we also have a follow-up suggestion for handling exactly that type of issue. (for another day)

What a colleague of ours is witnessing is that his web-to-print personalization tool is allowing him to offer designs and templates with minimal mistakes to capture new customers. This web-to-print enticement, seems to not only capture the customer but proves to be a valuable tool for brand recognition.

The value of the customer outweighs the value of the first order. We are finding that a properly launched web-to-print template personalization tool accomplishes that exact need.

This topic seems to be picking up steam in the last 6 mos. First, as we are still in the infancy of web-to-print, the newer and hotter buzzword is procurement. Along with procurement is ‘spend management’. Spend management is the means by which an organization takes control of their spending and reviews and utilizes the best price from their respective providers to achieve maximum cost savings.

How does all of this intermix and relate?

What I would propose is that the cost for a corporate marketing department to build and integrate a system for print procurement with some web-to-print capabilities is too high. Not only do they have to capture and secure the blessings of IT, but they have to have the internal resources to fund that development time. What I would propose is a flexible system built upon fundamental data sources like xml, for ensuring migration, and utilizing a system whereby the company itself can take the code and then modify it to meet their future needs. OnlinePrintSolutions.com is on of those firms that has such an offering. They have the web2print technology, including the capability to set budgets and use cost centers, plus they are flexible enough to allow for modification of the code by the owner in the future. Top it off with logic and rules for unlimited digital storefronts, cross media technolgy and a digital asset manager and OPS provides the best platform for a corporate marketing department to hit the ground running.

I’m happy to debate and share with others what we’ve found to be more of the hurdles relating to corporate adoption. Hope this post has helped.