Tag: content

Web-To-Print: Taking the Steps Towards Choosing the Right Solution

Posted on by Ed Entecott

Having made the decision to invest in web-to-print, the most immediate requirement is deciding what platform to use. There is rarely a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for web-to-print and a careful analysis of organisational wants, needs and requirements must be conducted. This means finding the right solution for your organisation can be a bit of a minefield unless you have a firm plan in place.

Knowing the challenges that web-to-print can help you to resolve is one thing, however choosing a solution is another. Here are three key steps towards helping you choose the right solution for your organisation:

Step 1: Define Your Goals and Objectives

The implementation of a web-to-print solution is determined heavily by your strategic objectives. Once you know what your goals are, you will know what processes you need to consider. If your objective is to streamline your marketing workflows through faster image and asset production, you will need to look at your current asset creation workflow. Consider how images are shared throughout the organisation and how they are being used. Look at how much time and resource is spent on the creation of these assets and find a solution that will either remove or speed up some of the steps involved.

There may be multiple objectives, but one primary objective should be determined early on as the top priority. Once this has been decided, other objectives can be tackled as a follow on phase. If used correctly, a web-to-print solution has the ability to enhance the sales and marketing efforts of a business, and improve the efficiency of workflows.

When defining your objectives, work with all key stakeholders within your organisation and identify the wider needs by asking yourself:

  • Where is the company today, and where do we want it to be?
  • How many assets are we currently storing? Knowing how many files you have now, and how that number will grow, will help you to plan capacity requirements.
  • How will web-to-print integrate with the software tools and workflow solutions you already have in place?
  • What files types are you looking to create and store? Web-to-print solutions will vary in regards to the file formats they support. You’ll need to know what files users store and if the system can optimise how you work with them.
  • How many people will use the system and what access do you want to permit?
  • How quickly do you want it up and running? If you want it set up ASAP, then you need to look for a vendor who can provide the system and train your teams quickly.

Answering these questions will give you a clearer vision of what you want to achieve from implementing web-to-print. Failing to distinguish a clear view of what you want to accomplish will ultimately result in money being wasted on a solution that isn’t right for your organisation.

Step 2: Outline the Critical Features You Will Require

Investing in software is a large commitment. Not only will it potentially require monetary investment, but it also entails time and resources. Therefore, it only makes sense to compare all options and adopt the solution with the critical features you’ll need.

After analysing your goals and expectations, decide on a list of critical features that will help you and your team to get the most out of your solution day in, day out. Ask yourself:

  • Do I need a system that can help me manage brand consistency and messaging?
  • Are you looking for a solution to not only store and manage your assets but also help you create assets?
  • Do you want a solution that will act as a central resource point which facilitates an approval process?
  • Do you want a solution that runs online and doesn’t require the need to download software?
  • Is the solution easy to use? Web-to-print software should be used to help your company and simplify its marketing efforts. The solution should be user-friendly and consideration should be taken into how much time the end user is going to need to get the hang of it.

Here are some key features you may want to consider looking for when you decide on a web-to-print provider:

Asset Repositories: One of the biggest issues multi-site marketers face is that different internal teams will manage different projects such as a website, a social media campaign or the production of sales materials. As a result assets associated with these projects get stored within their individual department and not in one collective repository. Implementing a web-to-print solution with asset storage makes it incredibly easy to access, create and distribute approved design assets. This ensures that your teams are using the right version of the right asset ensuring overall brand consistency.

Accessible Online: It may be essential to adopt a web-to-print solution that is hosted online, especially if the business operates across multiple sites and there is a requirement to access assets from various locations. With no software to download, it can be accessed 24/7 on any device, anywhere in the world.

Editable Templates: One of the biggest costs relating to the production of marketing assets is the use of a graphic designer. From the original designs to re-edits – the costs can quickly accumulate. With some web-to-print solutions, you can upload pre-approved templates that allow you to customise only agreed elements. This could remove the need for a designer to artwork smaller jobs such as business cards and letterheads. This means your designers time can be better spent on the more important tasks.   

Order Print Runs: Starting print runs can be a laborious and time consuming process. Calling multiple vendors, requesting quotes, designing and sending files, waiting for proofs, making corrections, and waiting for print products to arrive can massively slow down time-to-market. A web-to-print solution can eliminate many of these tasks making the process of starting print runs more streamlined. The order process can take a matter of minutes, instead of days. 

Track Orders: If you have numerous people ordering printed assets from numerous vendors, costs can very quickly spiral out of control. With an effective web-to-print solution, you can manage budgets by seeing exactly who is ordering what before approving the order. By using a single vendor you have much tighter controls over your budgets.

It’s easy to get distracted by a sleek user interface or flashy functionality without a clear understanding of your requirements. Having that understanding of your requirements will ensure the solution you adopt is best suited to your needs.

Step 3: Find the Right Provider

Choosing the right provider is crucial to your web-to-print experience. It’s important to build a relationship with a vendor who will support you, not only in the initial implementation stage, but also into the future. When looking at vendors, follow these steps:

  • Look at the features that each solution offers. Do you feel confident that the solution will meld with your organisation?
  • Read customer case-studies about potential providers – they’re an honest indicator of how satisfied a vendor’s customers are.
  • Ask for a demo or a free-trial. This is not only a great way to explore the functionality for you, but it provides an opportunity to see how the vendor operates.

Remember, whichever web-to-print solution you choose, it has to be right for your organisation. This is an investment and a decision that you will need to work with daily, so spend the time evaluating all your options to ensure you’re making the right decision.

Brand Centurion

Choosing the right web-to-print solution for your company can be a time-consuming exercise, especially during the research period. Brand Centurion from Burst Digital is a powerful marketing portal with web-to-print capabilities that can help you overcome many of the issues faced by multi-site marketers. For a demo of Brand Centurion and its full capabilities, contact us today!

Continue Reading: Making the Business Case for Web-to-Print

5 Trends that Should Shape your 2017 Marketing Budget

Posted on by Ed Entecott

We’d all like a crystal ball to help us plan next year’s marketing budget so that we could spend more time engaging with our audience and less time planning. How nice would it be to know exactly which emerging technologies and trends are going to have the biggest impact on your bottom line? Or knowing exactly which digital channels your prospective customers will be using?

Unfortunately we can’t predict the future but that doesn’t mean we can’t draw upon some comprehensive research to help us make some informed predictions as to which way things are heading. The way in which the marketing industry drives forward is immense so here are our top five predicted digital marketing trends that should be shaping your 2017 marketing budget.

Video – Live Streaming

In the last year we have seen video skyrocket. Each social network now seems to offer its own video platform but live streaming is still relatively new. The first release of tools like Periscope and Meerkat only came about in early 2015. Facebook very quickly jumped on the bandwagon though and more recently, YouTube has introduced live streaming capabilities.

Live video streams can be used for marketing in various ways. They can build awareness, drive conversion and boost engagement. Very often this will be dependent on using the right social platform for your content though. By supplementing your current social strategy with live video, and hyping the build up to your content, you have a real opportunity to reach the masses. In fact, it is believe that in 2017, 74% of all internet traffic will be to video.

Despite the enormous growth of the apps there are still very few brands that have adopted video. Live content is now getting preference over all other content though. Its rate of user adoption and participation is driving the urgency to include this in marketing strategies. With live video being the best way to bring the full power of personal sales to social media, there is a real opportunity for ROI.

You can only do this though by adding value to your customers, so don’t just go straight in with a sales pitch. Give your customers an insight into the personality of your business. Stream company events, make live announcements, conduct interviews or even run a live video blog. Although it is safe to say that live video is here for the long haul, now is the time to determine how to best use it to build awareness and expand reach.

BoohooMAN recently worked with social media marketing agency Social Chain to deliver the most engaged live video ever. Customers were invited to engage with a live stunt on Facebook that saw air being pumped into a giant water balloon every time someone commented ‘pump’. The last person to comment pump when the balloon burst won a £250 gift voucher. This stunt received on 2 million impressions, 930,000 engagements and over 4,000 comments a minute! By creating content that they knew their target audience would react to, boohooMAN was the most talked about brand on Cyber Monday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Cross-Device Retargeting

Consumers are much harder to reach these days, especially as they switch back and forth between all their different devices. DMA’s Statistical Fact Book reports that the average consumer is now connected through five addressable devices. This in turn means five opportunities to get your brand in front of them. Today’s shopper uses a laptop, a tablet and a smartphone and consumers will bounce back-and-forth between device before making that final purchase decision.

As these consumers move across devices, marketers must engage with them in personalised, meaningful ways. By tagging consumers at their first touch point with your brand and tracking their behaviour across devices, marketers are able to target them with display advertising that is appropriate for the device. This unified view of a customer helps deliver a consistent and engaging message across devices ensuring your brand is always at the forefront of their mind. So rather than sending one message to what appears to be three different consumers, you can reach one consumer three times with a consistent, relevant message.

Google recently announced that advertisers will soon be able to reach users across devices with Google remarketing campaigns. This is a significant development as this isn’t something Google previously supported. This means marketers can now monitor how frequently users see their ads across devices enabling them to seamlessly to deliver a cross-device marketing campaign.

Personalised Content

There is so much content on the web that it can be very difficult for brands to break through the noise. This can also make it difficult for brands to differentiate from other brands, especially if they are offering the same product or service and targeting a wide audience. If you’re producing content to appeal to everyone, it’s not going to be as valuable as content that is targeted. Treating customers and prospects as one homogenous group fails to maximise the potential of your messaging.

Consumers now expect more from brands and as such, are looking for you to add value to their lives, not disrupt it. In exchange, brands get their custom, loyalty and brand advocacy. We can only achieve this though by providing content that our customers actually want to read. If brands have a better understanding of the person they are targeting, they will have a better understanding of the information their customer might be seeking.

It is also vital to consider how your prospects and customers are consuming your content. With mobile traffic now outstripping desktop traffic, the importance of delivering content on the right device, in the right format and at the right time is vital to its success. For example, first thing in the morning on the commute, content should be mobile friendly and easily digestible. However in the evening, when content is more likely to be read on a tablet, it can be longer-form and more in-depth.

For brands to add real value to consumers though, they need to shift their focus towards narrower niches, personalised content and more targeted channels. Although this will undoubtedly generate lower volume, the quality of engagement will be much higher and the content is more likely to resonate.

Optimise for Mobile First

Smartphones have now overtaken laptops as UK Internet user’s number one device. On average, we are spending almost two hours online on our smartphones every day. There has been an emphasis on optimising for mobile traffic for a few years and now it is clear that mobile first should be the mantra for the rest of the year and beyond.

Having a mobile-friendly website or app is just the beginning.  For the first time Google has started widening their first page search results to include mobile apps and they have recently released their “Mobilegeddon” algorithm. This will essentially phase out sites that have not been optimised for mobile access from showing in search results. This is very bad news for companies who have not yet optimised their website as their Google rankings will drop moving them further down the search page. Google has also introduced Mobile Accelerated Pages which delivers a lighter version of a web page that will load ultra-fast on mobile.

Desktop traffic is slowly beginning to fade away, and in order to increase the competitive edge of your company, mobile-focused online marketing is key. As it currently stands, one in seven Brits own wearable technology and the trend is set to continue.  This means marketers need to be prepared to produce content to fit the format, the channel, and the place.

Social Analytics

It may feel like social media has been around for a lifetime but it’s certainly still in its infancy. Although most companies have adopted one or two social media platforms, many of them are still not collecting data. Social media gives businesses an unprecedented opportunity for connecting with customers and prospects but 88% of marketers aren’t sure of the best way to engage their audience on social media which is potentially driving away consumers. With the move to mobile though and more brands relying on social platforms, analytics will offer the greatest opportunities.

The mass-target approach is out, and personalised data-driven marketing plans are in. Social media is competitive and it is crowded so it is essential to test and track results. By making greater use of social analytics, brands are able to drill down and gain valuable insight. There are certain nuggets of valuable data buried within the mountains of social media chatter. Organisations that are looking for a competitive edge can use social analytics to identify patterns in customer sentiment which in turn enables them to gauge their marketing effectiveness. This process goes beyond the usual monitoring of “likes” or retweets to develop an in-depth idea of who their social consumer is and this information is invaluable.

Using social analytics, brands are able to understand how their customers are making use of their services or products and what their views and opinions are about that particular company or product. There are countless blogs, tweets, comments and complaints regarding products and services and social media platforms are now the No.1 place for consumers to complain. This huge volume of information can be used to evaluate consumer’s experience which can then be used to help companies perform better.

Tracking data is also essential in helping brands get better results. If brands aren’t tracking their data, they are wasting their time on hit or miss type campaigns. Social media analytics is often the difference between success and failure for obtaining the results brands want.

So there you have it, five growing trends to watch out for this coming year and to consider adopting in your 2017 marketing strategy.

Written by Liam Beauchamp for Burst Digital, 12/09/2016