Published on September 6th, 2017 | by Guest

What should be first in web to print – Activity or Strategy?

A web to print solution might not be new to people but the growing interest in this technology even in such tough economic times is a new bite. According to Gareth Parker, Production Print Solutions marketing manager at Ricoh UK “Interest in W2P is such that 30%-40% of UK printers will “seriously consider” investing in a W2P product over the coming years.” With the increase in growth, there is an increase in demand too. However, the confusion still lies whether to focus on activity or strategy to get success in the web2print industry.

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A mammoth of printers fail only because they have not taken the right decision. They think that doing activities continuously will enhance the business growth, but little do they know that to stipulate that order one needs a strategy in place. Without a strategy, any activity you do will go in vain. You need to have a proper planning before you start an activity. Like how and when do you want to target your market and with what.

To have anything fall in its place you need to use a good and strong strategy. Both activity & strategy are important but you have to be sure to prioritize the right thing. You have to decide where you want to be at the end of the activity, so your strategy is very important. People are under the impression that setting-up a web-to-print solution is very difficult; well that is just a myth. If you have found the right provider, installing this will not be an issue.

Even to set-up the web to print software, planning is required. A well thought plan is necessary to have this software installed in your current system. You do not just go and pick up the best one, pick the one that fulfills your needs and your client’s needs. Maybe the best software is still not for your type of print business. A closer look at the software and comparing it with the needs of your business and your clients will help you land on a good one.

There are endless numbers of strategies you can use to make your web-to-print a great success. When you do not strategize then your team is like that hockey team, running behind a small ball in circles trying to get a hold of it, some might even get but the result is more important. They need to reach the goal to make the run a success, so is the case with your team.

Why is it so?

You and your team will work too much in it but you do not work enough on it. Let me make it simpler, you will work hard to get sales, but you will not work hard in the right direction, like how to get more sales. The prime concern of any business is to get loyal and more customers, but you need to use the right strategies that will make your print business a hit.

Some strategies you can use are:

Understand what your business is all about
Define your target Market
Research Your Target Market
Talk about the benefits
Strategies for your Activities

Understand what your business is all about

To make any strategy fall in the right place you need first understand your business. What features it currently has and why is it different from other providers? Does your software give good enough speed? Is it easy to navigate (user-friendly)? Once you have been able to establish these things about your business you have understood it well, and planning strategies from here gets easier. When you know the reason for the planning then the output is also good.

Define your target Market

Now that you have established who you are or what your business is, you then need to decide who your customers are going to be. This might have been tough earlier, but since you know the USPs of your business, defining your target audience gets easier. The competition out is huge; you need to compete with it. So your strategy of getting to the right market can be based on from where you got your maximum orders. Then you need to decide whether you still want to target them or would like to change based on from where you can get more orders.

You don’t need to limit yourself target only one group, but at the same time don’t fill your plate so much that you need to throw it all away, what I mean is don’t run behind too many audience. Stick to a few; establish yourself among them and then move towards expanding your reach.

Research about your Target Market

Now, since you have defined the market you wish to target, doing a little research on them is very important. It can be a single market or maybe multiple. You need to amalgamate your target and their needs to get the best results. Understand the requirements of the customers before you plan to market your services and products. If you make it up to meeting their expectations, you can add more customers to your database.

You can also try to talk to people in the same to find out what situations they face and how they have handled it so far. It will give you an insight of the whole thing.

Talk About Benefits

You need to talk more about the benefits your business will do to them in order to build more trust. You need to tell them that keeping in mind their print requirements you go this product created. Tell them the benefits and they will always believe you that is why they have always been your loyal customers.

Strategize for your activities

Now that you know to whom you need to market your business, using marketing strategies to run the activities is what you need to do. You can use various ways to do your activities to attract more customers. This will allow you to use the activities you have planned in the right way.

Conclusion

In web-to-print software, it is important to strategize in the smartest way so that you can run your activities. Strategy should always be priority as it will fetch you results that alone activities never be able to get you. Your strategies make your activities worth a try or else your efforts go in vain. A mammoth of printers fail only because they have not taken the right decision. They think that doing activities continuously will enhance the business growth, but little do they know that to stipulate that order one needs a strategy in place.

About the author:

Amy Watson has completed her education in Information Technology sector and then she has started working in eCommerce web to print research & development segment at Design’N’Buy. After getting more than 5 years of experience in web-to-print technology market segment as well as Print Commerce product customization software development & solution she found best interaction model about it. She really enjoys her success in research and development for start-up business by extending current model with highly reflective ROI model.

Tags: activity, print, strategy, web, web-to-print