In today’s competitive marketplace, winning new print business requires more than offering quality products and services. It demands a strategic approach incorporating community engagement to strengthen customer relationships, build new relationships, and establish trust with local businesses.
Summer is the perfect time to get involved and entrenched with your community. Here are a few ideas to get your creative and strategic brainstorms started.
Create a Community Event Calendar
Whether it is a magnet to hang on the refrigerator with a comprehensive schedule, or has a QR code to scan for information, sending details about local summer events to locals will linger for months – that means your business name and logo will, too.
If you go the QR route, you have even more opportunities to cross-promote with local businesses. For example, perhaps your community is holding a summer concert series on Saturdays in the park. What do people who watch concerts in parks need? Blankets to sit on? Lawn chairs? Coolers? Items for the cooler?
Talk to the business owners that sell these items. Get them involved in your ‘Summer Concert Series Promotion” and create marketing materials and signage to inform customers about their deals and participation.
If people are in the store, they can take advantage of the promotion there, and if they scan a QR code they can either get a promo code to shop online or go right to a landing page with everything they need to enjoy the concerts in style and comfort.
And don’t forget about the local businesses around the park. Concertgoers may prefer to have dinner before or after, or perhaps a drink, or some ice cream. You can offer Summer Concert Series punch cards where customers are rewarded by patronizing businesses around the park, and businesses get rewarded with traffic and sales on concert days.
There are so many options if you get tactical and creative. This strategy applies to street fairs, festivals, and all types of local events that have businesses and restaurants surrounding them. All seasons, too.
Here is a pro tip! If the businesses you sign up for event promotions share the costs, this would be an easy sell. And since our ultimate goal is to generate new print business all year, you now have a new roster of contacts to call upon who have already benefited from your help. Reach out for a meeting in mid-August to discuss their marketing, sales, education, and customer communication needs and goals.
Invest in Local Events
Give your print business community clout and name recognition by sponsoring local events. Beyond your logo on a banner or in an event program, see if there is a way you can provide a personalized print experience at the event.
Think like an amusement park. Whether pressing T-shirts with transfers, making keepsakes from supplied photos, or from a fun selfie station or backdrop you create, there are many opportunities to connect personally with event attendees.
If you can sell these items – do it! If not, consider it a marketing and new business investment, and make sure your logo and website are on everything. Your budget, your promotion. Make it work for you.
Capture some data to follow up after the event and share how your print business can support local businesses and residents all year and for many years, after.
Create a Local Event
Many print businesses have parking areas or are within office parks and complexes that have space to support a community gathering. It could be ‘Food Truck Friday,” a market (or art show) for local artists, makers, craftspeople, brewers, or artisan food products.
With the correct permissions and permits, your print business can be associated with something cool, and plenty of print promotional needs come with these events. You can work those costs into participant contracts and offer them even more ways to connect and communicate with event attendees during and after your event through print.
Your Community Support Matters
I understand the ideas have many moving parts and may require an investment you can’t make in time or money to execute. Do what you can, now. Use this post as a prompt for a community outreach brainstorm. Apply the concepts to other seasons, or to summer 2025 and beyond.
You are surrounded by residents and businesses that don’t realize they need print in their lives. They may not understand how print can enhance their world personally and professionally. Take advantage of every opportunity to educate and printspire your community by being an active and prominent participant in all things local.
PRINT LONG AND PROSPER!
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See Deborah’s featured post: Big Changes in Real Estate Mean New Opportunities Ahead for Print Businesses
Deborah Corn is the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse at Print Media Centr, a Print Buyerologist, international industry speaker and blogger, and the cultivator of Print Production Professionals, the #1 print group on LinkedIn. She provides printspiration and resources to print and marketing professionals through education, events, Podcasts From The Printerverse, ProjectPeacock.TV, and an array of community-lifting initiatives including Girls Who Print and International Print Day,
Deborah also helps companies create more meaningful and profitable customer relationships by utilizing 25+ years of experience as an agency, brand, and corporate print buyer who has assessed, hired, and worked with hundreds of printers and service providers.
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