Before You Start

Before any form of marketing takes place, you need to look objectively at your business image. Does your business portray the right image for your products? Look at headed paper, business cards, leaflets, telephone number (not a mobile, for instance).

Do you have a professional looking website that is easy to navigate?

Look at your competitors locally or nationally. If your company image does not portray professionalism, this may limit the potential impact of your marketing.

Create a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) - but remember 'cheap' is not always a good USP.

The style and image of your brand need to be in sync with your USP.

Who Are Your Customers?

Anyone who uses advertising banners and flags, who exhibits at trade shows or uses large point of sale displays! Take a trip round the local industrial estates for inspiration if you need to, but think about Hotels, Pubs, Gyms, Car Dealerships, DIY Warehouses and Tool suppliers, Hire Companies, Industrial Building Rental Companies… the list is endless and so is the potential profit.

Remember your existing customers! Include large-format in your website and all communications with your customers (look at VB Media if you haven’t got a website). It shouldn't dilute what you're already doing, but enhance your whole message.

Advisory Note: We understand some of your customers collect from your premises and will object to our carriage costs. If you don’t want to absorb this cost into your margin, the standard rebuff is: "This is printed in our specialist large-format division based in [insert name of town a long way away]".

How Do You Get Your Service In Front Of These People?

There is an old marketing adage that says If you try to reach everybody at once, there's a good chance you'll reach nobody. Instead think about identifying a specific target market and design your marketing specially for this market.

An example of this is to have a leaflet designed that will appeal to gyms. You could have pictures of roller banners (often used inside gyms) and pictures/mock ups of membership offer banners.

The point is that by making the advertising tailored to the target audience, the recipient will be more receptive to your message.

Find an advocate of your services and products. Do you supply one branch of a national chain? If that one branch loves your product or service why not attempt to 'go national'. Set up a national price structure or design a service level agreement nationally and enlist the help of your 'advocate' to make this happen.

Research is vitally important to any business. The more research about your market you do the better as this will enable you to tailor your marketing, and even the products you offer, to their needs.

Find out how much your competitors are charging for banners. Remember, they probably won't be able to print anything over 1300mm wide (approx., depending on their kit) so you'll automatically have a competitive advantage, by being able to print up to 3.2m in one piece.

Simple Marketing Options

Below is a list of some ideas on what you can do to help market your business.

The introduction of GDPR has confused a lot of companies as to what they can and cannot do with regards to contacting people for marketing purposes.

The main reason for GDPR is in the name 'General Data Protection Regulation' - it is meant as a regulation for the protection and use of a customer's data. This means you have to look after your customer's data securely and you cannot just freely give their contact details to anyone you think might make use of it.

This is to protect consumers from companies that like to pass their data around without their consent and to help prevent their data falling into the wrong hands

When it comes to contacting your existing customer base there is the 'legitimate interest' reason for contacting. They do not want you to stop marketing and generating business and if a customer has purchased from you before you can apply the legitimate interest reason to this (as long as the customer has not previously unsubscribed or asked you not to contact them for this purpose).

However, if you do contact them for marketing purposes, you have to legally provide them with a way to opt-out of this form of contact.

Transactional emails such as Order Confirmations and Invoices are not subject to GDPR as they are part of the order process and required for clarity and confirmation for both parties.

The above is our interpretation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and we encourage you to make yourself fully aware of what it entails. For all the information on GDPR, please visit the ICO website

Search Engines & SEO Companies

Everybody wants to be at the top of Google! and rightly so with people barely needing to scroll to get the results that they want. However, in reality it is not always practical.

Being found organically (through a normal search and not through an advert within search results) for a search term like 'banners' will be impossible if you are just starting out. One of the factors that Google ranks sites by is longevity (how long that term has been relevant to your site for) so anyone starting off is already on the back foot.

Search results are also based heavily on content. The more relevant your content is to the term they are looking for, the better. However, do not go overboard and start adding as many words as possible as this is know as 'key-word stuffing' and will have a detrimental effect on your rankings.

One way to help yourself is to start by mentioning your target market within content "providing banners for schools in essex". If you can start by tailoring your content to your market (naturally and not forcing key words in) then it should help give you helping hand, although it can still be a bit of a waiting game.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Companies can be a great investment. However, if you would like to find out how good an SEO company actually is, then try to search for them on Google, but not by name. If you can find an SEO company on Google (that isn't an advert) for the search terms SEO, then they must be good because this is highly sought after.

Please bear in mind that for a good SEO company, you will be paying a hefty price. If you find an SEO company for cheap, then you may find that they will have an adverse effect on your overall ranking as they use outdated or 'black-hat' techniques.

Also, a good SEO company should always give you regular reports on how your site is performing for selecting phrases.

Some Helpful Marketing Links

Below are some links to useful resources to help you.