10 marketing tactics to help you drive print buyers to your website

Loosely based on a line from the 1989 film Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come” is a phrase that often comes up when a business is trying to justify an investment. In the world of e-commerce, however, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Quite simply, ‘they’ will not come if they don’t know ‘it’ is there!

A website is a platform or a utility; it cannot attract traffic by itself any more than your press can sell print by virtue of its existence. In fact, building a website, declaring it complete, and expecting it to drive sales on its own would be like opening a shop with no signage, keeping the door shut and just hoping that customers will accidentally wander in.

Of course, a website is a business essential for any print business today. E-commerce already constitutes more than a quarter of UK retail sales [1], and while buying in the print industry has not yet reached anything near this proportion, research by Smithers suggests that globally, web-to-print will account for more than 7% of print volumes by 2028. In the US, a recent NAPCO study found that print providers expect web portals to account for 12% of their revenue within the next two years [2]. 

It is vital that your website can facilitate user-friendly print buying, but it is just as important (and possibly even more so) that you invest energy in driving customers and potential customers to it. Build it, make sure they will come, then measure your web traffic and use that data to optimise your content and marketing activities to make sure they keep on coming.

With this in mind, we’ve identified ten marketing tactics that many of our most successful customers use to drive traffic to their websites.

Good, old-fashioned pay-to-display advertising can take all kinds of forms. Offline advertising can run the gamut from print advertising in local newspapers and door-drop guides to out-of-home advertising in spaces frequented by your target audience. Online, the range of possibilities is even broader, with pay-per-click and retargeting advertising through search engines and social media platforms at the more cutting edge end of the spectrum, and display advertising on relevant blogs and websites at the other.

The key to getting it right and generating a return on investment is understanding who exactly your target audiences are, researching where they are and then being willing to experiment with a few different permutations to get the mix right. The level of complexity entailed will be down to which aspects of your product offering you want to promote, and to whom.

If, for example, your print business specialises in large format prints for professional photographers, you’d do far better to advertise in a magazine such as Professional Photo Online than in PrintWeek. Similarly, if you are a signage specialist whose business draws most of its business from the local area, an advertorial in a local Business Improvement District or Chamber of Commerce newsletter about the power of banner advertising is likely to have more impact than a spread in the local newspaper.

Whatever your paid advertising approach, don’t forget to include your website address in all of your advertising material!

As a print business, it is essential never to underestimate the power of printed direct marketing. After all, what better way to demonstrate the power of print than with an eye-catching, personalised piece that entices action with a too-good-to-miss offer. It is, of course, essential that your web address features clearly (and correctly) on this, and by using a QR code or PURL (personalised URL) you will not only make taking action even easier for the recipient, you will also make it possible to measure response rates.

Not only is printed direct marketing an important marketing channel, if your business’ product offering includes stationery or marketing materials, what better way to showcase new or unusual finishes, formats and materials? Even for a signage business, printed substrate samples that customers can touch can bring a tactile element back into the print buying experience.

Before you even consider email as a marketing tactic, first ask yourself whether your company’s email signatures feature your website. We’re constantly amazed by how many emails we receive in which we can’t click through to a website even if we want to!

For both long-term and newly signed-up customers, regular email newsletters can point your audience to new offerings, special offers and useful information such as how-to blogs or tutorial videos. One-off promotional emails can be used to highlight time-bound offers such as discounts on seasonal products or to drive interest in new product lines. And although email marketing will typically target customers and prospects who are already aware of your business and thus won’t necessarily drive new visitors to your website, the traffic it does generate has the potential to be even more valuable.

It is vital to remember that you always need explicit permission to send marketing emails to someone. Running giveaways, offering discounts and creating lead magnet content can all be effective tactics for building up your email database if they offer enough value to your audience, but it is also essential that your email sign-up forms are explicit about what people can expect from your email marketing.

Purchasing email lists is something that should never even be considered. It is also advisable to steer clear of ‘free’ email marketing from external services or publications using an email address at your domain, especially if you have SPF, DKIM and DMARC settings on your email. These can easily be flagged as SPAM, with the associated detrimental effect on your brand. Finally, sending mass emails from ‘free’ email addresses can also have a damaging result, so signing up for a domain that can be properly authenticated is another business essential.

Social media can be an excellent tool both for generating leads and building brand awareness by disseminating your website content, establishing topic authority and sharing promotions. Most importantly, social media enables you to build a community by engaging with your audience.

At its heart, social media is about building social connections, so you cannot simply use it as a ‘free’ tool for distributing marketing content. Instead, you need to focus on engagement - replying to comments, liking and sharing other posts. In fact, good social media practice advises a 4:1:1 rule, whereby you share four carefully curated pieces (created and shared by other users, with appropriate credit given, of course) for each original and promotional piece you post. It can also be advisable to use social listening tactics to identify trending topics that are relevant to your product offering.

Unless you have unlimited marketing resources, it is often best to choose one or two social media platforms and focus on using them as effectively as possible. Spreading your efforts too thinly can often result in having many profiles that look unused and lack engagement, which can be a worse look than no presence on a platform at all.

When selecting which platforms to focus your efforts on, it is important to choose based on who your audience is and where they are. According to research by Hubspot, some of the most popular platforms include:

• YouTube: The second-most visited website in the world (after Google and before Facebook), YouTube boasts a user base of more than 2.4 billion and an audience that spans all age demographics. It is an ideal platform for how-to and explainer videos, building brand awareness and community building, and has both B2C and B2B appeal.
• Facebook: Largely a B2C platform that is good for building brand awareness and communities, as well as advertising. Most Facebook users are aged between 24 and 35.
• Instagram: Featuring advanced e-commerce tools for brands, Instagram is known for high quality photography and videos, user-generated content, influencer marketing and advertising. It is widely used for product discovery by consumers, who prefer its in-app shopping experience to other social media platforms. The audience is evenly split between Gen Z (aged between 12 and 27) and Millennials (aged between 28 and 43).
• TikTok: Predominantly a B2C platform, but with growing adoption by B2B marketers, TikTok is known for authentic and entertaining short-form videos and is an excellent platform for community building. The audience is primarily Gen Z, followed by Millennials.
• LinkedIn: Best known as a B2B platform, LinkedIn is widely used for building professional relationships, long-term business development, social selling and, increasingly, industry-specific community building. Its audience is predominantly Millennial, but also includes older members of Gen Z (aged 24+) and Gen X (aged between 44 and 59).
• X (formerly Twitter): Lending itself well to both B2B and B2C brands, X is widely used for customer service and community building. Its audience is primarily Millennial.
• Pinterest: A B2C platform with a mostly Millennial audience (followed by Gen Z), Pinterest users are searching for inspiration and new ideas, so are already in a shopping frame of mind. It is a great platform for visual advertising, infographics and inspiring tutorials.

Finally, once you’ve established your presence on social media and begun to build and engage with your communities there, social media advertising can be an effective way to boost your reach and drive further engagement.

The phrase ‘search engine optimisation (SEO)’ refers to a set of techniques aimed at improving your website’s visibility to people using search engines to find a product or service that you offer. By helping your website to appear higher up (or rank higher) in organic search results, you will benefit from more visits from visitors to whom your offering may be relevant.

Search engines consider two main elements as they determine what your website is about and how to rank it: content and inbound links. The first of these is obviously the easiest for you to control, so SEO typically begins with research to find out what your target audience is searching for so that you can ensure that your website delivers content that the search engines’ ‘crawlers’ consider to be relevant, authoritative and credible.

The days of ‘keyword stuffing’ tactics are long gone, with any attempts at black-hat SEO tactics heavily penalised by all search engines. Instead, it is important to focus on building a website that search engines will see as an expert source on the topics about which they talk. As a result, investing in your on-page blog and PR activities can pay dividends.

PR activities and your blog can also be extremely valuable in establishing inbound links or ‘backlinks’. Quality is far more important than quantity here, so it is vital that these be from relevant websites. This is important from the point of view of SEO, but backlinks can also drive referral traffic, so it is well worth making this a part of your SEO strategy.

For many small businesses, ranking highly in local searches for ‘near me’ products and services can have a positive impact on web traffic. Whether a large proportion of your audience is local or you want to generate more business from your local area, it can be well worth investing some time in making sure you’ve got the basics right.

Tools such as Google Business Profile, for example, enable businesses to manage their own directory listing for no more investment than the time to set it up properly, which will significantly improve your chances of appearing in this kind of search. Local content such as blogs, online magazines and social media pages are also considered by search engines when determining a business’ position on the search engine results page (SERP), so some local PR efforts can pay dividends too.

Regular, original blog posts ensure that your website is regularly updated, with the added benefit of giving you content to promote via newsletters and social media. In addition, by creating content that answers the questions your audience is searching for, you can establish your authority on particular topics and ultimately provide a boost to your search rankings.

Typically educational, insightful or opinion-based in nature, an effective blog post addresses a particular question or explores a specific topic in 600 to 2,250 words that deliver genuine value to their intended audience. A blog post often also contains complementary media such as photographs, infographics or videos.

It is essential to focus on topics that you understand well - this is your chance to showcase your expertise after all. However, it is also vital to ensure that the topic and the way that you approach it is relevant to your audience. There is no sense in writing 2,000 words on the finer technical points of garment printing if your target audience is only likely to be looking for 25 shirts for a hen party or a company away day.

With YouTube now the second-largest search engine (after Google), it’s no surprise that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Video content generates high levels of engagement on social media platforms and is increasingly relied on by consumers for research into products and services.

Videos can be hosted on YouTube and embedded in your website, as well as shared via social media. It is interesting to note that - according to Wistia’s 2024 State of Video Report - more than two thirds of video marketers are creating video content primarily for their websites, followed by email blasts at 49% and then social media.

Many businesses with small marketing budgets avoid video creation out of fear of it being expensive, but it is important to remember that video content needn’t be expensive to be effective, as can be seen by numerous high-ranking videos on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Depending on who your audience is, participating in trade shows, conferences and even local business events can garner a big boost to web traffic. Similarly, online events such as webinars, when promoted effectively through channels such as social media and email marketing, can generate a strong return in terms of web traffic.

For businesses wanting to associate themselves with a particular topic, sponsorship of awards or virtual events can be an effective way to build brand awareness (and potentially also build high quality backlinks), while sponsoring local community events or sports teams can go a long way towards raising your profile among more local audiences.

It is always worthwhile asking happy customers to take a few minutes to post a review on your Google Business page and/or one of your social media platforms. Doing so not only has the benefit of showcasing positive testimonials, it can also be a source of referral traffic.

You may even wish to consider offering existing customers an incentive to refer new customers to your business. This sort of promotion can be done quite effectively in an e-newsletter or via social media, and by using campaign-specific URLs or even PURLs it can be possible to easily measure the result.

1. Never pay for traffic to your website. No matter how this is being sold, the visits will typically just be from bots and you could potentially just be paying for a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
2. Don’t just buy the service of any company that emails you out of the blue claiming to be able to improve your SEO, email marketing etc. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It is always best to use a service provider who has been recommended by someone you trust or to do your own research into possible service providers.
3. Don’t look for short-cuts! Whichever tactics you choose to drive traffic to your website, it is essential to understand that this is a long-term project and gains will be incremental and occur over time.
4. Don’t forget to include your website address in any offline marketing, as well as links to it in your email marketing and across any social media pages.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to driving traffic to your website, but these ten tactics are some of the most effective. Now that you’ve learned more about them, choose a few that align with your goals and experiment to find which ones resonate best with your audience. As you monitor your progress, you can adapt your approach until you find what works best for your business.

Getting your website marketing started doesn’t have to be difficult. It all starts with a single step. At VB Media we think that getting your website’s e-commerce offering set up should be the same way. If you’d like to find out how easy it is to be in control of your own website, book a demo.

[1] Office for National Statistics. May 2024. Internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales (ratio) (%). 

[2] NAPCO Research. 2023. Web Portals, New Path to Print Profitability. https://go.propago.com/w2p-res...