Times are tough, with the economy being what it is today. Things are slowly starting to look up, but when you’re running a business, any slow day can be bad. After all, when you’re not printing, you’re not earning anything for your work.
Growing your business in this economic climate is tricky. With customers becoming more frugal with their purchases, bringing in new customers will be difficult. Instead of worrying about it, you should instead look at shoring up your current source of revenue: your existing, regular customers. How do you best meet their apparel needs while increasing your profits from your regulars? It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out how to leverage this opportunity: let us help you out!
Simple Measures Still Work
Most of the tips and tricks in this article hinge on making the most of what you currently have in your print shop. Given how hard it can be to procure new equipment without leaving a dent in your cash flow, you really need to leverage everything you have in your print shop. This usually means adding value to your core services and improving your customer service skills to retain your customer base.
All things considered, these tips can be considered “cheap wins;” it doesn’t cost much to introduce them to your shop, but the returns for leveraging these to great effect can be significant in the long term. That means a constantly running print shop that’s taking regular orders and staying afloat amidst all that’s going on. You must adapt your print shop to the times so that your business can survive.
Upselling and Cross-selling
One of the most important tools to add value to your business is to use upselling and cross-selling. Upselling simply involves suggesting pricier, or premium, “upgrades” to a customer’s order. This adds to the overall sale and increases your revenue without needing to do much else. At the same time, you’re also adding value to your customer’s orders by giving them what they might need, sometimes without them realizing it. Meanwhile, cross-selling is when you suggest related items to go with an order.
How You Can Upsell
A prime example for upselling can be seen in competitive pricing matrices, where the more garments a customer orders, the lower the overall price they need to pay. In this case, you’re upselling their ability to have more for less. You could also offer several bundled deals which consist of specific services your shop has. You can draw customers to pay “less” in exchange for more value; the illusion of choice helps to make it seem that they’re really getting a whole lot from your bundles.
You can’t simply be upselling whatever you have because your customers are still discerning, especially when it comes to increasing their expenditure. You could ultimately lose the entire sale if you wrongly suggest something a customer might not like or need. Upselling is all about helping your customers add value to their every order.
The Potential of Bundle Deals
Let’s try this example to show how bundled deals can be enticing to your customers. Suppose you have a pricing matrix for your screen printing service, as illustrated below.
For a regular order that a customer places, you’ll charge them based on the applicable pricing bracket, then include additional fees that are applicable to the order: an art fee, a set-up fee, and any additional charges, such as a rush job fee. Your order might look something like this:
Your customer pays you $1,410 for the order and gets everything as advertised. That’s a decent profit, but you can always go with something better that works for you and your customer. Take this bundled deal example: you’re offering a flat rate on 100 shirts with all other fees included into the deal. On top of that, you’re now offering your customers a complimentary graphic design service to touch up their artwork and optimize it for printing. That’s already a sweet deal to grab your customers’ attention.
On top of that, if your customer decides to increase the order size to 200, you’ll offer them a pretty swell discount to go with their purchase.
Granted, you might have terms and conditions on specific things such as rush jobs, and you may need to tinker with some aspects of the bundle and its overall cost – that’s something you can work out for yourself. The appeal of a bundle can’t be understated, and it may just work wonders in improving your total sales revenue.
Cross-selling
The same rule applies to cross-selling, where you suggest a complementary product or service to add value to the order. A simple example is when a customer orders custom garments with their company logo screen printed on the back. You could cross-sell embroidered name tags to go with their garments as a way to make their order more unique. Or, you could offer something else that captures your customer’s interest: perhaps introduce them to attractive glossy inks you can add to their design at a competitive price point.
This example shows how the cross-sell of embroidered name tags helps you earn more.
Once you know what your customer requires in an order, it becomes easy to make recommendations that you know they’ll like.
Adding More Value
Your existing services are the cornerstone of your print business, so it’s only natural that you’d want to add more value to what you offer. Upselling and cross-selling are great avenues for increasing your profits, but they won’t always work. Adding value to your core can also yield great results, potentially opening a customer to an upsell or cross-sell opportunity.
You might think to yourself, “I’m already providing a great deal of value to my customers; what more can I give?” It doesn’t have to mean that you need to buy more equipment or have more fancy goodies to give away. The bundles we mentioned earlier are one such example as they can fulfill your customers’ criteria by offering plenty of services that suit their needs and at a competitive rate.
Discounts and Deals
This is the go-to strategy to draw in customers. You can also take note of the seasonality of your customers’ orders: particularly, in which month do they place the most orders with you? Is there a pattern to their purchases? Leverage this information and offer special deals and discounts for these customers, giving them an opportunity to place more orders and thus boost your revenue in that period. Perhaps a celebratory deal for the Fourth of July? People love their holiday discounts, after all!
Enticing Add-ons
You can offer add-ons to your existing services, too. If you have a graphic designer on your team (or if you have the experience yourself), you can offer graphic design support for your customers: you can help optimize their design for apparel printing or even fix their logo. If you have knowledge of embroidery digitizing, you can also do the same by optimizing thread counts and adjusting the design’s overall stitching. If you can give your customers more reasons to frequent your print shop, you should definitely act on it.
Your bundles can also benefit from having add-ons as well. In the case of our earlier example, you could augment the included complimentary graphic design service. For example, the basic complimentary service includes five revisions per provided artwork. You could have an add-on that increases the number of revisions to ten, or another one where you use your expertise to recreate/streamline their artwork. All of these can slowly add up to your overall profit margins!
One-Stop Solution
By turning your print shop into a one-stop center for all your customers’ printing needs, you are already adding significant value to your business. You can add fulfillment services for even greater convenience; you can quickly and easily ship packages directly to your customers (or their customers). And all of this doesn’t require you to make hefty investments into new machinery or equipment: you’re simply making the most of what you already have.
New Products and Services
That said, your customers appreciate any new-fangled products and services you introduce to your shop. However, leveraging what is currently popular and adding fresh variety for your customers can go a long way to boosting sales figures.
Augmenting Your Kit
Many times, the subject of new products and services immediately has you thinking about adding new equipment to make new kinds of things. But interest rates are very high in recent times, and the thought of taking out a loan can make you nervous – especially if you’re not financially ready for such a daunting commitment.
You can still use whatever you have on hand while offering something you’ve never done before. For example, if you’re a screen printer, you can look into screen-printed transfers as an additional product you offer. If you’ve ever had a customer who wished they could apply your design to something other than garments, screen-printed transfers are just the thing for them. The extra versatility of these transfers can be a very appealing point for your customers while opening you up to even more possibilities.
As previously mentioned, your graphic design services can be extended so that you can now create custom artwork for your customers and then print them. This new service supplements accepting customer artwork and optimizing them for print. By doing so, you’re effectively killing two birds with one stone: adding value and introducing something new simultaneously.
Increase Your Online Presence
Building your online presence can also be considered a new service for your customers if your shop doesn’t already have a website. Your online presence isn’t just about promoting your business: you can have a dedicated online storefront for customers to easily view your catalog, place orders, and even make payments to you – all from the convenience of their homes. You’ll also enable your more distant customers to easily reach you and order what they need without having to call you or drive (or fly) all the way to your shop.
Rewards Programs
Your regular customers have supported your print shop for a long time to be where it is today. Why not reward them for being such loyal customers? You might argue that discounted deals and free shipping are enough rewards, but customers don’t just want those. Once a competitor offers a similar service at a lower price, your customers won’t hesitate to jump ship.
A rewards/loyalty program is meant to show your appreciation to your regular customers. This can be offered via points for purchases they make, as well as special customer perks that give them plenty of unique bonuses. You can also mark milestone moments that celebrate (and even incentivize) long-time customers, such as an annual birthday month discount on their first order for the month. All of this help to make your customer feel that much more special as your customer.
You can decide what’s best for your customers, depending on their overall spending patterns with your shop. A points-based system might be a good idea if you get frequent large-scale orders; the points they earn can be used to unlock discounts or other special perks that add value to their order. Meanwhile, a tiered system may be ideal for customers who buy small quantities but at regular intervals; they slowly gain incremental benefits with every order they place. Again, consumer research will help you identify what your customers would want instead. Or you could just speak directly to your customers and see what they might think!
Other Useful Tips
Outside of these suggestions, there are plenty of other ways to grow your revenue. For example, before reclaiming a screen, you can offer customers a reorder bonus where the customer won’t need to pay an art fee: you can reuse the same screen for the new job since it’s reusing the same design. That way, you save some time that would’ve been spent on cleaning and earn some extra cash from a new job from the same customer.
It’s also important to consider your print shop in the sea of competitors doing the same thing as you are. What makes you different from the others? What’s your competitive edge? You need to consider building greater value in your branding: it could be upping your marketing game, building bridges with your customers, or some other clever method. Find creative ways to incentivize your customers to stick with you and get more value from your working relationship. It’s a win-win scenario that keeps both of you happy!
Conclusion
Boosting your revenue might seem easy at a glance, but getting it to work as intended may take some experimenting on your end. Customer trends and spending patterns are always changing, so it’s important to stay ahead of the game to ensure maximum profitability with your customers. Just remember that it’ll take time to find strategies that work for you, but they can pay significant dividends in the long term once implemented.
While a successful shop is turning a healthy profit every day as the orders keep coming, a truly successful business relies on the trust and communication it has in its customer base. When they leave, they can leave a lasting adverse impact on your business’ reputation. Trust is sacred; you never get it back once you lose it!
Being genuine with your customers requires transparency, understanding, and mutual respect. Building rapport with your customers does a lot more than you think. It enables you to be keenly aware of their needs, especially once you’ve worked with them for so long that you’re practically friends. The longer you build the relationship, the more trust you earn.
Eventually, once you find the winning formula that earns you healthy profits while also providing the best service your customers deserve, you might just find that they’ll slowly but surely put out the good word and draw in a new slew of loyal customers eager to see what you have to offer. We’re all for win-win situations!
