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Every business owner takes a big risk in starting and growing their company. There’s room to fail, but also enough room to succeed and immerse yourself in the various aspects of running a business. No matter how small you start, you’ll find yourself far from where you took that first step. Starting a business isn’t just about running day-to-day operations and accounting for a limited budget. As a one- or two-person show, you’ll handle everything from public relations, customer service, to digital marketing if you don’t have the budget to outsource these integral functions.


Thankfully, the internet has made all sorts of knowledge accessible to anyone willing to learn. Having served hundreds of small businesses with its products and services, PrintPlace understands how information can make or break a company. We’re doing our part in sharing the knowledge business owners need to know. For this series, we’ll start with expert advice from the leaders of PrintPlace's marketing department. Digital marketing is a complex industry, so we’ve gathered answers from experts in its different fields. Find out what they say are the three aspects you need to be good at in digital marketing.



Jacquelyn leads the PrintPlace customer retention team in ensuring our first-time customers become repeat buyers. She has over 10 years working in different aspects of digital marketing, from link building, paid search and shopping, to lifecycle marketing. She narrows down the three things retention specialists must know:

• Relentless pursuit to solve problems, always seek to make things better.
• Be good at telling stories – Not everyone understands what you do. Communicate with this in mind, it goes a long way.
• Be friends with data and numbers BUT do not drop logical thinking. Understand what the numbers mean and how data works. It empowers you. It’s hard to argue with someone who can tell a story, recommend a solution, and has data to support all that.

Bradley leads the PrintPlace customer acquisition team. He has over 10 years of experience acquiring customers through digital advertising. Here are the three things he thinks you should know about acquisition:

• Satisfy your customers – Find out what makes your customers click and provide it to them.
• Know your competitors – When able, one-up your competitors on value, features, or emotion.
• Overcome your limitations – Identify the limitations holding back your productivity and overcome them.

Jeanne leads the new tactics and programs for both the acquisition and retention teams of PrintPlace. She’s been in the marketing industry for over 15 years, selling everything from dental appointments to luxury cruises, all while using an array of fantastic tools from the ever-changing marketing toolbox. When it comes to selling products online, she focuses on three values that are integral for marketing:

• Data-Driven: In today’s marketing world, everything revolves around data so being comfortable both in working with and interpretation is a must!
• Flexible: If the last year has taught us anything, marketers must be flexible. Being able to react quickly to your ever-changing customer and company needs is vital.
• Curious: With the diversification of content consumption, being open-minded as a marketer to new concepts, platforms, etc. is extremely beneficial. Facebook was a game-changer as a marketing platform due to its targeting ability. They’ve collected so much data on users that the targeting was like no other platform. Now that privacy changes are happening all over the place (iOs 14.5, the demise of the third-party cookie, etc.) it will be interesting to see how it affects digital marketing, including Facebook.

Joy brings with her over 10 years of SEO and Digital Marketing experience and success both from the agency side and client-side. Here’s her expert advice on what you need to know about SEO and how to be good at this essential in digital marketing:

“To be effective at doing SEO, one needs to be truly good at strategy, problem-identification/root-cause analysis, and data analysis. Google lists over 200 ranking factors and throws in major algorithm updates like a curveball to spice things up. Nothing is stagnant in SEO, so one must adapt and roll with the punches.

There are also fundamental truths that an SEO practitioner can hold on to, that no amount of Google updates can sway and that is to give your visitors the best user experience. Knowing when and how to react, act, and when not to are all characteristics of a seasoned SEO professional.”

A fundamental requirement would be knowledge of how Google Search works. Her top 3 tips to achieve this would be:

• Read – industry blogs, opinions, case studies
• Collaborate – Learn from other teams such as developers, writers, paid search counterparts, etc.
• Apply – which includes monitoring results and iterating where needed.

Rupakshi is a pricing enthusiast with five years of experience analyzing the prices of airline tickets and print products. She crunches the numbers for PrintPlace products so that our customers know they’re getting value for money with all our prices. Here are the top three tips she has for marketing practitioners in pricing:

• Data is gold! Data helps us understand our customers’ preferences and helps us make decisions with a higher level of confidence.
• Monitoring is key: In today’s world of ever-changing costs and demand, being able to adapt to changes quickly is a necessity.
• Get the word out: Lower prices that nobody knows about don’t benefit anyone.

Now that you have essential tips on marketing your products or services, you can go in half-ready to fight for your business. Continue learning as you apply the advice above, seeing what works or doesn't work along the way.

Have any tips of your own from immersing yourself in the marketing side of your business? Let us know in the comments below or send us your thoughts at community@printplace.com. You can also hit us up with a Facebook or Instagram tag.

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Useful Tips and Innovative Inspiration