As the marketing and advertising industry begins to shift their budgets in response to a looming recession, more C-Suite and middle management personnel are looking for new ways to serve clients better while boosting their own agency’s bottom lines. 

Besides advising clients on how to reach both short- and long-term goals without exploding their media costs, smart agencies are looking inward for new technologies that help to streamline the marketing process. One of these, print management, is an easy-to-use, cost-effective solution to both managing print costs and bringing greater value and substance to marketing efforts. By using print management software, agencies can be more responsive to client needs — including making short runs of marketing materials more cost effective — and reduce waste to benefit both clients’ and their own bottom-line health.

Print Management Trends Set to Revolutionize the Marketing Industry

As the face of advertising and marketing evolves, agencies are keeping pace by choosing technologies that support enhanced strategies across a number of platforms — from digital to paper. One of these, managed print solutions (MPS), can help agencies provide clients with well-balanced marketing portfolios that generate the kind of impact that drives revenues. Some trends to watch include:

Sustainability

Last year, the concept of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives saw a huge expansion both in business adoption and consumer demands. Smart marketing agencies are helping clients to grow their ESG profiles by adopting in-house sustainable practices. Companies can place smaller orders of printed advertising materials to keep costs down so that fewer materials are wasted. And, if your agency combines this with using print management software to gain visibility into print usage you can further decrease waste and conserve ink, cartridges, and paper. 

Streamlining Workflows

If your agency has an in-house print operation, streamlining workflows using print management solutions is a key strategy to increase productivity while reducing waste and inefficiencies. Automated workflows can reduce the burden on in-house staff and help project managers achieve greater control over project timelines to boost successful outcomes. In addition, smart automation can reduce completion times and make implementing changes easier, allowing you to be more responsive to client needs and goals.

Variable Data Printing (VDP)

Brand awareness is a key component of any successful marketing strategy, especially ones that use print media such as mailers and other promotional materials to reach new customers and create loyalty among existing ones. Using VDP technology, you can create personal messaging by automating print output on a digital press. In this way, materials can be customized for specific niches or demographics, allowing more personalized communications. 

Digital Printing

Digital printing will continue to revolutionize the way content is created. With digital printing, marketing, and advertising firms have an affordable, efficient way to create stunning visual content on a vast array of media for their clients. Using digital printers, content can be created on materials such as:

• Plastics
• Canvas
• Cardstock
• Vinyl
• Wood
• Glass
• Metal

Of course, this is in addition to standard output produced on paper in brilliant color. New ink choices round out the versatility of this technology, allowing marketing to amplify content’s visual impact with touches of white, gold, silver, and other metallic shades. 

Managing Your Print Environment with Help from Blue Technologies 

Many marketing firms in the industry today are operating with small, or even non-existent, IT departments to help them produce the high-quality marketing collateral that clients want and need. Print management technologies can help streamline your business processes without further impact to your in-house team if you have one; and without the need to hire expensive talent if you don’t.

At Blue Technologies, our team of print management experts can help you glean all the benefits of print management solutions for optimal print uptime, better visibility into print data to control waste, and myriad other advantages such as the ones outlined above. Our team brings you clarity through an in-depth analysis of your current infrastructure, a custom-tailored print management solution created specifically for your needs and goals, and ongoing support and maintenance for the life of your system.

Get on the leading edge of today’s marketing technology with print management. Contact a Blue Technologies consultant and discover how our solutions can bring you the advantages you need to set your agency apart from the competition.