Whether your company is just starting out in its industry and looking to acquire printing services for an upcoming event, or you’ve been established for years and want to expand or streamline your print solutions, you might be wondering just what kinds of options are out there. You know brick-and-mortar shops exist, but what if they don’t carry what you need, or their timeline doesn’t match your requirements?
It might be time to consider a print management company, otherwise known as a “print broker.” These printing specialists will work with you to determine exactly what printing needs your company has, utilize existing connections with the professionals who can best meet those needs and keep a careful eye on budget, timeline and project scope to fulfill your expectations.
So what is the value of print brokers, and would this type of management system be a good fit for you? At Integra Graphics Synergy, we’ve been in business managing diverse print projects for almost 20 years, so we’d like to think we have a pretty good handle on who this system works for and who would be better served in the brick-and-mortar realm.
Below, learn four of the top advantages you could tap into with a quality print management company by your side.
1. Learn About Your Full Range of Print Opportunities
If you’ve looked for top print solutions for your marketing needs in the past, you may have felt as though the options were limited, especially in today’s heavily digital world. Maybe you read articles with lingo you didn’t quite understand or wondered which materials would be truly impactful in your marketing campaigns.
The truth is that the print marketing world is broad and looks a little different for every company. Printing methods, technology and equipment evolve and change over time, opening up a variety of options you may not have considered. When you’re focused on what your business does best within your industry and area of expertise, you don’t have time to become an expert within the print world, and that’s where a print broker comes in.
When you meet with a print broker, you won’t need to show up with every question answered and your print marketing plan ironed out. The print management specialist will show up to help you decide on your best path forward based on the information you can provide. They’ll help you determine what can be done within your budget, which print solutions would best serve your brand, what kinds of campaigns might be most effective and what can be done on an optimal timeline.
Want to know more about what kind of timeline you might expect with a print broker like Integra? Click below to answer a few questions and receive an estimate.
You can come to a meeting with a print management specialist with as much as an entire print calendar and plan or as little as a company mission statement. Either way, your print broker will use their carefully cultivated industry knowledge and expertise to handle getting you from where you are now to where you want to be in your print marketing.
2. Access All the Best Print Experts for Your Job
Anyone asking about the value of print brokers is likely wondering if they can manage the print sourcing themselves or delegate the task to an employee. While that’s a fair question, if you choose to manage these needs yourself, you’ll lose out on some key perks of working with a print broker, including:
- Years worth of knowledge and firsthand experience with available printers: Good print brokers have already done their due diligence sourcing the best specialty printers for each specific niche in the market, learning about what those professionals have to offer, checking into their customer reviews, certifying the amount of time they’ve been in business, determining average prices and building mutually beneficial relationships.
- Pre-established relationships with industry experts: After finding the best specialty printers and learning extensively about their offers, a quality print broker builds a partnership with these industry experts and keeps up with their development, including pricing, available equipment and specialties. When you put a print broker in charge of your company’s print management, they’ll leverage their existing relationships to make sure you get exactly what you need, when you need it. They won’t have to start at the drawing board, because they’ve been working with print businesses in their region and beyond for years and already know what to ask for and how to communicate your company’s needs.
- Trade printers with precise specialties: One perk you won’t be able to access yourself no matter how much time you put into learning the print industry is service from a trade-only printer. These printers tend to specialize in a niche, granular type of printing and become leaders of that specific type of printing, but they work only with print brokers because of the segmented nature of their offer. Need a specific type of banner to display in your brick-and-mortar shops, or a precise type of folder for your next tradeshow? A trade printer might be capable of offering the perfect custom solution, but you’ll need a print broker to find out.
- Troubleshooting and resolution for any mishaps: Nobody wants to spend their limited professional time on the phone trying to right a wrong, including issues with missed deadlines or incorrect prints. While it’s unlikely that you’ll run into many issues when you work with print management specialists, if you do need any kind of quick fix, you can contact them directly to handle anything that arises. They’ll act as your one-point contact, learn what the pain point is and leverage their expertise and relationships with specialty printers to reach a quick, effective resolution.
As soon as you establish your print goals with the broker, you can rest assured that they have a list of trusted professionals top of mind and a process in place for meeting your needs and keeping them met.
3. Streamline Your Printed Materials With Your Digital Efforts
If you’re trying to enhance your brand recall and engage customers at every level of the sales funnel, your company could benefit from omnichannel marketing. Give leads and customers a consistent experience with your brand through cohesive marketing tactics that establish your name in one clear, bold way that your audience will notice and remember. That means matching your direct mail campaigns with your email campaigns, allowing your promotional materials to fit into that schema and branding your building, shops and tradeshow spaces accordingly, to name a few elements.
You could spend hours or days calling as many print facilities as possible, comparing prices and seeking the best fit for your printing needs, and at the end of all that hard work, you’d realize that no single company is custom fitted for your print marketing. The more types of bulk printing you plan to do, the more collaboration and coordination will be required to maintain a cohesive omnichannel presence.
Managing all the printing your company needs, tracking stock and ensuring delivery of your promotional materials within an appropriate timeline is a full-time job to say the least. Fortunately, when you trust print brokerage experts to source the right print specialists for each one of your printing needs and keep you abreast of changes and developments as your project progresses, you can kick back and expect stunning results at the right times.
4. Get Print Professionals on Your Side for Your Next Printing Project
The ultimate goal of acquiring printed products in the first place is to give your business an edge over the competition and catch potential customers’ eyes through reliable, accurate and relatable branding. At the end of the day, you’re here to find out how best to find and order printed materials that will serve and inform your audience, and the value of print brokers is that they’re here for the same thing.
Print brokers aren’t in the game to exclusively support the printers of the world. In fact, their primary objective once you become their client will be to serve you. Their goal is a turnkey print service for your company that will properly emphasize your brand and allow you to achieve your business goals significantly faster, cleaner and more cost-effectively than you could on your own.
Find Your Ideal Print Management Solutions
So maybe you weren’t sure when you first showed up here how a print broker differs from brick-and-mortar. If you’ve made it this far, you should have a solid idea of the top benefits this kind of print management can offer to your company and whether or not those perks would handle unmet needs for you.
Print management solutions aren’t for everyone, but if you find yourself engaging in a variety of print projects, you may want to consider a more streamlined approach. And assuming the print broker model is a good fit for your needs, now you’ll likely need to determine how to choose a print broker.
Feeling like it might be time to move into the selection process? If you think this management model could be best for your business, your next step might be to learn about top print managers in the industry to find the right fit for your goals.
Along the way, if you'd like to learn more about Integra Graphics Synergy and what it's like to print a project with us, click below for details on what you might expect.
No matter which direction you take or who you select to handle your printed content, we wish you the cleanest, most effective printed work you could possibly imagine!
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