Last week’s blog, “HP’s Nor Rae Spohn on Print 2.0” featured a podcast in which Nor- Rae described the changing role of printing for our SMB customers. In this discussion, Nor Rae described some of the specialized products and services that will help you publish marketing materials in-house (we call this In-house Marketing or IHM). This week, I want to describe some of these IHM resources in greater detail so you can get a feel for how they can immediately add value to your small business marketing and printing efforts.
The place to start your investigation is the HP Color printing center, which is essentially your portal for hp’s IHM resources. In the HP Color printing center, you’ll find a number of tools, templates, links to partners services (like stock photos, SMB blogs), and training that will help you create marketing collateral to improve the effectiveness in your own products and services—from creating (or refreshing) your brand identity, through applying this to marketing materials (business cards, brochures, etc.); to figuring out the best way to print. While I’ve discussed branding and marketing material creation in a previous blog, I’d like to expound on how you can use HP Color LaserJets and business inkjet printers and the tools on the portal to print in ways that save you time and money, while giving you the flexibility to print what you want, when you want.
On the lower-right nav-bar of the Color printing center, in the “Produce” section is a link to HP Marketing Resources software. Upon downloading this new, free software, you’ll find the HP Print Cost Estimator to be a very useful tool to estimate the cost for printing one or two-sided marketing materials on your Color LaserJet device. You’ll also gain info. that will help you compare the estimated cost for printing that same document at an external print-service provider. In most cases, you’ll find that it is more cost effective, and timely, to print in-house on your Color LaserJet for print runs up to 2,000 sheets--and much better for printing smaller runs. In many cases, the cost savings of printing in-house allows you to justify the cost of the printer in a very short amount of time. And that is money you can take to the bank! Check back to this web site often, we will be refreshing the software to broaden the number of printers that are supported—including business inkjets.
I think you’ll also want to use the HP Print View Software, which will help you optimize printer settings before you hit the “print” button. With this new software, you can change your printer settings and immediately see how changes affect your materials with a print view of the final output. Then, when you know you’ve optimized the settings (and you’ve already determined that it is better to print this run on your LaserJet)—you can hit “print” directly from within the software. Then you’ll have printed pieces that are optimized for cost and attractiveness, all when you want them.
You’ll find this whole process very easy and more than a little interesting. The key thing to keep in-mind is that, by using these software tools, you’ll ultimately be saving time and money, while you regain more control of your marketing process. You won’t be dependent on a printer’s schedule and having to print large runs that often have to be scrapped due to changes or come with exorbitant set up charges. You can also print short runs, customizing them for particular proposals, customers or events—making your communications pieces more effective.
And like other hp software solutions like Web JetAdmin and Universal Print Driver, these new software applications are absolutely free! Please feel free to let me know your experiences in using HP In-House Marketing Resource Center . . .
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