I’ve written about a lot of subjects that might be considered pertinent to large enterprises over the past few months. This week I’m going to shift gears and talk a little about small and medium business customers (a.k.a SMBs). This week’s blog speaks directly to those SMBs that need printed marketing materials--flyers, brochures, etc.--to help sell their businesses, products, and services. While outsourcing has traditionally been a popular option for these types of marketing materials, many SMBs are now turning to a “do-it-yourself” model to stretch their marketing budgets. And “do it yourself” doesn’t mean you will have a “lemonade stand” or “garage sale” sign level of quality. What I am talking about is level of quality that is equal to what you would get from a commercial print shop.

Marketing can have a significant impact for many small businesses as most want to look as professional as possible (like the big guys) in order to generate revenue. However, budget constraints limit what SMBs can afford to outsource to design shops, commercial printers or agencies. Because of these challenges--more than 50% of small companies print either all or some of their marketing materials in-house (Internal Communications Research, Feb., ’05).

Hardware and software manufacturers have noticed this trend and now offer solutions specifically designed to allow SMBs to quickly and easily create marketing brochures, flyers and other collateral in house. This top trend was recently cited in a PC magazine article entitled “In-House Copy Shop.” To print these materials, printer manufacturers now offer high-quality color ink and laser printers at lower costs—by 2005, sub-$1000 color laser printers had reached mainstream status (InfoTrends, Feb, 2006).Today it is possible to find an entry level color laser around $299

On the software/services side, SMB’s can save money by using some of the free marketing resources now available on the internet. For example, HP hosts an in-house marketing portal for SMBs that offers how-to seminars and free templates to develop materials including brochures, business cards and customer logos. These resources are helpful for companies looking to create a whole new corporate identity or simply to produce a brochure to promote a particular product or service.

If re-branding is one of your Marketing strategies, you can use the business marketing identity kits as well as services from companies like LogoWorks and iStockphoto, found on the portal, to redesign fliers, business cards, newsletters and even PowerPoint templates—creating an attractive, unified look across all your marketing materials. It would then be important to leverage this look into other communications tools, like your website.

Or you might want to create a singular brochure, flyer, business card, calendar or other piece for which we offer templates. The HP in-house marketing portal also offers free seminars. You also might be interested in the related Small business marketing toolbox blog by John Jantsch, the Creator of Duct Tape Marketing.

Another thing to consider is how frequently your business might need changes or updates to your marketing materials. While companies often order large quantities of brochures, etc. in order to get price breaks, very often the underlying information changes before the inventory of printed materials runs out, making for wasted budget and paper. By printing materials in-house—you can print what you need, when you need it and even customize information for particular opportunities. This creates a level of empowerment to the SMB that previously has not existed.

The opportunity to apply color to your marketing materials should also not be overlooked as color documents tend to be more persuasive. The print quality of color laser, combined with glossy paper meant to replicate the look and feel of a commercially printed page, is creating some great in-house marketing alternatives for the SMB. This and other issues SMB marketing decision-makers might face are further discussed by Larry Trevarthen in “Marketing Your Business On a Dime”. Jim Lyons also has some interesting insights on “do-it-yourself marketing” in the second half of his blog article “Observations: Low-end Color Lasers—Build Them and They Will Come?”

With all these resources available, my question to you is—What’s keeping your business from producing marketing materials in-house? Feel free to “comment” on what you are doing to produce in-house marketing collateral and the issues and challenges you are facing . . .

In a study by QualityLogic, remanufactured cartridges were shown to have significant reliability problems, canceling out initial cost savings to consumers. Approximately 70 percent of all inkjet and 80 percent of toner cartridges displayed problems from leaking cartridges, cross-contaminated colors and cartridges that printed no pages. Furthermore, 17 percent of all remanufactured inkjet cartridges failed prematurely. These are clear hard costs that outstrip any potential savings.

Put in another light, the cost of using remanufactured cartridges can be more than just the price of the cartridge. Our printed output represents the quality of our work and ideas. To have this output disparaged due having the colors look wrong is hardly worth the perceived cost savings.

Also, most people (myself included) are editing, thus printing, their highest profile documents on a deadline. You know, there’s a meeting where you have to sell something in and you want to present crisp color documents and a presentation. Just imagine the cost of losing a project/deal/promotion for the sake of trying to save a few bucks on a “remanufactured” printer cartridge.

HP Colorsphere toner cartridges and Vivera Ink cartridges have been specifically designed to give the optimum image quality from the first print to the last print. HP Sure Supply is a free tool that first alerts you as to when your toner or ink cartridge is running low. The hosted Sure Supply program then finds exactly what cartridge your printer needs, checks availability and sets you up to order online from your preferred retailer or directly from HP.

To actively explore how to compare printer cartridges, you’ll want to visit the related HP sites for toner or related ink issues. Another aspect to consider is that HP is a leader in print cartridge recycling. In fact, we recycled approximately 140 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges globally in 2005. Very often those “recycling” bins you see for remanufactured cartridges are actually just giving cartridges to companies so they can sell them back to you, at a greatly decreased level of quality.