Every sign shop needs to have a copy, even though you might still be a little grumpy over the switch to Creative Cloud. Creating artworkĪdobe Illustrator – The industry standard for artwork creation. Works with a lot of different apps out of the box, but you can use Zapier to connect orders from non-integrated providers. Once you’ve chosen how you’re going to ship your signs, generate shipping labels and customized packing slips in just a couple clicks. ShipStation allows you to compare rates for UPS, FedEx, USPS, and more. ShipStation – Stop wasting time rekeying in shipping addresses. It couldn’t be any easier to start taking payments and they integrate with nearly everything. Stripe – Stripe is the new go-to provider for credit card payments online.
You can even find a few screen printing WooCommerce plugins. It’s open-source and endlessly customizable. WooCommerce – For those of you using WordPress to power your website, you can add e-commerce by installing WooCommerce.
The Online version was a huge change for Desktop users, but it’s slowly turned into the better software for sign companies (most of them). The accounting software has over 80% market share here in the U.S. QuickBooks Online – QuickBooks really needs no introduction. Pricing screen printing and creating estimates It’s easy to customize, integrates with a ton of other apps, and it’s reasonably priced. Pipedrive is a lightweight, easy to use CRM for managing quotes, leads, and contacts.
But for most shops in our industry, it’s overkill. Pipedrive – Salesforce is the 800lb gorilla in the CRM game.
They recently released a Free plan which will help you learn test out the tool before you start paying $$. You can create highly personalized email campaigns for re-activating old customers, automatic follow-ups, and more. There’s a lot of players in that space, but we recommend Drip. They got a super friendly interface and pricing that’s hard to beat when your lists are fairly small.ĭrip – When you move up the ladder in email marketing tools, you’ll hear the term marketing automation. For every $1 spent on email marketing $44 is made in return, according to a 2016 study. Mailchimp – If you’re not doing any email marketing, now’s the time to start. Here’s a good screen printing WordPress theme. Theme Forest – If you’re revamping your website and you don’t want to drop $1000s on design, you can find a great looking WordPress theme on Theme Forest for under $100. But if you’re looking for qualified leads now, directing Google Ads traffic to a targeted landing page is a good way to start. Long term, you’ll want to work on your site SEO to rank for those keywords organically. If someone searches in Google for “vehicle wraps Portland OR”, then it’s safe to assume they’re looking for more info or a price on a vehicle wrap. Your chances of connecting with that smaller percentage who are ready to buy is much better with Google Search Ads. Google has a huge audience that averages over 40,000 searches per second. Google Ads – (Formerly Google Adwords) Google Ads is the giant in online advertising. It might be tough to land direct sales from Facebook Ads because most people aren’t actively looking to buy your product or service. Use their Custom Audiences and Look-A-Like Audiences to your advantage.ĭirect your ads to a landing page on your website where you offer something valuable in exchange for their email. You don’t want to blanket everybody on Facebook. Make sure you are targeting your ideal customers. Two guidelines for advertising on Facebook: The downside is that people clicking your ads might not be ready to buy immediately. You can target specific audiences that you want to display ads to.
The strength of Facebooks advertising platform is their audience targeting. They’ll take care of the WordPress updates for you and you’ll get a dedicated staging site where you can test any changes before you go live.įacebook Ads – While there’s a lot of ways to waste thousands of dollars on Facebook Ads, when done right it can be a great source of new leads. It’s not cheap, but their support is great. WP-Engine – If your shop’s site runs on WordPress, then WP-Engine is the best place to host it. The great prices and their easy to use interface made them twice as good as other domain name registrars. NameCheap – Secure your shop domain name with NameCheap. Don’t forget to drive happy customers to leave reviews for you. Combine that with some quality inbound links and outbound links and you’ll start gaining ground on your competitors quickly.
This is the starting point for any local SEO improvements. Claim your business listing on Google to get a rankings boost. Google Business Listing – If you’re not showing up in a local search for t-shirt printers, then you’re dead in the water.