27 www.signlink.co.uk Issue 262 - December 2025 | January 2026 INDUSTRY TIPS | THE ONLINE PRINT COACH of that social media-friendly video content prepared while the machines are idle and the shopfloor is quiet. Film quick tours of the equipment, maintenance demos, or short ‘meet the team’ clips. These visual assets are gold for social media engagement when you ramp up in the new year. Many of your customers’ finance teams will be focused on next year’s accounts and budgets. This is the perfect time to present your plans and offers to them and secure the necessary marketing spend for the first quarter. This could stop these budgets from getting tied up in slow-moving January approvals. Get Back in Touch With Lapsed Customers It’s the season of goodwill, right? What better time than to check on some old friends? You know you’ve got a batch of lapsed customers who haven’t ordered in the last few months or years. If your competitors are chilling in December, what better time to remind them you’re still around and better than ever? Former clients are often easier (and cheaper) to win back than a brand-new prospect, so why would you ignore them? Pick up the phone and restart those conversations. But here’s some advice to do it strategically: When you call them, don't go straight in and push for a sale, it's much better to try to find out why they moved away from you and if there is a chance of bringing them back. Ask them for an honest review of the work you did previously. How about: "We're cleaning up our accounts before the new year and noticed you haven't ordered in a while. We value your business and just wanted to check in, was there anything we could have done better on your last job?" Consider framing your call around what they might be looking for in the new year. Try to engage them in a conversation about their plans and end with the offer to send some samples to spark ideas. This approach shows you care, avoids a hard sell, and subtly plants your company name back in their head as they finalise their 2026 print budgets. You might even pick up a pre-Christmas order getting in touch with people to get things moving. This January, you should be executing the plan, not debating it. December could be a precious window to conduct a comprehensive review of your year. Review the year and work out what marketing campaigns (email, social, and direct mail) delivered the highest ROI in the past year? Assess what worked and why, and work out how to replicate those. Identify what didn’t work out so well, think about how it could be improved, or bin the concept if necessary. Plan out your next year’s calendar: What are the key industry events, seasonal peaks, and major campaigns that could boost your revenue in the coming year? Get your email campaigns and social media content for January and February written and ready to go from day one. Every printer knows it should be publishing regular, valuable content, but finding the time to write well-researched articles is tough, particularly if writing isn’t your strong suit. You know you should keep your website up to date, publish regular content, and monitor for those all-important SEO keywords, but this is often one of the first things to be pushed back on when times are busy. December is your opportunity to prepare some great content. You could even consider bringing in the help you need to complete this task in a regular and timely manner throughout the year. And also, what a great time to get some to be ready for first thing January! Get a grip on your data Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the engine of your sales and marketing efforts. If the data is poor, the engine misfires. December is your time to really get to grips with data. Start with the simplest data hygiene. Remove duplicate entries, verify all email addresses, and update contacts who have changed jobs. A clean database means better deliverability and higher response rates in January. Segmentation is a powerful and effective way to laser-focus your campaigns. Target clients more effectively by grouping them by spend, product type, or industry? This will make your campaigns more relevant to the audience, reduce your production costs, and generate a higher percentage of wins. Time for Take-off When you choose to coast in December, you pay the price in January. You return to the office exhausted from the holidays, only to be confronted with a backlog of administrative tasks, urgent client queries, and the immediate, overwhelming pressure to find new work. Your sales team begins the year with no momentum, waiting for the phone to ring. Your marketing plan is sketched on a napkin, and you miss the early-bird submission deadlines for industry features. When you treat December as your runway, the picture is very different. You return refreshed and dive straight into a well-prepared marketing execution phase. The lapsed customer campaign is already generating warm leads. The sales team has a clean database and new training materials. Your website delivers relevant, scheduled content, and your SEO ranking is rising while your competitors' sites lie dormant. You begin the year with momentum. You are already several steps ahead of the competition, which is still trying to figure out which marketing agency to call. Stop dismissing December. It’s not a quiet period; it’s the most crucial strategic month on your schedule. Make the most of it. Where did this delusion come from that nothing happens in December? It’s a myth, and it’s costing your business in lost momentum
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjM0NDIxOA==