Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach, acknowledges the common pitfalls print and signage businesses make when it comes to marketing, and suggests his three tiered approach to getting more revenue and brand recognition Why Your ‘Now, Next, and Later’ Marketing Plan Isn’t Working One of the biggest problems I see with businesses isn’t a lack of marketing, it’s impatience – the order book looks a bit thin, revenue is behind target, and suddenly panic sets in. ‘LinkedIn isn’t working, SEO isn’t bringing anything in, and maybe we need to do some direct mail? Perhaps we should run an offer?’ Before you know it, everything gets changed again. The problem isn’t necessarily the marketing, it’s that we’re expecting everything we do to produce results now. In reality good marketing doesn’t work like that. I think there are three different jobs your marketing needs to do “now, next, and later”. If you don’t understand which one you’re working on, it becomes very easy to convince yourself something isn’t working when actually you haven’t given it enough time. I see this constantly in print and signage. A business starts something new – LinkedIn, email marketing, SEO, direct mail, or perhaps a campaign targeting a particular sector. They do it for three or four weeks, nothing spectacular happens, so they stop and move on to something else. Three months later they’ve tried six different things and concluded that none of them works. The reality is that some marketing should produce an immediate result, some should build your pipeline over the next few months, and some might not properly pay you back for a year or more. The mistake is measuring all three in exactly the same way. Start With the Now Before spending another £2,000 trying to find new customers, have a look at what you already have. How many quotes are sitting in your MIS that nobody has followed up? How many previous customers haven’t You’re trying to build familiarity and demonstrate expertise. You’re giving people reasons to remember you so that when they eventually enter the market for something you sell, you’re already in their head Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work. In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches. Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform, Print Mastermind and private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott. www.theonlineprintcoach.com ordered in the last six months? How many enquiries came in last week, received one email, and nothing else? How many customers buy one product from you but have absolutely no idea what else you can do? This is your “now”. It isn’t particularly sexy marketing, but it works. One of the simplest things I encourage print and signage businesses to do is create a proper quote follow-up process. If you’ve 27 www.signlink.co.uk Issue 267 - October | November 2026 INDUSTRY TIPS | COLIN SINCLAIR MCDERMOTT
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