Running a business for 36 years teaches you a lot.
At Plus2Print, we've seen enormous changes since we first opened our doors in Downpatrick in 1990. The printing industry has changed, technology has changed, the way customers communicate with businesses has changed and, perhaps most significantly, the way people find and buy from businesses has changed completely.
Experience is important, but one thing I've learned is that experience should never become an excuse to stop learning.
That was one of the reasons I became involved with the Go Succeed programme, where I had the opportunity to work with two specialists from ProfileTree in very different areas of digital marketing and online business.
I wasn't starting from zero. We'd already invested considerable time into our website, Shopify store, social media and online advertising. I had previous experience running campaigns through Meta and Google and had been actively working on improving Plus2Print's online presence.
What I wanted was perspective.
Were we doing the right things? Were our campaigns being given the best chance to work? Was our website structured properly for search? And were we concentrating our efforts in the places that could actually produce long-term growth?
Getting a Fresh Perspective on Google and Meta Advertising
My first area of mentoring was with Gabbi from ProfileTree, a specialist in Meta and Google advertising.
I'd used both platforms before, so this wasn't about learning where the buttons were or how to create an advert.
In fact, having some previous experience probably made the mentoring more valuable.
Anyone who has spent time inside Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager will understand how quickly they can become an abyss of information. There are recommendations, campaign objectives, bidding strategies, audiences, keywords, conversion goals, automated suggestions and an almost endless number of metrics.
The difficulty isn't necessarily accessing the information. It's knowing what actually matters.
You can very quickly reach the point where you're making changes simply because the platform is suggesting them, rather than because they make sense for the objective of your business.
Working with Gabbi was a useful opportunity to refresh what I already knew, challenge some of my thinking and look again at how we were approaching paid advertising.
One of the biggest things I took from it was the importance of giving a campaign a clear purpose and then giving it a fair opportunity to work.
If we're running a campaign specifically to bring relevant people to our website through searches connected with printing, workwear or other services, the campaign should be judged against that objective. Constantly changing settings or following every automated recommendation can sometimes make it harder to understand what is actually working.
That renewed clarity has been valuable as we continue experimenting with Google and Meta to introduce more people to Plus2Print.
Looking Beyond Paid Advertising
My second area of mentoring was with Khadiza from ProfileTree, whose expertise in coding and web analysis brought a completely different perspective.
This became particularly relevant to our Shopify webshop.
Over the years we've built up a considerable range of products and services. We produce everything from everyday business printing and full colour flyers to business cards, banners, large-format graphics, personalised garments and embroidered workwear.
The challenge online isn't simply putting those products onto a website.
People have to be able to find them.
Working with Khadiza helped me develop a much better understanding of organic growth and proper SEO, not simply as a collection of keywords but as part of how the entire website is structured.
That has changed the way I've started looking at our webshop.
Understanding What Customers Actually Search For
One of the most useful lessons has been understanding the difference between how we describe something internally and how a potential customer might actually search for it.
We might think in terms of "large-format production", for example. A customer may simply search for banner printing in Downpatrick, an A1 poster, a pull-up banner or an outdoor sign.
The same applies to garments. Someone isn't necessarily searching for the technical process behind decorating a garment. They may simply need embroidered workwear for their staff, polo shirts carrying their company logo or personalised clothing for a club or event.
That sounds obvious when written down, but applying that thinking consistently across a large website is a very different matter.
We've consequently been working much more deliberately on individual service pages, product descriptions, page titles, headings, internal links and useful content that answers the questions our customers are actually asking.
SEO Isn't About Stuffing Keywords Into Pages
Another important change in my thinking has been seeing SEO as something much broader than repeatedly putting a target phrase onto a webpage.
For a local business like ours, context matters.
Plus2Print is a printing company based in Downpatrick, County Down. We've been here since 1990. We have a physical premises, real equipment, real customers and decades of experience producing print.
Our website should make those relationships clear.
So rather than trying to make every page rank for everything, we've started developing pages around particular areas of expertise.
Our flyer printing service in Downpatrick, for example, can provide useful information about flyer printing while naturally leading customers to the appropriate product when they're ready to order.
Similarly, our work around large format printing in Northern Ireland allows us to explain the differences between products such as PVC banners, posters, pull-up displays and other large-format graphics rather than simply presenting visitors with a catalogue.
The objective is still commercial. We're a business and ultimately want people to buy from us. But there is a considerable difference between creating a useful route towards a product and turning every paragraph into a sales pitch.
Paid and Organic Growth Need to Work Together
Perhaps the most useful outcome from working with two different specialists was seeing how the two areas complement each other.
Paid advertising can put Plus2Print in front of somebody today.
Organic search is about building the relevance and authority that can help somebody discover us tomorrow, next month or next year.
Neither should exist in isolation.
If an advert brings somebody to the website, the page they arrive on still needs to be clear, relevant and easy to use. Equally, a beautifully constructed website achieves very little if nobody can find it.
Working with Gabbi and Khadiza gave me an opportunity to look at both sides.
Putting What We've Learned Into Practice
The work certainly hasn't stopped with the mentoring sessions.
If anything, they've generated more work.
We've been reviewing the structure of the Plus2Print website, developing stronger service pages, improving product information, examining our Google data, creating more useful blog content and thinking much more carefully about the journey between somebody searching for a service and eventually becoming a customer.
For example, rather than simply putting a product such as 500 Full Colour Flyers onto the webshop and expecting customers to find it, we're developing relevant content around flyer printing and the questions customers have before they order.
We're taking the same approach across business printing, banners and signage, workwear and other areas of the business.
We've also started looking beyond individual rankings and thinking about the overall digital footprint of Plus2Print.
Search itself is changing. Traditional Google results now sit alongside maps, social platforms, AI-generated results and tools that can answer increasingly complex questions directly.
For a business that has been around since 1990, that's another major change to adapt to.
But adapting is something we've been doing for 36 years.
36 Years in Business Doesn't Mean Standing Still
Plus2Print was founded by our father, Tony Oakes MBE, in Downpatrick in 1990.
My brother Alan and I now run the business, and we're immensely proud of that history. But I don't think longevity should mean doing things a particular way simply because that's how they've always been done.
The printing industry we entered is very different from the one we're working in today.
Customers can now discover us through Google, see our work on social media, order printing through our webshop and communicate with us instantly. At the same time, they can still walk through the door of our shop in Downpatrick, show us what they're trying to achieve and talk directly to the people who will actually produce it.
For me, the experience with Go Succeed and ProfileTree has been another part of that evolution.
It refreshed areas where I already had experience, challenged me in areas where I had more to learn and, most importantly, gave me a clearer understanding of how paid advertising, our website, SEO and organic growth need to work together.
After 36 years, we're still learning.
And I think that's probably one of the reasons we're still here.