What Print Buyers Really Want, · low you to continue obsolete practices. But the process of ﬁguring out what print buyers ﬁnd valuable, and how you can do business with those

S P E C I A L I N S I D E R R E P O R TWhat Print Buyers Really Want, And How The Small Print Provider Can Charge A Premium To Give It To Them

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What Print Buyers Really Want, and How The Small Print Provider Can Charge A Premium to Give It to Them

Contents

Challenges facing small, independent printing businesses

Marketing as the engine of the small printing business

Laying a foundation for effective print marketing

Finding your ideal customers

Identifying what print buyers want and need with the Print Buyer Priority Matrix

Priority: Low cost — — — High performance

Specification: Simple format — — — Complex specifications

Guidance: Minimal assistance — — — High demand for guidance

Summary of print buyer priorities

Strategies for successful print marketing: Next actions

Make a marketing plan

Position your business, state your value

Challenges facing small, independent printing businesses

This report is written with the owners and managers of small printing busi-nesses in mind. These businesses include those with less than about $10 to $15 million in revenue, and fewer than about 25 employees. Shops on the smaller end of this scale are widely thought to be “on the edge” in the cur-rent industry climate, or at least closer to it. They have fewer resources to compete with, are more vulnerable to business swings or events, and more vulnerable to competition from larger, more technologically capable firms.

I speak regularly with print owners in different parts of the world, and find

Introducing the Print Buyer Priority Matrix, a tool to help printers evaluate their marketing options

http://www.pressreadymarketing.com



several major concerns repeated again and again.

Many feel threatened by trends in the printing industry such as consolida-tion, the trend toward larger players in a mature industry, and growing offshore sourcing both by large competitors and by print buyers.

They worry about the growth of the internet as a sales channel, along with large office chains getting further into the printing business. They are con-cerned that print is increasingly thought of as a commodity by print buy-ers who see no substantial difference among print providers, and who buy printing by price alone. In some cases small printers are unable to compete on price, and in others they find that buyers mistakenly believe the large chain store suppliers offer the lowest prices and look no further.

Many sense that future success depends on embracing new technology, but that the costs involved, the difficulty of evaluating choices and steep learn-ing curves are significant barriers.

While all of these challenges have profound implications for the operational side of printing businesses, they can all be approached as marketing prob-lems. Of course, marketing cannot compensate for poor performance, or al-low you to continue obsolete practices. But the process of figuring out what print buyers find valuable, and how you can do business with those who value what you can offer, is the beginning of creating a business that does not need to compete on price, and has the resources to adapt its capabilities to meet the evolving needs of the print marketplace.

This report aims to give the owner/manager of a small printing business a framework to develop marketing strategies which will drive the success of the business, no matter how small the starting point. I hope you will find specific actionable items in this report, and that it will spur new thinking about the role of marketing in helping you achieve greater profitability and more enjoyment in owning and running your business.

Marketing as the engine of the small printing business

In addition to having common concerns, many owners also approach their businesses in similar ways. The most important example, as it relates to the topic of building a profitable printing business, is that print owners generally think that the primary activity of their business is to put ink or toner on pa-

This report aims to give the owner/manager of a small printing business a framework to develop marketing strategies which will drive the success of the business.




per. I believe this is a fundamental problem, because it places a choke hold on the potential for growth and success. I believe this commonly held idea is the single most significant difference between smaller printing businesses that struggle to succeed, and those that achieve growth and profitability in any business environment. If you take nothing else away from this report I urge you to consider this: the primary activity of your printing business is marketing. This is so important that I will repeat it in other words and come back to it.

Nothing that the owner or managers of a printing business can do has more impact on revenue than marketing. This doesn’t mean that operational excellence is unimportant. Rather it means that by focusing on finding and keeping customers as the primary activity of the business, the owner can generate a stream of business which supports investment in operational optimization, and is able to hire staff to handle operational activities.

The reverse case is the harried owner who is constantly racing to stay on top of operational activities (working in the business, rather than on it), never quite manages to get to marketing projects, and is constantly frus-trated by the obstacles to growth and profitability. This owner is also likely to think of marketing as among the first expenses to trim when business slows down.

Thinking of marketing as an additional, desirable but non-essential activity is to give up control of your business’s destiny. The most successful entre-preneurs, CEOs and managers recognize that successful marketing drives growth, while successful operations give a company something to market. They also know that marketing done well is an investment which produces a profitable return.

This is a good place to consider what marketing is and what it can achieve. I see marketing and sales as two ends of a continuum rather than completely distinct activities. The whole process encompasses identifying, qualifying, and engaging prospective customers, then converting them into buyers. Marketing activity is everything you do to speak to many prospects at once; sales is everything you do one to one. Well planned and executed market-ing activity makes the sales force’s job easier and more efficient, as it will already have established the value and uniqueness of your services. Sales becomes a process of clarifying value, eliminating doubt, establishing cred-ibility for individuals who require it, and facilitating transactions.

If you take nothing else away from this report I urge you to consider this: the primary activity of your printing business is marketing.




Laying a foundation for effective print marketing

The fundamental issues involved in running a successful printing busi-ness are actually identical to those of any other business. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling printing, food, insurance or bicycles, a business is built on three essential steps:

1 acquiring customers

2 providing something they value, and

3 collecting a profit for doing so.

It is significant that acquiring customers, or marketing, comes first in this sequence, but the steps are interdependent. Being able to offer the highest precision imaging, with absolute color fidelity and the shortest turnaround, would be of no use without a steady stream of customers to support the capital outlay necessary to provide the service. At the same time, without the ability to produce value there would be no basis to acquire customers, and without a return of profit there would be no basis for the other steps. However, beginning with the needs and wants of customers makes the whole process more efficient and effective.

By identifying what customers find most valuable which is also in short sup-ply, you can adapt what you sell to cater to the most profitable needs. You can then define your target audience very precisely, which allows you to do two things: you can create tightly focused messages that address their concerns directly, and you can get those messages in front of them cost ef-fectively.

The marketing process itself begins with knowing who your potential cus-tomers are.

Finding your ideal customers

If we think of print buyers as anyone who purchases enough print services to have some value as a customer, we have a large and diverse group to consider. This group would not include consumers, unless we specialized in wedding invitations, for example. It would be made up of businesses, and the people who own, manage, and perform purchasing for them, whether they are enormous conglomerates or home-based sole proprietorships. The

By identifying what customers find most valuable which is also in short supply, you can adapt what you sell to cater to the most profitable needs.




array of concerns and priorities this group encompasses makes efficient tar-geting impossible, and identifying profitable needs hopeless. We must break the universe of print buyers down into subsets and eliminate those whose needs do not match our capabilities, or to whom we cannot provide services profitably. In preparing for direct marketing campaigns this is often done with filtering strategies.

First, you can limit targets to a convenient geographical area. Informal poll-ing (1) reveals that among subscribers to a web-based service for print buy-ers, 40 miles is about the farthest the majority will travel to a printer. This is based on two factors: shipping costs and the convenience of visiting for press checks and so on. The area you target will depend on the region you are in. For example, in a densely populated city you may find all the pros-pects you can afford to contact within a radius of only a mile or two.

Next, you can select by industry category. It is routine to filter mailing lists by SIC code, and this will allow you to eliminate industrial sectors which do not use much printed literature, but which would be numerous enough to waste a significant amount of your mailing budget, such as restaurants. You could also concentrate on categories that you know to purchase a lot of printing, such as financial and professional services.

Other ways of refining your pool of targets might include filtering by the number of employees or revenue, or concentrating on members of particu-lar trade associations. Applying all these limiting factors will create a much smaller list, but there are still problems with qualification as buyers. Even within narrowly defined groups of businesses there is room for a wide array of priorities, which could mean that companies who purchase products that you can produce still might not be a profitable match.

A more reliable way to identify good prospects is to use information about their purchasing priorities and behavior. For a small printing business, this kind of data can be prohibitively expensive, if it is even available. A practical alternative is to work “in reverse,” by defining the behaviors and priorities that match up with the capabilities you can offer, then using your marketing messages to make prospects self-identify with those priorities.

Essential to this process is a way of categorizing and quantifying print buy-ing priorities.

By defining the be-haviors and priorities that match up with the capabilities you can offer, then us-ing your marketing messages to make prospects self-identify with those priorities.




Identifying what print buyers want and need with the Print Buyer Priority Matrix

In developing marketing resources for printers it is my aim to understand the motivations and fears of print buyers, so that the materials I produce for clients are as effective as possible. From my research I have formulated a core set of purchasing dynamics that can be plotted in a three dimensional matrix. The result is a visual tool that allows printers to easily identify profi t-able customers according to key characteristics of the jobs they order and their priorities for choosing a printer.

You can use this matrix to compare your past and present customers, and to think about the profi le of your ideal customers – those in the “sweet spot” where you can offer excellent performance and return a good profi t.

Use the matrix to think about how you can differentiate your business from competitors and how you can position your services.

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The critical purchasing dynamics I identified are described by three contin-uums, or sets of opposing attributes. These are:




Each of these continuums can be used to pinpoint a customer, prospect or job. Each has implications for profitability that will depend on your opera-tional capabilities, so you can also use the matrix to think about how you can differentiate your business from competitors and how you can position your services.


Of all print buyer priorities, the demand for low cost causes the most trouble for small printing businesses. The ability to deliver lowest prices and thrive depends on eliminating human effort from the workflow with auto-mated systems at every possible stage, and to maintain a high volume of or-ders. The internet has made this possible for a number of very large printing businesses, and to some extent print buyers have become conditioned to expect low prices and fast turns. Few small printers can compete effectively head on. However, there are answers to the problem, and opportunities for small providers to carve out a lucrative niche.

Very low prices are only possible when the job fits a predetermined format and the customer requires no guidance. When cost is the driving consider-ation, a buyer is likely to compare vendors extensively, will take risks regard-ing an unknown performance record, will accept lower standards of quality and service, and will be prepared to switch vendors for even a small reduc-tion in price. This does not make a price motivated buyer an attractive pros-pect, but there are opportunities here, including educating inexperienced print buyers about the pitfalls of apparently cheap printing options. For example, although the ordering process is extremely fast for online printers, turnarounds are rarely particularly speedy, and when shipping is factored in can be fairly slow. Shipping costs can also erode the low cost advantage. Creating awareness of the risks associated with unknown vendors can also help keep print jobs local.

Customers are more likely to value your suggestions for improvement to the quality of the end product or the efficiency of the work process, and for alternate ideas to produce a better re-turn on investment.




When confidence in the outcome is the priority, a buyer will select a printer who offers a high assurance of performance, and will be resistant to change as long as performance is good. High performance can encompass rapid turns, high precision imaging, or unusual capabilities. Print buyers who val-ue high performance will judge printing in terms of the results it returns to them. They may see superior print quality as reflective of the quality of their own services, or as more likely to create the marketing results they desire. Because of this focus, such customers are more likely to value your sugges-tions for improvement to the quality of the end product or the efficiency of the work process, and for alternate ideas to produce a better return on investment.


Just about all low cost internet and mail order printers offer an array of stan-dard formats at standard prices, often with a premium for faster delivery. Any deviation from the standard specifications is expensive and inconve-nient. An obvious competitive advantage is to be able to produce complex custom orders efficiently. From a marketing point of view it makes sense to demonstrate your unique capabilities, and show print buyers how they can achieve their communication goals more effectively with custom work. This idea extends to technological capabilities, such as multi-channel mar-keting resources and variable data printing. The harder it is to compare an estimate for such work to other vendors, the greater the premium that can be charged. On the other hand, work that fits standard formats optimized for your equipment and workflow can be very profitable, and may be worth marketing aggressively if you can find the volume to make it worthwhile.


In some cases print buyers will accept a low level of assistance simply be-cause they lack experience and are unaware of potential difficulties – they don’t yet know enough to ask for help. On the other hand, experienced print buyers may be knowledgeable enough not to need much help. How-ever, the ability to offer guidance to customers can be one of the stron-gest points of differentiation a printer can use. Most people have a certain amount of fear based resistance to any purchase, whether it is fear of mak-ing an expensive mistake or fear that problems will cause missed deadlines. A proactive campaign based on providing guidance to print buyers can be

By positioning your company as a source of such in-formation, you can establish relation-ships that translate into premium priced services and long term loyalty.




especially effective in removing doubt and establishing trust. People also value information that helps them do their jobs better or otherwise meets their needs. By positioning your company as a source of such information, you can establish relationships that translate into premium priced services and long term loyalty.

Summary of print buyer priorities

To summarize, the most profitable print buyers are those who:

want it fast

want it to look absolutely perfect

want it to perform better

want to do something unusual

want guidance to get better results

In all these cases, your services can command a premium price, especially if you can make it easy and enjoyable for the buyer to do business with you.

The strongest relationships come from customers who see your contribution as part of their success. Loyalty can also come from inertia – when assets are placed under your control, such as data, or materials for frequently updated or distributed jobs, there is greater resistance to changing vendors. Part of the value you offer in these cases is a smooth and easy workflow. Whenever you are able to make your customers’ lives easier you have po-tential to charge a premium for it.

Strategies for successful print marketing: Next actions

Make a marketing plan

If you haven’t already prepared a written marketing plan, make it a prior-ity to sketch one out. Keep it rough in outline at first and refine it as you go. The important thing is to create an awareness of your current situation and to detail action steps you can take to move toward specific goals. Your marketing plan is a living document. You will adjust it in response to the results form marketing activities, and to the changing competitive landscape of your business.

The strongest relationships come from customers who see your contribution as part of their success.




Start by mapping out the kinds of customers you have now, and the kinds of jobs you do for them. Group them according to two dynamics: the profit-ability of the work, and the smoothness of the workflow. Are these related? Look for patterns that show where your energy is wasted, and where your profits lie. From this will emerge a picture of your sweet spots – the catego-ries of customers and jobs where you can achieve profitable work efficiently and profitably.

Now start brainstorming ideas for how to identify, reach, talk to and convert more of the customers in your sweet spot. Where can you find them? What are their most difficult problems? What messages would they respond to? How can you engage their interest? From these ideas you can start to create plans, which are distinct projects with defined steps to move toward clearly defined goals.

Include the steps you will take to measure results, evaluate both perfor-mance and goals, and test your strategies.

Position your business, state your value

Use the resources in this report to begin shaping your competitive position, and your unique value proposition. It is good practice to generate a vari-ety of messages stating the distinct value you offer to customers, and the ways you are different from all the other options available. Remember to focus strictly on the benefits you offer, phrased from your customer’s point of view. Prepare messages from a dozen or so words to a couple of para-graphs, and keep them on hand for use in all your marketing communica-tions. The Print Buyer Priority Matrix is a useful tool for pinning down the specific points of differentiation that you can use to develop your position-ing statements.

As a final recommendation, let me suggest that you do not wait for things to fall into place before you make marketing the main priority of your print-ing business. Begin marketing with the capabilities you have now. The em-phasis of intelligent direct marketing is on building your herd – those who have responded to the value you offer, and with whom you can develop a relationship. Once you have a receptive audience, you can maintain the re-lationship relatively cheaply with a steady flow of valuable information and assistance, and sell new services as they come online.

The emphasis of intelligent direct market-ing is on building your herd.




Apply the same marketing principles to promote your new capabilities as you did to win leads originally: use relatively inexpensive communications to qualify interest, following up with more involved communication to bring respondents along to the purchase stage. Marketing activity brings your prospects along the pipeline until they signal readiness to purchase, and then person to person sales activity takes over.

For more information about marketing for printers please vist us on the web at www.pressreadymarketing.com


Documents

What Print Buyers Really Want, · low you to continue obsolete practices. But the process of ﬁguring out what print buyers ﬁnd valuable, and how you can do business with those