Put yourself in the marketing mix – Print21 magazine article
Evolving from being a printer to a marketing services provider may seem daunting at first but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, particularly as many of the services involved are related to what printing companies already do. Harry Brelsford outlines what it takes to add marketing services to your sales pitch and why even small printshops should think about doing so.
News Corp chairman, Rupert Murdoch, is credited with saying that the internet has been the most fundamental change during his lifetime and for hundreds of years. Others say that the change it is bringing about is akin to the industrial revolution – and most in the graphic arts sector would agree.
But our industry is no stranger to change. It all started with the printing press back in 1440 when Johannes Gutenberg called his mates over to show them what he had done with movable type. The copy writers of the day were up in arms and kings and queens worried that literacy spreading throughout the land would allow the masses to learn about freedom and unfair taxation.
The printing industry settled down for a while but has now gone through any number of transitions since that word digital entered our vocabulary. One constant theme has been a declining market, causing us to seek out new opportunities to compensate for lost income. Right now one of the areas being discussed is for printers to become marketing services providers. What is it all about and is it something the average printing business would want to get into? Will we need to reposition ourselves in order to be recognised as marketing services providers?
During the late 80s, as participants in the short-lived offset quick printing sector, the advent of the high-speed copier caused us to strive to transition into copy centres. Then when digital printing came along many believed that we should become part of the communications industry. But try as we may, we would still hear our customers call their office to explain that they were at the ‘printers’, and that is what they still do today.
That’s the way it has been since 1440, no matter what technological wizardry may come along and this will be the case for as long as the bulk of what we do is to put images on paper.
This does not mean that we should not be on the lookout for additional sources of income as right now there is an oversupply of print production capacity driving down prices whilst leading to shorter order books. For these reasons, we constantly need to pursue new services in order to survive and prosper.
The time is right
I believe that our objective when searching for new revenue streams should be to add what our clients see as being a natural fit with their perception of us as printers. Many printing establishments already offer graphic design, large format, laminating, vinyl lettering, mailing services and more. Offering marketing services can be a good fit for those with some experience in this field.
Some printers may want to become fully-fledged marketing service providers but experience in our own business, Varsity Graphics on the Gold Coast, has shown that there are only certain aspects of marketing where we can assist our clients. Importantly, we have found a beneficial knock-on effect which is outlined below.
The need for printers to provide marketing services is not that new. I recall at a print conference in the USA during the late 90s that NAQP research had identified that many small printers’ clients were looking to them for marketing advice.
Right now may be as good a time as any to branch out. The latest Dun & Bradstreet business survey has shown that expectations for 2011 have hit a seven year high. The NAB confirms this in its October quarterly business survey stating that business confidence is back to levels not seen since before the GFC. This bodes well for the economy in general, and then I saw a comment on
So this is a strong indicator that the demand for marketing services is growing, but how can we get in on the action?
Our business is primarily a digital printing establishment offering marketing services for a number of years. Our experience is that the market is not as big as expected but it has added to our bottom line. So the opportunity may exist and the timing might be right but do we have to be marketing experts in order to provide marketing services?
What is marketing?
Marketing is a vast and varied blend of art and science as a glance at the business book shelves in Dymocks or Borders will tell you. And the answer is yes, we do need marketing skills but only in relation to the services that we want to offer, so we can narrow the field considerably.
My definition of marketing is the process of getting new customers to contact a business in order to enquire about its products or services. Sales is the process of converting those enquiries into profitable orders. Marketing therefore requires getting an appropriate message in front of prospective customers. There are many ways of doing this but, as printers, we are specifically interested in those areas where we can adapt or add value to our existing services.
The following table outlines the available options for getting a message out into the market place.
| Print media | Online media | Other media |
| Direct mail | Email marketing | Radio |
| Newsletters (printed) | Websites | Television |
| Letterbox drops, inserts, flyers, brochures | PURLs (personalised URLs) | Public Relations (PR) editorial |
| Directory advertising (eg Yellow Pages) | PPC - Pay Per Click (eg Google Adwords) | Word of mouth |
| Newspapers and magazines | Social media - Twitter; Facebook; LinkedIn etc | Sales reps |
| Transpromo | Telemarketing | |
| Billboards | Sponsorship | |
| Signage |
Even if we don’t want to become a full on advertising agency where we create and place advertisements, we do want to sell more printing so our main interest lies in flyers, brochures, letterbox drops and direct mail.
Most of us already print this kind of material so we are perfectly positioned to offer additional services such as delivery through Australia Post or street deliveries, mail merged or variable data direct marketing, and even improving on or creating the client’s message.
One way to break into this field is by conducting a print marketing campaign of your own. This not only boosts our sales but also positions us so that we can speak with authority on the processes and advise on what, in our experience, works or does not work locally. When it comes to creating content this will be most suited to printers with an existing in-house art department but you may also want to line up the services of a freelance marketing copywriter.
Whilst we had hoped for more marketing services orders at Varsity Graphics, we have gained new business through positioning ourselves as being experienced in marketing locally using print. We advise clients that we will incorporate our expertise at no extra cost when designing their marketing piece. This is a value-add service and we can speak with authority as it is what we do in our own business. We can rightfully claim that we know what works “right here, right now”.
Customers see a higher response rate to their marketing at no extra cost as a benefit, especially when comparing us to competitors who may not share our level of hands-on experience.
Going direct
If you decide to get into direct mail marketing you will need to be able to provide envelope addressing in preference to labels which are known to get a lower response rate. In fact, hand-addressed envelopes with a postage stamp achieve the highest open rate.
We utilise an older HP laser printer with an envelope feeder but it does require heavier 100gsm envelopes. Search eBay for an envelope feeder for your old HP laser printer or Lexmark currently offers an envelope feeder for its mono laser T640/650 series printers. For very short runs, an Epson inkjet printer with the waterfast Durabrite inks can do the job but it only holds around 10 envelopes in the paper tray. Specialised inkjet addressing printers producing colour or black only are available for around $12,000-$15,000 new. Collating and inserting would initially be by hand.
Some say that creating content for direct mail is more art than science but it is often simply a hard slog in boiling down the content provided by the client to draw out only that which will interest the prospect and tempt them to call or go to a website. Subscribe to Drayton Bird’s 51 free marketing tips at
But no matter what the media, the same basic principles apply in that the headline or first paragraph should capture attention followed by an offer that is hard to refuse. Put a time limit on it and a call to action with contact details. And from the customer’s perspective remember that old acronym, WIIFM: what’s in it for me.
Caught in the web
As printers we continue to be drawn into the web with clients increasingly expecting us to provide web design and related services. This increases the more you get into marketing services. Offering web services is complex. One way to get started is to establish a working relationship with a local, reliable web service provider, which is easier said than done as most also offer printing services to their clients.
You may want to consider taking on your own web designer but, in our experience, the good ones tend to be transient. No matter which avenue you choose you will probably want to become familiar with email marketing and offer it as a service. This is something most can learn without being a web guru and by doing it for your own business.
You will also need to know something about PPC (Pay Per Click or Adwords) advertising as your clients will be talking about it. Then there is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation which involves optimising a website in order to achieve higher search engine rankings without paying per click.
Do some research on personalised URLs, or personal web addresses. These are increasingly being used in conjunction with direct mail marketing with claims of dramatic improvements in response rates. Each recipient is given their own personal web address where they are recognised on the site in their own name and presented with a special offer or other enticement. These sites are set up in conjunction with the direct mail program and I believe we will see growth in this area.
And finally there are QR codes which are images carrying messages recognised by mobile phone cameras and which are gaining popularity in Asia and the USA.
You can learn about these new media on the web or I would suggest some of the For Dummies books as a starting point. When it comes to marketing in general one of the books I read some years ago was Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing Attack. Get a copy from your bookstore or go to <www.gmarketing.com>. You can also get a copy of my free marketing checklist on the website at the end of this article.
Success as a marketing services provider will probably come to those with a keen interest in the subject and who are already conducting their own campaigns. The words of that historic agent of change, Charles Darwin, come to mind: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
When we consider that the marriage of the computer and the telephone caused a revolution, then you never know what the marriage of a printing business with an advertising agency might bring.