Printers Swimming in a Red Ocean

In the business world, spending all your energy selling and competing against the same products and services offered by everyone else is called a “red ocean” strategy (it's not really a strategy anyone would choose). Red…the color of the financial ink or something else red in the waters of the marketplace. Red…because it’s a zero-sum game - your financial success comes as a result of another’s financial loss - or vice versa. Red oceans are full of sharks. Can you hear something like rapidly pulsing beat from Jaws in the background? We’ll give you the shark repellant later.

The typical smaller print shop or quick printer swims in a red ocean populated by an ever-increasing number of sharks. If you don’t recognize the sharks, here’s a partial list of everyone wanting some or all of your customers’ printing business:

• Office supply stores,
• Mailing stores,
• On-line print providers,
• The new print shop or franchise across town,
• Local and national marketing agencies…and more

And, the red ocean concept applies to more than ordinary printing. There are sharks for wide format printing, banners, signs, web sites, promotional items, door hangers, email stuff, etc. It’s usually good business to be different from the competition, however in a red ocean, it’s hard to…have the lowest price, the fastest delivery, the most convenient locations or hours, the broadest or best set of offerings…it’s hard to be the best at anything.

The solution is to find unique and valuable products…stuff your customers want but few or no people offer. Then, you can spend your energy growing your market…that you monopolize…rather than fighting with the sharks. Moreover, if your unique and valuable product happens to tie into printing or communications, then a potentially large portion of your red ocean may turn a more attractive color…blue!

Now, for your shark repellant - data! Most of your sharks can’t do data!

Think about it - data is at the heart of all of your customers’ communications… data makes your customers’ communications possible…data makes your customers’ communications valuable…data is what your customers want to get from their communications…data…data…data! Data ties into many types of printing and virtually all types of communications. Data can take you to a blue ocean!

Call us if you need swimming lessons.

"I Love Lucy" and the Source of VDP Business

We are constantly asked, “Where can I find VDP business?” The questions tend to be couched in terms of the best type of business or industry to find VDP work. It’s a perfectly natural question since we deal with so many printers doing VDP across the country.

However, when we’ve looked at the types of jobs that have come through our shop, we find they’re all over the map, literally and figuratively: electioneering stuff, local and national retail/consumer stuff, all types of services, fund-raising, school district issues, insurance companies, clubs, associations, etc., etc., etc. There’s just no common denominator that jumps out…except one.

A few days ago, we were going through the same exercise to find the magic bullet for VDP business when one of our more nimble-minded colleagues announced that we may have been looking at things the wrong way. At that point, the rest of us had a collective I Love Lucy moment just like when Ricky would say to Lucy, “I will ‘splain it to you.” With all of our hair seeming to get redder and looks of skepticism all around, someone blurted out, “Start ‘splaining.” - just the way Lucy would mock Ricky’s heavy Cuban accent.

It turns out that there is no correlation that we could make between businesses or industries and volume of VDP work, but there is a strong connection between volume (frequency and job size)…and the source of the business. What we could easily see when we looked at the data a different way was:

- Printers getting work from marketing agencies (or ad agencies) had/have a much higher frequency of VDP work and higher average order sizes.

- When a printer begins to get work from an agency, the order frequency and size usually ramp up quickly.

- There are no identifiable business types or industries that dominate the VDP work originating from agencies.

- Much of the work appears to have been ongoing and the agencies are simply changing printers. [This might explain the rapid increase in work as an agency gains more confidence in a new printer.]

That’s some interesting ‘splaining, Ricky.

There may be more, but we can offer three possible explanations for these results. One might simply be that more people are recognizing the value of personalization. Another could be that agencies are becoming more comfortable promoting VDP as a means to differentiate their services. And, lastly, the sluggish economy might be forcing the agencies’ customers to look for ways to do more with less.

Draw your own conclusion about what the data means. We’ll just note that we do not ask about the source of anyone’s work, however it is often volunteered by our customers during discussions about their jobs.

L-u-u-u-cy!!!

Even Lucy might see that VDP work can come from sources where VDP work is ongoing - either marketing agencies or customers. We can confirm that price and performance have played a key role in some of our customers getting lots of work from marketing agencies. Our EZ-VDP services certainly provide advantages on both counts.

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Here's some original 'splainin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMj9Fm4SBq8&feature=related