Print Shop Survival Tips

Here's a summary of a piece we created based on our interaction with many struggling print shops. See all 10 tips...
 

Small and Quick Print Shop Survival Tips

Live in the digital age – There’s no future living in the past. The printing process, market, customers and competition...

Know the competition – Digital technology enables your competition. Electronic media competes...

Be careful about commodities – Products are commodities when only price and delivery drive the buying decision. Competing for low-price...

Forget the “magic bullet” – There’s no software, hardware, gadget or gizmo that will miraculously improve your business. If there were a magic bullet...

Use small & quick to your advantage – Large competitors are limited to offering cookie-cutter products and solutions. Leverage your knowledge...

Head for your blue ocean – A thousand print shops go out of business each year because they were swimming in a red ocean. Understand why...

Break the rules for products & services – You’re in the communications solutions business: printing is just one of your tools. Skip convention...

Embrace data (information) – Data is crucial for your customers: communicating, analyzing audiences, spotting trends, etc. Simply talking...

Market your print shop – Customers can't buy anything from you if they don't know you exist. Market your print shop to make it easy for potential...

Make selling fun – Selling commodity print work is painful. Selling communication solutions like a consultant, however, can be fun. Learn...

We value your feedback. What would you add, delete, change?

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Stop Stupid Marketing

Stupid Marketing: The process of trying to attract business while accomplishing just the opposite.

You'd be amazed how many print shop owners are quite good at stupid marketing. They aren't actually stupid but they aren't professional marketers, either. Stupid marketing mistakes are often obvious and can be disastrous.

One classic example of stupid marketing is: 

A print shop owner looking to expand his business finishes some lessons and decides to identify himself as a marketing services provider. As a good marketer, he knows he must let all of his customers know about his new services. He designs a very clever direct mail postcard campaign and adds some personalization to impress his audience. 

The campaign is hugely successful as evidenced by the print shop’s website experiencing a 45% increase in traffic immediately after the postcards are delivered. However, no phone calls, emails or any other communications are forthcoming. In fact, business overall seems to turn down rather than up! 

What’s the problem? Stupid marketing, of course!

As happens too often, the print shop owner failed to stand back and look at the image he was projecting to the marketplace. What’s that?

The owner did a great job announcing his new services and pushing his customers to his website…but, his old, ugly website delivered a totally different message to his customers:

• He does/did a lousy job of marketing himself
• He doesn’t keep his own marketing up-to-date
• He’s not particularly good with details
• He doesn’t have much sensitivity to image or brand
• If he’s this sloppy in his marketing, what else suffers?

Ouch! If you think the “stupid marketing” label is too harsh, consider this: the printer spent time and money to deliver a very negative message about his capability, image and brand to a large portion of his customer base. More to the point...he paid to drive away his existing customers! What do you call that?

We make this point intentionally edgy because we continue to see print shop owners doing this. But, now the good news!

We also see many other businesses doing exactly the same thing.

If your print shop does website design, you may have just learned a new trick for identifying and selling website opportunities.

Dirty Little Secrets about Variable Data Printing

Secret #1 – 120 Billion

More than 120,000,000,000 pieces are printed in the U.S. each year using VDP. That’s about 400 pieces for every man, woman and child every year! What percentage of those do you produce?

Secret #2 - Software

Variable data printing requires a dozen pieces of software, or more. How many of these do you have and how many can you use?

Most VDP programs are add-on modules to graphics software such as Adobe Creative Suite. Several additional modules for special effects and imposing may also be required.

Fixing up data to for use in VDP may require six, eight or more pieces of software to:

• Open and convert
• Cleanse and de-dupe
• Format and test
• Correct upper/lower case, abbreviations, suffixes, prefixes, etc.
• Sort and analyze
• Enhance

Finally, address list presorting, NCOA, CASS, etc. requires at least one or two pieces of software.

Secret #3 - Presorting

The annual renewal for address list presorting and processing software can cost $3,000 or more. That requires a lot of mailing work to justify the cost when you include the cost of the time spent learning and using the software.

EDDM has reduced the amount of presorted direct mail work in many areas.

Secret #4 – Crossing Over

VDP isn’t just for printing or making fancy images…it’s a crossover technology between print and electronic media. The same data-driven processes used to create VDP print files can also create electronic documents such as personalized PDFs for emailing (also personalized). Moreover, VDP can be used to add security elements to printed or electronic documents, tickets and events.

Secret #5 - Easy

Any digital print shop can easily be in the VDP business without buying or learning any software. Outsourcing mailing list processing eliminates the annual renewal expense. Similarly, the creation of printer-ready VDP print files can be outsourced…leaving the print shop owner with nothing to do but print and deliver VDP jobs.

See how you can easily include new high-value products and services into your business…

www.ez-vdp.com or www.printshopmarketing.com

Move Beyond Order Taking

When you go the computer store…yes, to buy a new computer…do you want to be waited on by the clerk who says:

Clerk #1 “Tell me which box of stuff you want me to drag out of the store room”, or

Clerk #2 “Tell me what your needs are and I’ll tell you what might be the best choices”?

Even if you are certain what computer model you want, you might happily engage clerk #2 to affirm your choice and check whether you might have overlooked something.

Your customers would probably rather deal with someone like clerk #2 when it comes to printing as well. They likely have a good idea of what they want. However, they might like affirmation that they are making the best choice for the purpose and the price. It’s not a matter of telling them what to do or how to do it, it’s a matter of building confidence and credibility for you. But how?

When the opportunity permits, why not simply offer some simple education or information about different printing concepts? Your points, of course, will all relate to services you provide. Even if the customer has no immediate need, you have accomplished two things: 1) increased your credibility (and the customer’s confidence) and 2) planted the seeds for future opportunities.

Consider the following educational points: 

• Increasing document security through printing
• Delivering more focused messages
• Expanding address lists
• Using gender or demographic marketing
• Getting more response
• Personalizing a business for customers

The easiest and fastest way to convey the points may be to give the customer a sample of a printed piece that demonstrates your point. Visual aids are always good, and leaving the piece creates a reminder.

Most likely, your competition isn’t talking or can’t talk to your customers about these types of things. This gives you the opportunity to be the de facto expert for your customers…and more like clerk #2. There’s a fair chance your customer may never find the need for any of these techniques. However, when a question about printing comes up, the customer is more likely to count on you for an answer.

Isn’t that the way you want it?

If you need more information on how to be more than an order taker, give us a call. We’re glad to help.

The Prescription for VDP Business

This is a tough time to be in the printing business. Business is sluggish and new competition seems to pop up everyday. Adding new services, like web site design, is not always easy or inexpensive. However, an old solution that has eluded many print shop owners may actually be the answer for new business…variable data printing.

Here’s a lighthearted look at a prescription for the challenges of VDP:

One printer who treated his problems with EZ-VDP told us: "I've gotten almost $10,000 in business from this customer in the last five months. When he came to me, I didn't know how I was going do his job. If I hadn’t found your EZ-VDP service, I couldn't have done it."

With EZ-VDP, you can sell and print VDP jobs without having to be a VDP expert…or buying and learning any new software. Use it simply as a way to do in-house addressing and mailing or to deliver fully personalized print jobs.

See why EZ-VDP is your prescription for more business and profits...

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"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