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?

Let us know what you think...

Talk Data to Me

Don’t get this confused with the 1980 adult comedy, “Talk Dirty to Me”. 

You should consider talking “data” to your customers. The industry experts have finally started to address an issue we’ve identified for years…data and communications are inseparable.

Your customers can’t communicate with or keep track of their customers, donors, supporters, etc. without data. Customer data can be simple such as mailing, email and contact lists or more sophisticated such as CRMs, donor software or custom datasets.

Moreover, data tends to be dynamic. Contacts come and go. People make purchases, donations, inquiries, etc. At some point, all data needs to be cleansed, merged, de-duped, sorted, formatted, appended, enhanced or some or all of these.

Where do your customers go when they need help with their data? Many don’t go anywhere. They muddle along with poor data…with inefficient data…with some data they can’t use. You have customers wanting help with their data or ideas to use their data more effectively. Why don’t you help them?

Learn some basic data-related terminology and you’re ready to start talking about data with your customers. What type of data (e.g. mailing lists, CRMs, etc.) are they using? How do they expand and maintain their data? Who does that? How do they do it? Do they have any problems with their data? Are there things they want do but can’t? You get the idea.

What makes this so simple is that you let experts do the actual data work for you. Send the data and the customers’ requirements to the experts who use their expertise and software and send the improved data back to you. Have any questions about data, they have the answers. What’s more, there’s no software to buy or learn.

You’ll be surprised by some of the reactions you get when you starting talking about data with your customers. Some of your customers will have been waiting a long time to have that discussion. They’ll start by telling you all of the problems they have and what they want to do (or can’t do) with their data. In reality, what they are doing is explaining all of the opportunities they have for you. Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer any questions on the spot and you always have your experts backing you up.

Being a data solutions provider (DSP) immediately sets you apart from the competition. Customers will never again look at you as simply a print vendor. Data is integral to both print and electronic communications – broadening your business opportunities. Few, if any, of your competitors will offer data solutions because the vast majority of them can’t. 

When you’re ready to start talking data, give us a call…we’re your data experts.

www.printshopmarketing.com

www.ez-vdp.com

Talking Data

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.

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...

Did you enjoy this blog?  Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

Do You Turn Away VDP Customers?

What do you do when your best customer calls to say that they want to run a direct mail campaign for six months with 50,000 pieces per week and full-blown variable data printing? If you already do VDP on a regular basis, you probably make sure the office door is closed for starters. Then, you jump out of the chair to start doing your best version of the I-scored-a-touchdown happy-dance while spiking your desk stapler (since you have neither a football nor a helmet handy ). Then you gather up your graphic designer, programmer, mailing services manager, production specialist and data expert. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. Hallelujah!  What? You don’t do VDP?

Surely, you don’t want to turn away your best customer. You may never see him again. Then, your stapler would end up on the floor for a very different reason.

Printers face similar challenges constantly. For example, when a customer wants a print job that requires die-cutting, what do you do? Send him somewhere else? Not likely. You do the job and outsource the die-cutting, right? How about booklets? You probably do the same thing: you print the job and outsource the booklet-making. Addressing and mailing? Yep - same thing. Maybe you can even do some of these in-house. But, variable data printing?

To satisfy your customer, you could outsource the whole job to a printer who can handle VDP (and will insist on printing the job), but where does that leave you? Sure, you’ll make some money on the job, but you may find yourself with a queasy feeling about the whole arrangement. If your customer realizes that you’re just a middleman, you might need a really good story about the value that you add to the effort. Or, you can take charge of the project.

Why not use the same technique you use to handle the die-cutting and booklet-making ...outsource the part of the job you don’t do in-house? Outsource the VDP print file creation, the data work or even the address presorting. You do the graphics work and the printing, and perhaps the coating, mailing and other work. This way, you really are doing the VDP job (or, at least, the majority of it) and you’re adding nearly all of the value to the job. More work in-house? You get that, too.

Don’t turn away your best customer, or any customer, because they want variable data printing. Just know that when the opportunity presents itself, we’re here to handle your VDP print file-related work. When that phone call comes, be ready to start dancing and looking for a new stapler.

While you’re at it, you might want to make sure that your customers know that you do VDP. Notice that we didn’t use the “S” word...selling ( not stapler). Why not simply let customers know they can come to you for VDP. You might be surprised at the response.

Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

Printers Should Be Asking WWJD?

Yes. We are suggesting printers look for inspiration and guidance by asking, “WWJD?” In this lousy economic environment, it only seems to make sense to ask - What Would Jobs Do? You know, Steve Jobs. If you thought we would attempt to discuss spirituality and printing, we can only say, “Heavens, no.” Steve Jobs is enough to make our point.

In 2003, when the stock market was dipping to 10-year lows, Mr. Jobs was asked why he wasn’t cutting back on Apple’s development of new products. Mr. Jobs’ often-quoted response was, “A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” Perhaps that’s an answer to our question, “What would Jobs do?”

Many situations change when business slows down as much as it has in the past few years. For printers, this includes situations such as:

• A broad reduction in business volume,
• Long-time customers who disappear or merge,
• Order frequency declines,
• Job runs get smaller,
• Customers want more for their marketing dollar, etc.

The iPod was barely a year old when Mr. Jobs made his comment, above. Apple dominated the personal, portable music player market but was already releasing the third generation of the iPod.  If Steve Jobs had been in the printing business, he might have been looking for ways to provide great [new] products for his print customers. So, what great products can printers offer? There are QR codes, websites, print-on-demand, mobile apps and wide-format, among others. And, there’s variable data printing and PURLs.

Steve Jobs was a big proponent of personalized things, which happens to be one of the primary uses of VDP. We often forget, but the original Apple was touted as a “personal” computer when mainframes were the order of the day. Then, there was the iPod that permitted people to create a personal collection of music to carry around. The iPhone, with its thousands of “apps”, certainly redefined personal mobile …uh…just about anything. If Mr. Jobs had been in the printing industry, there’s no telling where we might be today.

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, ...”

This is what a lot of printers have already done…and some continue to do. It is hard to see how to add great new products under such circumstances. Many printers are simply looking for ways to continue offering the same products while no longer having the in-house staff they once had.

WWJD?

Outsourcing is one way printers can maintain, and even expand, their product offerings - following the Steve Jobs concept of “We took a different path.” For example, outsourcing the VDP print file work is a way to control (or reduce) costs while keeping VDP as a product or adding a new product offering. In tough business times, customers may be more willing to try something new. Although a VDP job is more expensive than static print job, the increased effectiveness (in response) might be used as a rationale to send out fewer pieces…and possibly reduce the cost to the customer.

It’s not clear what Mr. Jobs meant exactly when he said, “…putting great products in front of customers.” Why not try putting VDP in front of all your customers. What do you have to lose? If some of them “bite”, we have you covered. If you tried this before, you may find some customers have changed their minds.

There’s no argument that Steve Jobs took a different path - quite successfully. You might want to think about your own version of a different path such as VDP and outsourced file work. Then again, you can always reflect on the original meaning of WWJD.

Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

"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.

Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

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

Industrial-Strength Business

In our last blog, "R.I.P. Reps", we talked about the changes the internet has brought upon B2B marketing, particularly in the industrial sector. To round out this discussion, you should be aware of the one website that clearly dominates online industrial B2B marketing: GlobalSpec.com. If you’ve never heard of GlobalSpec, it might interest you to know that more than 4,000 of your competitors (or friends) have already listed their businesses (free) under “Commercial Printing Services”. There are many other printing-related categories where you can list your company in GlobalSpec.

Before you run off to check out GlobalSpec, you should note that you have to register to use the site. Just do it. With more than 6,500,000 registered users and thousands of advertisers, they can’t afford to do anything creepy with your information.

Industrial/B2B marketing is clearly different than B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing. B2B marketing is much more focused on generating and maintaining relationships while B2C marketing works on emotion or impulse.

Using personalization with variable data printing can be a way to generate and maintain relationships. While direct mail and VDP probably aren’t viable choices for the very large, trans-national OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), the fact is that there are many, many more small, local industrial businesses, distributors and resellers that service local or regional markets. You can find thousands of these smaller businesses in GlobalSpec.

If you offer any type of marketing solutions or websites to B2B companies, you should be familiar with GlobalSpec because your customers might know about it. If they don’t, then you can be a hero by telling them about it. Superficially, GlobalSpec may appear to be a gigantic industrial directory - it is, but it also much more. There are many very sophisticated marketing tools behind the curtain including broad syndication opportunities, online trade shows, on-demand events, highly subscribed e-newsletters, etc. If you wonder how companies with huge marketing budgets use the internet, just keep an eye out for new marketing tools appearing on GlobalSpec.

Lastly, GlobalSpec provides a great library of free marketing information, tools and tips. The focus is on the B2B segment, but much of it is readily relatable to B2C markets and businesses. Topics such as “Search Engine Marketing on a Small Budget” and “Top 10 Marketing Planning Mistakes” provide insight about the industrial and B2B marketing practices and trends as well as tips you can use in your own business. Look at the bottom of any page and click on “Advertise with us” to find this material.

Moving VDP and personalization to the industrial will certainly put you out front of the competition. We don’t guarantee instant results. We do guarantee, however, that if you never offer VDP to your B2B/industrial customers, they will never buy it from you.

Of course, VDP is always easiest when you use our EZ-VDP services.

Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

It All Depends on What “Do” Means

We get all sorts of responses when we ask printers, “Do you do VDP?” The most typical responses are “yes” and “not really”. Interestingly, both of these answers are completely honest and most often mean the same thing. It all depends on ones view of “doing VDP”.

Printers answering “yes” most often mean that they can do a sort of simplistic “mail merge” process to put addresses on an otherwise static page. A master page is loaded in the RIP and the variable addresses are printed on top of the master. Technically, that is variable data printing. But, don’t look to do anything like variable graphics or more complex variable text that way. A very small number of printers that answer “yes” actually do do VDP, however few of them would claim that they are highly proficient at it.

Printers that answer “not really” may be doing VDP to the same extent as the ones answering “yes” but the formers’ view of variable data printing includes those fancy variable effects and personalization.

That’s how “yes” and “not really” can mean the same thing – it’s just a matter of ones’ point of view. Much like the issue of whether the glass is half empty or the glass is half full.

Printers answering “yes” to the doing VDP question are in something of a precarious position. If they make it known that they do VDP, a customer wanting full-blown personalization and special effects will certainly appear. Murphy’s Law always applies. Then, what does the printer do?

We provide EZ-VDP brand services so that any digital printer can offer an emphatic “Of course we do! What do you need?” when the question about doing VDP comes up. You no longer need to fear VDP. Embrace it, promote it …and use to grow your business.


Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

Find VDP Business in Your Neighbor’s Trash

We don’t recommend dumpster diving or rifling through your neighbor’s trash cans, however you could find plenty of potential leads for new VDP business that way. It’s far cleaner and less hazardous to simply ask a dozen or so family members and friends to save the direct mail they might otherwise throw away and give it to you. But, what do you do with this “trash”? It might be a treasure trove of competitive information and market intelligence…if you look at it in the proper perspective.

What you can glean from it includes details such as:

• Who produced the VDP direct mail (the mail permit may tell you)
• What businesses or industries are using VDP for direct mail
• How (and to what level of detail) they are using personalization
• Who is doing a lousy job of VDP personalization, and
• Who isn’t using personalization in their direct mail (the static postcards and self-mailers).

Once you’ve collected your trash over a number of weeks or months, separate it by business or product type. Let’s say that you end up with 15 unique pieces promoting jewelry – six different pieces from one local jeweler, three pieces each from two smaller, local jewelers and three pieces from mass marketers or national retailers. You see that the three pieces from one of the smaller jewelers used personalization, so your first effort might be to contact that jeweler to offer your VDP and other services. Here you have a lead already sold on using VDP so your approach is probably based on better solutions, such as service.

Next, you can target the two other direct-mailing local jewelers about upgrading to VDP. You already have a sample of their competitor jeweler using VDP to use as part of your pitch. You might also take the jewelers’ static mailers and mock them up to show they could be improved with some eye-catching personalization. Selling in these cases would be on the value of personalization with VDP (i.e. ROI, customer acquisition costs, etc.).

Finally, you have all the other local jewelers that aren’t doing any direct mailing. If they had poor experience with direct mail using static pieces, then the competitors VDP mailing and some snappy personalized samples might just renew their interest in direct mail. The sales pitch could include the fact that they would be one of the few jewelers using personalized advertising.

Repeat the process for other businesses and look for ways of migrating ideas from one type of business to another. A further benefit of collecting this type of trash is that you build up a library of VDP samples, ideas and best practices (such as what not to do). Former GE CEO, Jack Welch, said, “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” Start taking your trash more seriously to generate new opportunities.

Did you enjoy this blog? Get new posts delivered right to your inbox...

VDP Security Opportunities

There is no question that security has become increasingly important in modern society. The capability of VDP to create thousands of unique printed pieces provides some interesting security-related opportunities for printers.

Consider large gatherings such as business meetings or entertainment events. We recently created VDP print files for 6,000+ tickets for a nationally televised major awards program. Sorry, we can’t say which one…for security reasons. We were not privy to the security procedures, but the organizers did have a database with the identity of the celebrity invitees and each ticket had a unique bar code.

In this situation, the organizer might have used various techniques to verify the identities of ticketholders. Having scanned the bar-coded ticket, the ticket collectors could ask for something as simple as ticketholders’ phone numbers or even required some type of photo ID to compare to the database of invitees.

Depending on the type of event, there can be the potential to include the addressing directly on the ticket or invitation itself which could simplify mailing, increase security and deter counterfeiting.

Similar VDP techniques could be used to put personally identifying URLs, codes, serial numbers, QR codes, etc. on mailed pieces to verify receipt or access by the proper person, not unlike the process used by credit card companies. Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of VDP relative to security is the use of variable graphics to include photographs.

Our customers often use variable graphics to include pictures of their representatives on promotional pieces for personalization purposes. However, it also affords recipients a measure of security by knowing that the person knocking at the door resembles the picture they received in the mail. More and more companies providing “at home” services are moving in this direction.

Keep a look out for opportunities to provide or recommend the security-related opportunities with VDP. Customers may not readily recognize the need or the security potential of VDP. It’s a question that could bear interesting fruit. Besides, security-related applications, by their nature, may be less sensitive to price than other printing projects.