I was meeting with a prospective client this week, and I saw yet again another print company that looked like any other. One out of hundreds. I asked them what made them special? and the usual answers came back...quality, service, price...blah blah (I mentally looked skywards)..
So my blog subject today became clear.
Web to Print is often a confusing topic, partly because it has been badly defined and partly because it is an industry filled with jargon. Red Tie's approach has been to simplify and remove the jargon to provide printers and marketeers with real tools that drive business growth online, strengthen relationships with customers and increase profit.
By all means contact Red Tie for the tools to drive growth, but also take a few minutes to read some real insights on the Fundamentals of Marketing Success...
It’s time we understand what it means to market ourselves to our clients and prospects. Here are some fundamentals of marketing success for printing companies.
You can’t wait for people to come to you!. Marketing is critical to the success of every business, and it’s no different for the printing industry. You’ve got to take a step! The first step is understanding the fundamentals of marketing a printing company.
You can’t sell remarkable unless you are.
Read that one again....!
Printing can be considered a commodity industry. It can be considered a custom manufacturing industry. There’s nothing remarkable about putting ink on paper. But the truth is you are remarkable, especially if you think like a marketing services provider. You have to find what makes you worthy of clients talking about you, and that may involve taking risks in your marketing.
Know what makes you different.
We all sell on quality, service and price. But we can’t just say those words. There’s nothing remarkable about that. We need to get specific, precise and analytical about what makes us different from the printer down the road.
So instead of talking about quality, you could say that 98.9% of our jobs are right and on time but if we make a mistake we’ll fix it. Or if you want to focus on service, say that 75% of your customers come from referrals.
It’s about adding value so you don’t have to be the cheapest.
Know your customers.
By understanding your target audience, it allows you to get intimate with your customers. Printing is not a B2B industry, it’s a P2P industry. People buy printing from PEOPLE. Print marketing is about creating a personal relationship with your clients. And to be different, offer to go to their place rather than have them come to you. This gives you an excellent opportunity to explore for other potential print sales that you see around their office.
Establish an identity.
Once you understand what makes you different and you know the types of businesses you’re trying to attract, you can establish an identity around that. This involves understanding your voice in your own locality.
One idea is to take a playful approach to your marketing efforts. Stand out! We all remember the TV ads with just a touch of humour....
Have a plan. Be consistent.
Now you’re ready to go out and market yourself. So put a plan in place and be consistent about your marketing efforts. Marketing is not a one-off practice. Sending out one direct mail piece in a sea of over 2000 marketing images your prospects receive on a given day gets you absolutely nowhere, but a consistent direct mail plan will eventually break through the clutter.
How Effective Brand Positioning Can Transform your Businesses
Sara, a precocious 3 year old, loves to dress up, have ‘parties’ with her friends and will not go to nursery alone. She insists on taking her Barbie dolls along.
Josh is a curious teenager, smart, not-so-sporty, loves his X-Box and would not be caught without a more than generous addition of Lynx when he heads out to be with his friends.
Judith is a hyper-achieving 20-something who went to Cambridge, works with HP and swears by her L’Oreal lipstick on Friday evenings out with her boyfriend.
Sara, Josh and Judith have their loyalties very clear in their minds. They have 'favourites' when it comes to things that really matter to them and no reasonable means can make them change their preferences. Is this because , Barbie, Lynx or L’Oreal are the best products in their respective categories? Is it because they are cheaper than everything else out there? No and no. It’s because, they have managed to occupy a place in Sara, Josh and Judith’s minds and made them identify with the subtle positioning that each offers.
A Barbie makes Sara feel pretty like a princess. It feeds into her active imagination and tells her “With Barbie, Anything is Possible”
Lynx makes Josh feel manly; he hopes it will make him irresistible to girls. After all, the “Lynx Effect” is every teenage boy’s dream.
L’Oreal justifies its premium pricing and makes Judith feel glamorous – a must have when she’s on that all-important date. It tells her “She’s worth it”.
Each of these brands, in their own way make them believe “This brand is so ME!” What these brands are essentially doing is, creating crystal clear brand positioning by offering a very clear emotional benefit to the customer and thereby breaking down the barrier between a sales pitch and an actual sale.
Positioning is not a statement of facts like “the world’s largest computer brand” or “The UK's favourite tea”. It’s not a tagline either, though taglines give you an idea of what positioning the brand aims at. Positioning is creating your own space in the mind of your customer – something that no other brand can fill.
All this is good, but why extol the brand positioning virtues of mega brands that used millions to create these images in our heads. The answer is simple. Nobody was born big. Each of these brands started small and painstakingly built the brand positions that they enjoy today. Small businesses that compete with big brands owe it to themselves to create a clear brand position for themselves … for their future.
1. YOUR BRAND POSITIONING SETS YOU APART FROM COMPETITION
What is so special about your product that your customer should buy from you instead of a million other comparable sellers? Everybody needs a USP. What’s yours?
Is it quality? Is it service? Is it delivery? Maintenance? Patented technology? Safety? How do you make your customers feel about your business?
Spell it out loud and clear.
2. GIVES THEM A REASON TO BUY, SETS EXPECTATIONS FROM YOUR BRAND
Go back to Josh in our earlier example. He could have opted for Old Spice or Davidoff or any other body spray. He chooses Lynx, because he believes in the brand promise – that he’ll be irresistible to women. There’s your reason to buy.
However, brand positioning is in the consumer’s mind. It’s not about big claims made by brands. If there is no sufficient proof that backs up your claims, your positioning falls flat on its face.
3. YOUR BRAND POSITIONING ACTS AS A FOUNDATION FOR CRAFTING YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Many business owners go horribly wrong in marrying their brand positioning and the actual customer experience. This is a recipe to losing whatever credibility you may have built up.
Once you decide what you want to stand for, from a customer’s perspective, you need to build all other aspects of your brand and it’s communication around it. The various areas that will need to sync with your brand positioning are:
Product design
Communication design
User experience
Service levels
For example, imagine yourself as the brand manager of Dominos when they still adhere to their “delivery in 30 minutes or free” formula. You would have to ensure that the product (pizzas) were made, packed and delivered within those 30 minutes. That’s some massive co-ordination between production, inventory, customer service and shipping. When done right, you end up with a brand like Dominos!
Your brand personality, brand recall and eventually brand loyalty will all fit in like pieces of a jigsaw, once you get the factors mentioned above in sync with your brand positioning.
4. CUSTOMERS BECOME LESS PRICE DRIVEN
Do you try and grab business by undercutting your competition? Do you do it all the time? Does it make your business bleed? You can be sure it does.
No business can compete in today’s world on price alone. There will always be someone else – online, in some other country, your customer’s relative – who can offer a lower price. Don’t devalue your product into a commodity. It deserves the price that you ask for it.
By setting up a clear brand position for yourself, customers actively choose your brand over competition. What are a few pounds here and there, when they actually believe in your product and love it for what it does?
Now that you know what vital brand positioning is, over to you!.
How can you position your brand effectively, you ask?
1. Define who you want to sell to – create a typical customer profile – age, sex, education, location, industry
2. Try to understand what drives your typical customer. What will make them happy, how do they like to imagine themselves (Remember Josh and the Lynx example?)
3. Identify how your product fulfills these needs and desires. Check if you can realistically deliver on what you find to be your customer’s prime motivators.
4. Double check whether your competition has not already taken that position or is not able to fulfill that need.
You have just figured out what your brand position will be!
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