How to Market Your Printing Company

Credit: Bill Gillespie

Let me start by confessing that I have never taken a marketing course. I have no formal training. I have never worked for an agency or marketing services company. I’ve always been in sales or operations.

What I do have is a great track record of growing printing companies. Each assignment has been different but what worked was consistent. We focused on what made us special to customers, identified market touchpoints, decided who we wanted to do business with, got our story straight and told it consistently with every communication channel available.

Let me tell you what marketing is. Marketing is everything you do to put your product or service into your customer’s hands. It’s collateral, social media, graphics.

It’s all of that for sure but it’s also people. It’s how you manage the phone, email response time, document accuracy, follow up and collections. Each of these things scream who you are. What you do matters more than what you say.

Let me say this too. Buying marketing services from companies that buy printing is hard. Let me share an example.

Years ago I was asked to have a company website developed. I called a friend/colleague with a studio. This guy bought printing from us so it seemed like a good idea.

The studio owner asked someone he knew that bought lots of printing to be part of the meeting. When I tried to share what I had in mind the print buying expert said, “I know your company. I know what you’re good at. I’ve got this.” There was no listening.

What we got was junk. It was all presses, direct mail, collateral, quality and on time delivery. It was “great work at fair prices with good service.” I could be wrong but I’m fairly certain the brands we wanted to attract were already enjoying those things. We couldn’t earn the studio’s attention, so we pulled the plug and moved on.

I called another guy I knew. He asked if he could take a stab at it. I agreed and we set up a discovery meeting.

This guy asked if he could call a few of our best clients. He wanted to ask them why they used our company. He wanted his messaging to be about client motivation not machines and color fidelity.

The feedback from clients was priceless. It shaped our marketing but it also led us to adjust our sales language. Studio #2 had it exactly right.

So, we knew who we were hiring. We would have a new website. How might what we learned influence our marketing in general? Suddenly it was on my radar screen.

The reps and I met and identified each touch along the customer journey. We talked about how customers buy and prospects research vendors. We asked ourselves, are we where they are and are we talking about what matters to them?

We also mapped a successful sales call. We talked about outbound calling, follow up, sample sharing, success stories, our company presentation, proofs, invoices, quote letters, delivery tickets and email template. We discussed everything that might find its way in front of customers and prospects.

Thinking through our sales process led us to identify the following critical tools:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Presentation Folder
• Case Study Template
• Direct Mail Template
• Quote Letter
• Email Update Template
• Thank You Cards/Notes
• New Service Announcement Template
• Delivery Ticket
• Carton Graphics
• Business Cards
• Educational Series (on site events)
• Company Power Point Presentation

As you can imagine, the list of tools evolved as our selling took shape and matured. Reps buy into your story over time. They don’t all tear out in the same direction at the strike of a gavel. The list was in constant motion and the “we could use something for this” conversations never stopped. That’s good. Excited and involved reps are what you want.

The next thing was our story. What did our message need to be? What did we learn from the client interviews studio #2 conducted?

What we learned was we were hired for all manner of intangible reasons. The responding clients cited all sorts of things. “They listen to my crazy ideas. They never say no. They never make me feel stupid when I ask if my idea is possible.” They also talked about response times, integrity, being made to feel important. Not the first client mentioned price, equipment or quality. It’s likely that most didn’t know which presses were offset or digital and none of them cared.

You’ll have to decide what is right for your company. We decided that our best feature was that we were “Idea Enablers.” We were hired to make ideas come to life. We were in the idea business not the printing business. Ideas turn on presses.

We hired a graphic designer to create a look. It wasn’t expensive. If I think about how many times we repurposed the elements he illustrated for us it was downright cheap. The look was all about transformation.

I wrote some “idea theme” copy and we married it up with his illustrations. We printed the tools we needed from our list (You’re a printer. Printing stuff for yourself isn’t expensive.) and set up a marketing materials cubicle.

Let me tell you something obvious. Fresh collateral triggers sales calls. Reps get excited. They want to show the new stuff. They make calls, send packets and tell your story. They tell it to people that buy what you do.

Having these tools on the shelf and our story straight left us with just a few things to sort out. We wanted to create an educational series for clients, and we wanted a good social media strategy. These things actually turned out to be easy, effective and the most fun.

We made the educational series Possibilities Focused. We decided on a minimum of 4 events and a maximum of 6 events per year. We held sessions on prototyping, dimensional design, variable data prep, embellishments, elaborate die-cutting and wall graphics. We tried to control numbers (crowds) but learned to live with standing room only.

The Social Media took care of itself. We shared what we were doing on LinkedIn from the customer’s perspective. We explained why stuff mattered and refused to talk about technology. We earned the attention of International Brands and were invited to present our story all over the country. We doubled the size of our already substantial business.

How did this happen? We listened to what mattered to clients. We thought through our customer journey. We identified who we wanted to work with. We simplified our story and told it consistently. We made sure everything we did reinforced who we claimed to be.

Seling is Simple. It turns out Marketing is too. Look through the client’s eyes.

By the way…your sales team is your first list of clients. Get them on board and excited then buckle up!