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A Printer Looks at Fifty

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(With apologies to Jimmy Buffet.)

Mother, mother offset

I have heard your call,

Recognized the smell of your ink

Since I was three feet tall.  You’ve seen it all,

You’ve seen it all.

~~~~~

Watched the men who ran you,

Switch from film to plate.

And in your rollers you held the treasure

We thought would never outdate.  You printed dreams,

You printed dreams.

Yes, I am a printer

Six hundred years too late

The presses don’t thunder, it causes me to wonder

I’m an over fifty victim of fate; arriving too late.

Hell, I’m not too late.

~~~~~

I’ve done a little cross media,

I’ve run my share of stock

I made enough money to Google Miami

But I pissed it away so fast, never meant to last

Never meant to last.

~~~~~

I have been marketing now for over 6 years,

I passed out QR codes and measured till in tears

But I’ve got to keep preachin’, got to keep teachin’

I’ll Lunch and Learn, again.  I’ll invite friends.

Engagement never ends.

~~~~~

I go for younger gadgets

Tried several for a while,

Sure they confuse me and often they lose me

And yet they still make me smile.

It just takes a while, just takes a while.

~~~~~

Mother, mother offset,

After all these years I’ve found

My occupational hazard being

My occupation’s just not around

There’s a movement aground.  Gonna head downtown.

~~~~~

There’s a movement aground.

I may just head downtown.

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Paul Strack, CustomXM

@pstrack

Print Lives, But My Industry is Killin’ Me. A Response to the Response to President Obama.

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Those of you who know me personally know that when it comes to politics, controversy and even food, I am pretty much like Switzerland. I try not to offend, and not be easily offended. I typically remain neutral. Industry communications over the past week, however, have caused me to become a little more outspoken. 

In one instance, one of our trade associations issued a video response to cost cutting efforts by President Obama in his attempt to eliminate wasteful printing.

In another episode of outrageousness, our industry produced, and in my opinion, regrettably shared, a video titled “The Sexy Side of Print.”

I realize our industry has struggled, but there seem to be better ways to promote our efforts than these two examples.

Below is my video response to the first action that brought me out of neutrality.

Here is the video reply to the President’s message that prompted my response:

Here is the link to President Obama’s video. For some reason, I was unable to embed it properly here.

I am still too disturbed by what I saw on the “sexy print” video to have formulated a response to that!

The state of digital printing

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Let’s start with some statistics:


1) According to Pira International, the total global digital printing market has grown 122% since 2002, and by 2012, it is expected to double again, accounting for 21% of the overall global printing market as a whole.

2) Today, 30% of print providers offer web-to-print services. (CAPV)

3) 30% of today’s digital work is versioned or personalized. (Interquest)

What I hear loud and clear from these facts is that the future of print is healthy. As the economic situation in our country continues to force companies to tighten their belts and their budgets, the efficiencies of digital printing become more and more critical to a company’s marketing strategy. Let’s take a brief look at the how and why:

(Digital) Print-on-demand: In the past, the price points gained by printing long runs on off-set presses was the key factor in how printed material was produced. The price per unit was the determining factor. Alas, in most cases boxes of printed material was sent to the landfill because it had become irrelevant and outdated.  Therefore the cost efficiency of long runs was not as great as imagined.  POD allows you to create short runs of relevant material at an affordable cost and also gives you the added benefit of being able to personalize each printed piece and take advantage of the power of targeted marketing.

Another advantage of POD is the ability to merge your print production and fulfillment with a web-to-print solution online giving you a greater amount of control in your print purchasing than you could imagine.  Picture this…a company’s sales force can go online and order sales collateral that is personalized for their prospects, in their region and have the product shipped directly  to them without ever having to pick up a phone.  The web-to-print portal can also produce reports on usage, manage warehousing of certain products and provide online proofing and design features.

Integrated Marketing Solutions: What is an integrated marketing solution you ask?  Good question. In our print-centric approach, digital printing’s abiity to create personalized print pieces allows us to harness the power of database technology and the web to create marketing campaigns in multiple channels.  Using Personalized URLS (PURLS) we can create printed materials that drive prospects and clients to websites that are designed to give you the opportunity to A. pitch a product or service B. gather valuable data about the prospect via a survey page including an email address for future marketing purposes C. forwards leads automatically from the site to the proper personnel and last but not least D. provides an online dashboard for managing the campaign. These tools also provide the ability to integrate the campaign with your CRM and your client database.

What kind of strategy does your company have for reducing marketing costs while increasing the efficiency of these strategies?  Can you manage print costs over a large geographic area? Do you have the right tools to drive prospects to your web site? Lets talk about that.

Steve Davison is a marketing consultant providing marketing and sales support to CustomXM. When he is not doing that Steve is a professional touring guitarist.

Market Smart in the Downturn

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By 2010 I was hoping I would be done talking about the recession. Over the past year I’ve had several friends ask me about how and why to market in a down economy. The fact is that most successful companies grow through marketing in the latter half of a recession. Even more amazing is that a large percentage of Fortune 100 companies were actually formed during an economic downtown.

By marketing in a down economy you can put yourself ahead of the competition when the economy recovers. The trick to marketing in a downturn is to market smart. Any idiot can market in a booming economy, when people are willing to spend money all you have to do is show them how. In a bad economy though you have to market smart and show people why to spend money. I typically give out 5 tips to market smart in a down economy:

  1. Track – Analytics are key in marketing in a down economy. You have to make sure you get every dime out of your marketing dollars. Using marketing tools like personalized URLs help you measure response from each marketing piece to help you adjust and refine each time you market.
  2. Segment – In an upturn a shotgun approach works fine, you can typically get enough people to bite on a marketing piece to make it worthwhile. In a down economy you must appeal to them individually which means segmenting your database to deliver exactly the right piece to the right people. Sometimes this means sending multiple versions of one piece, by using targeting marketing you can easily run this all in one marketing push.
  3. Be Innovative and Eye Catching – More than likely your competition is going to be marketing as well during the downturn. So make your marketing stand out. Spend a little extra time with a graphic designer, use good photography, and add that special touch to set your marketing piece apart. Remember a marketing piece is only good if someone looks at it.
  4. Understand Your Market – Make sure you are keeping up with what your market wants. Follow your customers on twitter, create a facebook fan page and invite them to it, or buy them lunch sometime just to chat. In a recession you have to go to the customers, don’t expect them to come to you.
  5. Keep it Cheap – I’ve walked into marketing positions before to find dozens of boxes of marketing materials. The people before me must have ordered a million line cards at a time. Every single marketing handout was at least 5 years old and out of date. In a recession, you don’t have a lot to spend, so spend smart. Instead of running large offset print jobs, run smaller digital print on demand jobs. You can run just what you need without running the risk of having expensive out of date materials sitting around in a closet.

Let me know how you market smart in a down economy, drop me a comment below.

-Greg

Real Integrated marketing with QR Codes

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Integrated marketing is what most forward thinking companies strive to achieve with marketing efforts. However a large gap exists between print and web making integration difficult. The use of QR codes in print advertising and marketing can help bridge this gap.

A few years ago while working for a marketing agency the big buzz word was “integrated marketing”. Essentially this was creating marketing flow between your online and offline marketing. Back then this included things like creating targeted URLs to direct people who receive your print piece, creating cohesion between your web site and your print campaigns, and directing people to online signup forms through traditional media. A gap exists between the printed page and a website. This gap is big enough that many modern marketers have written off print advertising completely. People are just reluctant to get a direct mail piece, go to their computer, and type in a web address.

Real quick, look in your pocket or on your desk. Chances are you have a cell phone within reach. In addition chances are it is a smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Pre…). The answer to bridging this gap lies right there, it is your constant connection to the world, but you are still not going to type in a web address.

QR codes are a way to help bridge the gap. Web browsing on cell phones is not at a very usable level. Using QR codes in your marketing allows potential customers to easily pick up their cell phone, scan in the QR code, and instantly be directed to the landing page for your ad. The New York Times recently did an article highlighting this very technique with advertising, looking at how various companies are starting a push toward advertising with QR and other 2d bar codes.

As technology and consumer awareness increases so will the integration of print and online marketing. Integrating technologies like QR codes into advertising takes very little effort, and no additional cost. This also adds a second layer of analytical data to marketing efforts, allowing you to better gauge ROI for a print piece. Take a look how Rob McBryde used this integration to move potential customers from his printed business card to his web site.

-Greg Henderson