Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

The issue probably is they don't understand it, its capabilities or how they can use it. I sold a product that could be customized, lazer cut logos or other art. I would walk into the store, take a pix of the front entry and the company would send me back my pix, with their logo dropped into the floor-a whole new floor. I did a very detailed project-- took a pix and we had mousepads made of the install (with my contact info so they'd remember to call on the next one). If the client was large enough we'd send an actual (smaller) sample of the product with their logo dropped in.

Things that are diffent-- they hear you, they think they understand you- but they need to see it to actually get it. I know they are creative types on their own- but you still have to spoon feed it to them.

Jane,

I agree with Carol, samples are powerful. I would prepare samples of some of the oddest printing you can do. The straightforward stuff people can get done anywhere. You need to showcase your ability to print on odd substrates. I know samples can be expensive, but it may be what is needed. You definitely need to have some brochures highlighting these abilities, perhaps showing some applications by various clients.

Mike

Dear Jane

What strikes me immediately is the differentiation of your product from those in the commodity printing market, regardless of size. For that reason, Phil’s reference to billboards may possibly be casting your net in the wrong direction.

If you offer a print service which is truly special, possibly neigh on unique, then you will not be competing with any standard printers, regardless of the size of paper they can cover – forgive me if I am wrong, but are not most large scale adverts on hoardings made out of a composite of many smaller printed sheets which fit together in a pattern?

The possible size of your products might also make providing samples a bit of a problem as lugging around a 10 foot by 12 foot slab of marble with something of interest printed onto its surface is just a tad taxing.

Likewise, guessing the specific viable application from the possible variations in a business would also be difficult and produce irrelevant ideas which would miss their target. I mean; I think that having an oak coffin lid printed at 300dpi high resolution full colour image of the dear deceased would be pretty nifty, but professional undertakers might disagree.

So why not gain acceptance by matching the unique or unusual qualities of your service to the specific, unique or unusual tasks to which it might be put in a potential client’s operation? That would involve marketing which produces interest rather than sales, preferably direct interest in the form of enquiries which would justify a sales visit.

To determine what you could sustainably spend on this, you need to know what your margin is on each and every product. Then you can calculate the number of respondents you need to convert to make the marketing profitable. As I can imagine that these are costly items in comparison to paper print, then I also imagine that there is a hefty amount of margin for you to work with.

I would also put enquiries onto a CRM system and once you have tracked a few of them into sales, you could then look at targeting companies with the same profile by researching them an going for direct mail, individual permission based email and a web / blog campaign. If you have enough sales success stories already, you could probably jump to the CRM system immediately and simultaneously research ahd target companies from the start.

The key here is probably in the layout and the copy: You need to say very, very clearly that you are not just another printing house or POS supplier and that half an hour of the customer’s time spent with you could be very profitable to them indeed.

By the way, a sample product which is outlandishly over the top, such as a slab of granite overprinted with some stunning advertising (Your own?) is an excellent ice breaker, but I feel that attempting to second guess the users intended application might be too difficult to get exactly correct. Better to be 100% spot on with your own media, selling itself, rather than to pretend that you know what the customer’s problems are and can solve them. The only way you can get to that position is to meet up, discuss them and then, if your product margin allows it, to make a second presentation with Carol’s suggestion of something that the customer has said they could use.

Steve Alker
Xspirt

PS Apologies for the length of this post, I went to CERN last week to see the LHC and got my brain accelerated to 99.9999% of the speed of light, thus making my explanations come out nearly infinitely long.