Six Musts for a Printer's Marketing Campaign

Note from Bill: Marketing has a strange place in the printing industry. It reminds me of exercising in that everyone talks about needing it, but few do it—fewer do it well, and fewer still do it consistently enough to make a difference. Therefore, I am grateful to this week’s ghost blogger for giving us all a checklist for creating an effective marketing campaign.

1) What message do you want to convey in your campaign?

We recently added wide-format imaging to our roster of products and services. We wanted to announce this to our client and prospect lists. The message was that we now offer creative wide-format imaging products and services, but unlike most companies that have similar capabilities, we have unique technology that allows us to print directly on unusual substrates, such as glass, metal and wood.

2) Decide how you want your campaign to be distributed—e-blasts, direct mail, both?

a) In our wide-format campaign, we began with an e-blast to all clients and prospects, under the signature of individual sales reps.

b) A week later, we had each rep follow up with their own client/prospect list by calling or sending an email using a prepared template.

c) After one month, we mailed a flyer explaining several of the new services we now offered in this realm.

3) Target the segments you want to reach.

After we did our initial campaign, we focused on ad agencies and design firms, as well as other types of companies that were most likely to utilize wide-format imaging products and services.

4) Send relevant samples.

For our two target groups, we produced sets of different samples of our wide-format offerings. For the agency segment, we sent three different pieces that were unusual in design and featured the variety of resources we can give them to support their clients. For the corporate group, we sent a different set of samples that were more geared toward trade shows, displays, etc.