Gimbel & Associates Blog

It should come as no surprise that video content is king, providing endless entertainment and learning through lively visuals and animations. But what about print? Should you just concede the attractive and absorbing aspects of video and animation to the digital channels and concentrate on selling flat printed images?

Don't leave any opportunity behind!

Motion graphics aren't appropriate for every project, but helping your clients dive into the realm of motion can be a differentiating factor for your printing business that helps retain current customers and attracts new ones. Motion graphics can transform flat sheets into mesmerizing 3D objects, capturing the reader's attention and even bridging the gap between the tangible and digital worlds for an unforgettable interactive experience.  

Everyone in the printing business knows how direct mail has resurged as an important marketing channel. However, it's not appearing as it did in your grandfather's mailbox! There’s no “spray and pray” anymore.

“In 2022, we saw marketers starting to shift their digital marketing budgets to direct mail solutions,” Meg Ugenti reported last month in Forbes. “This trend will hold steady as the digital marketing landscape continues to be more crowded and less predictable than traditional offline marketing channels.”

In a recent article from Practical Ecommerce, Eric Bandholz explained how Apple’s iOS 14 privacy change has upended advertising on Facebook. “Merchants accustomed to stellar ROI must now accept modest or less-than-modest performance, he reported, citing the intriguing case of Pig of the Month. The Ohio-based direct-to-consumer seller of barbeque quotes company founder Lea Richards: “With post-iOS 14 ads not working, we’re getting back into direct mail. We’ve found good results, up to six-times return.”

In today’s competitive printing industry, customer retention usually comes down to a great customer experience. High quality printing is simply the standard now, not a differentiator, and competing on price is a race to the bottom. Great customer service can be the competitive difference that makes clients want to do business with you and keeps your bottom line growing.

But the definition of great customer service has evolved. Today, the meaning includes a certain degree of self service and 24/7 access—the conveniences that can be found via online portals. Easy to navigate portals with anytime and anywhere access, quick responses, project tracking, proofing, invoicing, inventory tracking, and other services can make your brand stand out with their terrific benefits.

“I don’t have to sell. My customers come to me.”  That is what a customer told me once. If you have that situation all the power to you, but you are probably leaving a lot of business for others to grab.  Learn  how your existing customers choose you and then delve into how can you leverage that knowledge to grow your business.

Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is probably one of the most important business processes that a company can have. As part of an ongoing program of both sales development and customer satisfaction (shouldn’t they be one in the same) you can build a dynamic model for analyzing customer acquisition experience and use that to develop strategies for new customer growth and customer retention.

A growing number of print service providers have added design to their service offerings. If you haven’t ventured there yet, consider the many advantages to bringing design in house. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as placing a help wanted ad. Design is a broad area and graphic designers come in many flavors and with many specialties.

The designer you choose to hire must be the right fit for the work your company produces and match your organizational culture. An understanding of the print process and its intricacies is, of course, mandatory.

This article is  a reprint, courtesy of the Print & Graphic Communications Association.  Gimbel & Associates is intrigued and gratified to learn of the charitable work of former NY Yankee great, Mariano Rivera, who has established a program to educate students about exploring careers in printing and graphics.  For more information on the Foundation or to attend the Franklin Event, click on the link at the end of this article.

Most of us are bombarded daily with thousands of marketing messages. Our phones, computers, televisions, social media channels, radios, and emails continuously clamor for our attention with promotional hits.

A marketer trying to cut through the noise faces almost impossible odds. The good news is that one of the most effective tools for bolstering engagement and response is individualized marketing through variable data printing. The most effective marketing is for an audience of one and leading-edge marketers increasingly use variable data printing (VDP) to ensure their client’s messages are heard.

For printers, this represents a big and profitable opportunity. Our eBook from Gimbel and Associates, A Printer’s Perspective & Guide to Digital Printing and Variable Data, is a thorough and in-depth source for helping printers transition to this business model. You can download it for free.

Anyone selling print today using the methods they learned ten years ago (or more) is going to run into difficulties. The pandemic changed the way people feel about work and time. That’s what brought on the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting phenomena. Print buyers, who may hold positions in marketing or the executive suite, place a high value on their time and they aren’t very tolerant of people who waste it.

It can take dozens of attempts to secure a meeting with a prospective customer. When you’re finally in the room with a decision-maker, don’t make mistakes that will cause them to end the meeting or deflect any attempts at following up.

A significant percentage of designers have little to no experience in creating print projects. When they shift to printed materials, this lack of knowledge can cause them to make design decisions that add unnecessary costs and make it tough for printers to produce the product the designers envisioned. Designers accustomed to working in digital channels may not be conscious of the details that determine the success or failure of a print project.

This GCS Strategies video features wide format experts, Sean Burke and Tom Cochrane talking to  Brian Ebenger, VP Excel Products, about the materials and installation of security film on windows and doors to protect schools.  Whether K-12 or collegiate, this film provides an additional layer of security against school shootings.  For more background on window security film, visit the GCS website blog, "Three Minutes on School Security."

For two long years, nobody put on an in-person event. Organizers migrated everything to virtual affairs or cancelled their plans outright. Now people are feeling safe enough to attend live events again. Sports teams are back to playing in front of their fans and entertainers are performing for audiences.

If you once had plans to host an open house at your printing company and never got the chance, it’s time to put that event back on the calendar.

Getting Back to In-Person Events

There’s no promotional investment that can make a bigger impression on customers and prospects than the personal interaction made possible with live events. Well-executed open houses are great ways for print service providers to achieve their goals for new business development, launching new product lines, or expanding business relationships.

Has anyone ever enjoyed a session of Death by PowerPoint? If your sales reps are still focusing on speeds, feeds, and other dry factoids during client presentations, chances are high they’re not delivering a message that resonates.

While facts still matter and need to be communicated, a more compelling approach is to weave them into stories that hold your clients’ attention and truly engage them.

Why Stories?

Stories sell better than facts, it’s that simple. When we listen to stories, we use more complex areas of our brain; we engage our emotions; we find it easier to remember content and data, and we stay focused. We’re all people and we all like a good story.