At our April Annual Meeting, Vincent De Franco, former Director of Marketing for St. Joseph Print Group and former editor of PrintAction, helped us explore the current state of the printing industry and what services and direction OAQP should pursue in the coming year.
On the subject of professional associations, DeFranco said: “I love to see associations such as the OAQP that consist of business people who are collaborating and cooperating for common interests. Although competition among printers will always exist, they benefit the whole industry by cooperating. For instance, printers need to be unified in promoting print as a communication medium. We think in terms of “how much of the digital black-and-white market can I get?” instead of “how much of the advertising community’s budget can I get?”
“We also need to promote printing because today direct mail is competing with television, targeted email, and other Internet communication, and these competing technologies are improving as much as the print technology.”
Considering his professional expertise, I couldn’t resist asking Vincent to hand over some free marketing advice especially geared for printers.
“A lot of confusion exists about what marketing is and how you do it, “ said DeFranco. “Printers typically focus on sales and not marketing. A lot of printers think marketing just means hiring new salespeople but in reality it means getting a unified message out to your prospective customers, and supporting the sales team that way.”
“I’m on a big direct marketing kick. Direct marketing makes so much sense for printers because their production costs are minimal. They can do everything in-house.”
“For one thing, you’re operating in a business environment where you already have a lot of information about your clients and you know the types of products they’ve purchased. You know the content of those products (since you’ve read them) and you can also deduce who their customers are.”
“You know the frequency of the work you do for them and since printers’ relationships with customers are generally positive, any feedback you receive on the success of a particular job or campaign can help you tweak your database. From there, it’s not much of a leap to structure a sophisticated direct-marketing campaign. It could be direct mail but it could also be other things, such as a well-placed telephone call.”
“Knowing your customers in terms of who their customers are also helps you realize where you fit in – whether it’s providing just one service or expanding your services for them into things like data management, photography, or creative.”
Win a $1000 Marketing Assessment
Take advantage of OAQP’s special spring membership offer: anyone who renews or takes out a new membership in OAQP during the months of April, May, or June 2004 automatically becomes eligible for a draw to win an expert marketing assessment. In other words, the winner will receive a one-time review of their company’s marketing plan and materials conducted by a skillful printing-industry marketing specialist, who will then provide feedback to the winner on his findings. (Approximate prize value, $1,000 CAD.)
The marketing genius whose services you might be lucky enough to win is Vincent De Franco. For the past six months, Vincent has worked as an independent marketing consultant specializing in the graphic arts industry. (You may remember that he served as our guest speaker and moderator for OAQP’s round table discussion at our Annual General Meeting in April.)
