What do your customers really want? If you have the answer to this question you are on your way to becoming a valued provider. While no two clients are the same and no two businesses are responding to exactly the same demands, the following article looks at some of the common threads of your customer’s desires. We begin by looking at some of the current industry trends broadly. Next, we look at what research currently exists to answer the question of what print buyers want. We then share some new data collected nationally by a team of researchers. We conclude with an interview with print buying expert, Maurizio Zomparelli, who reflects on some of our findings.
Printing Industry Outlook
Economic Overview
The Canadian economy is projected to experience slow growth in the coming year (1.8 percent) (Porter et al., 2015). While the slowdown largely stems from low oil prices, the weaker Canadian dollar is serving to maintain growth overall. While the changes do not appear particularly drastic, in the Western provinces the picture is quite different. In particular, Alberta’s growth has plummeted from a 4.4 percent growth in 2014 to only 0.4 percent projected in 2015, ranking the province near bottom of the list (Porter et al., 2015).
The printing industry is valued at $640 billion worldwide (Print Is Big, 2015); Canada represents about $9 billion of this market. While the size of the printing industry is formidable, a majority of print businesses are small to medium-sized. Market research shows that 5,694 businesses across Canada employ about 50,000 people in the printing industry (8 people/company on average). Given these numbers, there is a lot of opportunity within the local community to work with like-minded entrepreneurs.
Number of people employed by the printing industries in 2013
Source: http://www.competeprosper.ca/clusters/data/by-cluster/printing-services
Statistically, the printing industry is in slight decline with a 1.2 percent decrease from 2010 to 2015. (Printing in Canada: Market Research Report, 2015). This decline was much steeper in the early 2000s at which point the Canadian printing industry was worth about $11.7 billion comparatively (Industry Canada, 2012). The industry has faced significant change, not only affected by typical economic fluctuations, but also by technological advancements changing the market itself. Within subsectors of the printing industry there has been a pattern of decline in commercial printing and a rise in quick printing as measured by share of total sales (State of the Canadian Printing Industry, 2011).
Secondary research shows currently there are several trends affecting the printing industry. For the purpose of this article we have focused our research on a selection of these trends. Namely, we include purchasing print online, a shift in demand to digital and ancillary services, and the impact of digital communication media. We will discuss each of these topics.
Online Print Buying
In 2011, 18 percent of print was purchased online. It is predicted that by 2017, this will increase to 50 percent of orders (Print is Big, 2015) as consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable making B2C purchases online.
Furthermore, many online printing company storefronts are offering B2C style products such as greeting cards, photo books, calendars, and more. In the 2013 White Paper, Web-to-Print: The Promise, the Potential, and the Reality by NAPL, it was reported that “web-to-print increased sales by a 3 to 1 ratio and over two-thirds report web-to-print streamlined workflow, and almost half report that it has enhanced company image.”
Naturally this trend towards online ordering is also affecting B2B corporate purchasing habits. What makes web-to-print so attractive in today’s market is the ability to handle more small orders with fewer or with less knowledgeable employees. People do not need specific print or design skills to order printed material as they can use web-to-print interfaces to input, design and view soft proof materials in real-time. Print companies that utilize functional web-to-print portals make it easier for customers, both individual or corporate, to engage and purchase goods and services.
This is favourable from a sales and marketing perspective as printing volumes are down, and the frequency of orders is increasing. Companies who are able to produce work with fewer touchpoints are able to accommodate this shift while maintaining margins. However, the digital printing market has low barriers to entry (specifically, it is easy to obtain equipment from vendors), which means competition in this area is high (Gordon et al., 2013).
While online print buying makes for a more efficient process, printers must be careful not to sacrifice their ability to maintain good customer service. Many print buyers value the relationship with the printer. In setting up online print services, the user experience is a crucial part to the success of a print company. Simplified, quick, and easy online transactions help with efficiency and quicker transactions (Online Print Business Trends in 2015, 2015). This is even more important when planning to sell B2C products as the general public is likely less familiar with the print buying process (Gordon et al., 2013).
Diversified Ancillary Services
The second trend that was examined was how Canadian printers are benefiting from offering ancillary services. In the State of the Industry Report, by the CPIA, conducted in 2011, the three most commonly offered ancillary services are, professional creative design (50.9 percent); mailing management (40.6 percent); and kit fulfillment (31.1 percent). Other ancillary services being offered by Canadian printers include photography, database management, archiving, logistics management, and cross-media marketing.
Future investment plans for printers seem to be focused on web-to-print e-commerce style storefronts (32 percent of respondents indicated wanting to invest in these capabilities in the next 24 months) and mailing management storefronts (17 percent of respondents indicated wanting to invest in these capabilities in the next 24 months). Further, 59.4 percent of the respondents indicated that in the last 24 months they had already invested in digital printing technologies between 2009 and 2011. Other areas of investment included prepress technologies (45 percent of respondents) and workflow automation (26 percent). All of these can be interpreted as being parts of a successful web-to-print solution (CPIA, 2011).
Digital Media
The third trend examined was the increase in client preference in non-traditional marketing options. The proliferation of digital media has had a tremendous impact on the future outlook of printed products (Fisher, 2013). Digital technology is changing some of the ways we communicate. Community or corporate newsletters are an example of information that has significantly shifted from print to online. Mobile technology and access to mobile data services will continue to shape and accelerate this trend.
In a study by Molkenbur et al., 2013, respondents reported they would be decreasing their print media spending from 34.1 percent of their media budget to 29.9 percent within the next two years. Online/web advertising and mobile media, on the other hand, are growing. In the face of this, print is transforming and performing a different role. Molkenbur reports that 34 percent of respondents agreed that the role of printing in integrated marketing would continue to increase. For example, printing is the preferred method of communication for the older population. Additionally, in some areas, consumers are returning to printed products. Most famously, the JC Penney catalogue is being printed again after five years of digital-only content. This is a direct result of consumer preferences. The key, however, is that we are seeing printed products change to be more integrated in the digital world. For example, the IKEA catalogue now features an augmented reality (AR) feature, which allows customers to virtually “try out” furniture in their own space using a catalogue and mobile phone with camera.
Buying Habits in the Printing Industry: Secondary Research Findings
A look at current research determined that print buyers consistently value two traits: a strong, long-term relationship, and a printer that provides solutions to their problems.
For printers, maintaining strong customer relationships is vital to encouraging repeat business and long-term success. Print buyers also value long-term relationships with their printers, and so it is necessary that printers grow connections with the decision makers of companies.
Additionally, when these decision makers move on to new companies, they may continue using a printer with whom they have an established relationship. When there is a genuine connection between the sales representative and the company, the relationship will promote repeat business. Additionally, when the connection is strong, the print buyer will not want to look elsewhere in most cases (Dana & Zarwin, 2014).
Trust is the most important component of a strong relationship. The print buyer wants to ensure that they can trust the printer to reliably achieve the expected quality with cost in mind. Print buyers would rather give their business to printers that they can depend on, even at a slight premium. If the print company catches mistakes before press, print buyers are grateful and believe the printer to be dependable. As their expectations continue to be met or exceeded, they will be more likely to continue their business and trust will be established (What do print buyers want from printers? 2010).
In addition to connection, sales representatives need to understand the business needs of their clients. This adds value to these relationships as conversations are generally genuine and helpful. It also shows that the printer understands client processes and has their best interest in mind. As relationships can be difficult to build, customers are less likely to search elsewhere for a new printer when their current one is top of mind for a particular area of print (Dana & Zarwin, 2014).
Driving Solutions
In addition to strong relationships, print buyers value a printer that can provide a high value solution to their communications needs. Through understanding the company and their business, printers can provide visual, material or design solutions accordingly.
It is important for a printer to behave like a team member by understanding the values of their clients and what they are trying to achieve in their own businesses. In doing so, this again helps strengthen the relationship between printer and buyer. This value-added service is difficult to establish with multiple printers so achieving this stage is crucial to a good and mutually beneficial printer-to-print-buyer relationship.
Print buyers are now looking for solutions that provide more than simple images on paper. Additional value-added services that are ancillary to the printed product can help a printer stand out as a solution provider. In particular, diversifying services in creative design, database management, mailing, fulfillment, and inventory management would help print buyers simplify outsourcing (Romano, 2014).
Buying Habits in the Printing Industry: Primary Research Findings
It is important to realize that today’s print buyers have varying levels of proficiency and understanding in the graphic arts industry. This is a challenge for printers and sales representatives because in order to be value-add solution providers, the print company’s customers need to be able to communicate what they need and why. Some print buyers have a specific print production role with extensive knowledge of print applications and the graphic communications industry, while others have little to no knowledge; they rely on the printer to get their job done with minimal hassle.
Within this study alone more than twenty job titles were supplied, ranging from office administration, to marketing, to design. Knowing this range and understanding how to effectively interact with customers along the range is crucial for a printer’s success and a key attribute that should be developed in the existing and newly recruited sales force.
Working together with an SME partner, our research team visited a sample of print buyers to gather information about what was important to them in their print buying decisions. In particular, we assessed each client’s current printing needs evaluated their ordering process, discussed what clients value most in a print service provider, and analyzed general media trends. The findings are presented within each of these general areas.
Current Print Needs
The printing needs of the clients interview reflected what we often think of when looking at printed products. For example stationery, brochures, newsletters and reports were commonly mentioned. There was no push for innovative printing solutions from SME clients.
There was a general sentiment that clients used more than one print provider to fulfill their needs. Interestingly, no one expressed an interest or frustration towards having multiple vendors. The primary cited reason for using a variety of printers was lack of product offerings or capacity. This goes in the face of the concept of a one-stop-shop. Many printers try to be everything to their clients. In fact this is not a need supported by our findings.
Order Processing
Our SME partner for this study had an online storefront available for their clients. Clients we interviewed included those who used this option as well as those who used email instead. In a world in which we push for all transactions to be digital, the clients expressed no particular enthusiasm toward moving ordering online. No one was opposed to online ordering; however, they did express that they would like to maintain their ability to contact customer service representatives directly with questions and concerns.
Valued Traits
The most pronounced sentiment throughout the interviews was clients placed extremely high value on the quality of service provided by the printer.
They expressed that they valued the company’s willingness to help by working to reduce costs, delivering in short turnaround cycles, and acting as a consultant to the client. In addition, clients were grateful for quality control (such as being mindful of errors) and having the ability to manage all relevant files used in a job.
Media Trends
The general reported trend for print media usage/spend by interviewed clients was that it would remain unchanged or be reduced. Interviewees indicated plans to reduce the number of print rotations in a given year, decreasing the number of copies being printed, and moving some collateral online completely. Specific examples included printing three reports per year instead of four, printing 100 copies instead of 200, or putting the entire report online, respectively. Furthermore, the general sentiment was that print worked well for special occasions, such as events or important reports, or for targeted populations (eg. where the client was serving an older demographic), printing was deemed superior.
As event-based marketing is a growing market, an area of opportunity could be providing an event-focused printing bundle to potential clients. For example, events often include printed collateral such as invitations (with fulfillment provided as a value added option), posters, banners, programs, tickets and other like products. Anticipating these individual items and presenting them to prospects as a package can help simplify the buying decision significantly. Such packages can continue to grow and evolve as the company builds expertise in what works well depending on the event or the industry.
Interview with print buyer, Maurizio Zomparelli
Maurizio Zomparelli has a unique vantage point, as his ten years of experience have been spent half on the printer side (in both production and sales), and half on the client side responsible for buying print. He is the key individual for all print procurement with a large organization (1000+ employees). As printers and clients alike know, his breed is a rare find in today’s market.
While some of the findings are intuitive and consistent over time, others surprised us. For example, we have intrinsically known for a long time that trust is important to clients. However, finding out that using multiple suppliers was not an issue is unexpected. We asked Maurizio to comment on some of those surprises and long-term truths.
Lumby: What are some traits of print providers that are important to you?
Zomparelli: We look for experts with a can do/will do attitude. We live and work in a fiercely competitive communication market. I have every expectation that my printer should have the expertise to take on a job and run with it. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find good people with a desire to learn and become experts that you can trust to do an excellent job. I believe that our industry is suffering to develop and keep talent. We are losing more and more people to other industries that are experiencing more opportunity and growth. We are lucky to work with some excellent vendors.
L: Our study shows that buyers are a very diverse group of individuals, with ranging expertise in print. Would you say that this is a challenge for the profession? Why?
Z: Print buying as a profession is certainly not as defined as it used to be. There are few people left today whose responsibility is print buying alone – it’s typically a split role. Marketing budgets no longer favour a large print spend and the budget is split among more media channels today. More of the focus has gone to digital and using the “in” channel as people seem to know less about printing in general. It’s crazy to think, but when I started as a professional, print had way less direct competition. Social media was just emerging, and people weren’t yet obsessed with moving everything to digital.
I will say that I believe that print is an incredible tool when used correctly. I think consumers also intuitively believe this. We need to move to highly impactful one-to-one marketing campaigns, focusing on direct marketing. Even young children brought up in the digital age, are excited about getting mail because it’s new to them and different. We need professionals who buy print to give it the respect it deserves. Then we will continue to see print achieve excellent goals – especially in the face of the increasingly saturated digital market.
L: We found that buyers are not put off by having to source their printing needs from a variety of suppliers? What are you thoughts?
Z: This surprising to me. We certainly limit the number of vendors we deal with. We have a small pool of vendors we trust and they have a majority of the capabilities to keep all the work in house. This is extremely important to me for several reasons. It creates an understanding and familiarity of each other’s processes, it affects price competitiveness, timelines and allows for me to check in (yes, I physically drop by) and make sure we are on track with more complex jobs. More importantly we have pretty stringent compliance requirements for the data we share with our printers – I certainly don’t want to be faced with being in breach of any of these.
L: What do you think about placing orders online? How important is this to you and what are some capabilities you would like to see in your ordering process?
Z: We do all of our simple ordering, like business cards, online. In fact those go through a different department altogether. Most of my ordering and proofing happens via email (unless the job is colour or format sensitive) – this works for us.
We also tend to pick local vendors so that we can have a timeline advantage and are able to meet easily if we would like. Also, working with local vendors allows me to support the growth of my immediate community, as well as reduce our environmental impact for deliveries and meetings.
L: What is something that print providers could/should be doing to make your life easier today?
Z: I really believe that print is a powerful marketing and communication tool. However, for all of the communicating we do, it really is communication that is the issue! I like to work with printers who are proactive about communicating with me. I’m always surprised by the number of times I have to initiate the check-in. I’ve even had to ask printers to invoice me!
For better or for worse it has become increasingly easy for people to switch printers. In this competitive market it is critical that I can build an honest relationship with a vendor who will be proactive about updating me about my orders, whether it’s good news or bad. Really, as a buyer I look to have someone who is on my team. I want them to spot my errors and help me by keeping me in the loop. In turn I provide honest feedback, which I know I would have valued when I was selling print. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
References:
Canadian Cluster Data. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from
http://www.competeprosper.ca/clusters/data
Canadian Industry Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/sbms/sbb/cis/salaries.html?code=32311
Dana, M., & Zarwan, J. (2014). The new print buyers: Who, what and why. Retrieved November 13, 2015, from http://www.idealliance.org/bulletin/feature-articles/11/14-new-print-buyers-who-what-and-why
Gordon, A., & Cicogna, F. (n.d.). eCommerce & Print Business Models. Primir Report.
Henry, Patrick. (2012). A Print Industry “Oligopoly” is on the Way: Are You In, or Are
You Out? Retrieved on December 9, 2015 from http://whattheythink.com/articles/59891-print-industryoligopoly-way-are-you-or-are-you-out/
Michael, B. (2013, April 20). Enduring #PowerofPrint: How Print Stays Relevant in a Digital World. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://digitalprinting.blogs.xerox.com/2013/04/22/enduring-powerofprint-how-print-stays-relevant-in-a-digital-world/#.VobEC3vXIzn
Molkenbur, C., & Zamani, R. (n.d.) Impact of integrated Marketing on the Printing industry. Primir Report.
Porter, D. et al (2015, May). BMO Blue Book. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
Printing and Related Support Activities Industry Profile. (n.d.). Retreived December 10, 2015, from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/026.nsf/eng/h_00077.html
Romano, Frank, “An Investigation into printing industry trends” (2004). Accessed from
http://scholarworks.rit.edu/books/26
State of the Canadian Printing Industry 2011. (2011). Retrieved November 11, 2015, from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/026.nsf/vwapj/printing-imprimerie-2011.pdf/$file/printing-imprimerie-2011.pdf
What do print buyers want from printers? – PrintCAN. (2010, April 28). Retrieved November 12, 2015, from http://www.printcan.com/news/2010/20100428669.shtml
Natalia Lumby, Christopher Ambedkar and Josh Ramsbottom
