Shift from the Service Triad to Target Marketing

Years ago, when I managed a small copy shop, someone asked, “How do you differentiate your company?” I would respond as I was taught with the traditional, “You can have it fast, high-quality, or cheap – choose two because you can’t get all 3.” This is a well-known business principle known as the unattainable service value triad.

The problem, of course, is that with new technologies such as web-to-print, Print MIS systems using JDF to drive finishing automation, automated PDF workflows, and digital presses, you can achieve all three. The unattainable service triad is no longer unattainable.

The Challenge of Differentiation

Differentiation is part of a marketing strategy. Unfortunately, not all companies have marketing strategies which can lead to the problem known as, “Trying to be all things to all customers.” But experienced managers know you can’t be all things to all people, and small companies just don’t have the resources.

Leading print service providers will target their offers toward customers that need and want their services, while setting aside the customers that don’t fit that profile. The overwhelming and most difficult challenge for printers and salespeople is that this strategy requires them to think as hard about where they don’t want to sell products and services as where they do.

According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is everything you do to attract customers/clients and to keep them coming back and referring others to you. This is a 2-step process:

Step 1: The process starts with the identification of the customer groups that a particular business can better serve than its target competitors.

Step 2: Once this group has been identified, a company can tailor its product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services appropriately.

Printing Sweet Spots

Where to start? Consider your sweet spot. Every company has some things they make better and faster. Your sweet spot consists of:

1. The products you make most (volume)
2. The products you make best (more efficiently, profitability)

As someone who evaluates workflows, I can tell you that every company has a unique workflow typically based on equipment format size and staff expertise.

But what you made most and best five years ago might not match with what your customers need today. This occurs more than you would think. For example, there are many quick printers and in-plant printers that created sweet spots with small format, 2 color, duplicator presses that printed business cards, letterheads, envelopes etc. But now they are struggling because their customers’ needs changed.

There is good news and bad news about production sweet spots. The good news when your production sweet spot matches your customers’ needs, you will thrive; when your sweet spot does not align with customers’ needs, you will struggle.

How Do You Find Your Sweet Spot?

An application analysis will show the type of work you do the most. In an oversimplified explanation, if you took all the work you did in a year and put them in piles based on the application, you would see that the size of the pile would show which you made most. An analysis of profitability per application would tell you what you make best.

The easiest strategy: identify the products in your sweet spot and target your existing customers with those products.

Once you know your sweet spot, you can target or segment that market. The advantage is that when you talk to a defined group (market segment), it is much easier to get their attention. After all, you are talking about their challenges and their issues.

Tip: You are viewed as an expert within the segment. Being seen as an expert in your field helps to differentiate your enterprise. The world of print is a crowded marketplace, so expertise is equated to differentiated value-add in the minds of customers and prospects.

In Conclusion

Once your marketing efforts become focused, your messages “sound right” to each market segment you are communicating with. Prospective customers will view you as a partner that clearly understands them and their needs.

Simple Step-by-Step Exercise

• Where’s your sweet spot? What you make most or make best?

• How big are those opportunities with your existing customers?

• • If that opportunity is big (which is unusual), target your existing market.

• • If the opportunity is small, can you identify other markets with greater opportunity?

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