Recession Redux

by Charlotte mills Seligman president, traversant, Inc.

While many of us weathered the economic downturns of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the depth and breadth of our current situation and the Internet-driven changes in the marketing landscape of the past decade have rendered the old “feet on the street” model outdated.

Assess Profitability

What’s changed? To begin with, hiring new sales folks is expensive and, unless you’ve done your research and prioritized your prospect lists, their efforts will likely show a low ROI. Second, your customers are prioritizing their marketing expenditures, including print, focusing their efforts on the marketing media that produce the best results. Third, the economic scene has shifted so dramatically that historically profitable industries, such as many global enterprises and much of the financial sector, can no longer be counted on. Also, geography—hard-hit housing markets—and demographics— hard-hit consumers like Boomers—will be more critical than ever before in determining where your profitable business opportunities are.

While large printing companies may have the resources to conduct extensive quantitative research to uncover these micro markets, smaller companies can gain valuable insights from less expensive qualitative programs using a combination of executive interviews, phone surveys, and online research. (My firm has found the results of these two methods to be surprisingly consistent despite the disparity in cost.)

Each customer’s profit potential and media preferences should be examined on a customer-by-customer basis. Again, phone surveys are relatively inexpensive tools to attain this information. This data in turn will enable you cherry pick the media that will give you the greatest “cost per qualified reach.” One bindery company we’ve been working with for many years, for instance, has found that the bi-weekly eNewsletters we write for him have proven to be his most costeffective marketing vehicle. While it may take a bit more effort up front, making decisions based on research will net a higher rate of return on your marketing dollars.

Customize services

Another effective strategy many printers have employed to counter price-reduction pressures and lost revenues is to find a profitable new service niche. Seattle’s Reischling Press Inc. has done that with photo books; the company reported a 60 percent yearover-year growth rate since the product was introduced. Due to downsizing, your customers are increasingly pressed for time and would probably welcome help in printrelated areas, such as project management, data cleansing, mailings management, and campaign strategy. And if you have IT strengths, digital delivery of your customers’ printed communications to mobile phones, websites, and emails could provide another growth area. And don’t forget about digital printing and customization, which will likely gain in popularity as run-lengths continue to shrink and targeting grows in importance.

If we are to ride out this difficult period, we will have to be more observant, more strategic, and more creative than ever before. Study your customers and their profit potential, select only those media that produce the best results, and look at new offerings that might create new revenue centers. Who knows, we may come out of this even stronger than before.