Our ethos

Positioning

25 October 2021 Stuart Nimmo

What’s this all about? Well in marketing terms, it’s where you exist in the market you operate in. Equally where you pitch your product or service to your clients. We as printers recognise that we are a valuable tool in your marketing communications arsenal. We like to make sure that you use your materials wisely.

Understanding where you and your business is at is highly important to help you to move forward. The last 2 years have seen markets shift monumentally with the advent of how digital tools are used not just in marketing but in the delivery of content and knowledge.

A recent conversation with one of our clients in the personal fitness business was highly enlightening about the issue of market positioning. Why? Personal Trainers have seen the digital tools which they used during the lockdown, now take the lead for convenience with certain sectors of their customer base. The added issue is that it has price point dropped due to lower delivery costs and retention concepts used during the COVID lockdowns.

So, when running your business, you look at your costs both direct and indirect which informs your price point together with your margin. When you are professionally established and have an offering that is delivered at that level there is a significant challenge in the 4 P’s of marketing (Price / Place / Promotion / Product).

So, looking at this PT, if the usual position in the market is swamped with low price offering, then the long-term goal is to deliver in a different place, as the business is geared up for a certain standard of delivery, it probably is easier to apply to a higher market and focus on a higher return for a slightly upgraded serviced product, rather than a downgrade.

How to make this work, we would suggest, that researching the local area, to identify where the potential higher value clients could be. This could be using LinkedIn to find local businesses and individuals within those businesses, supplementing this with other online searches, would also help. Why identify individuals? Being targeted and direct reaps a higher level of response and engagement.

The essential part of the pitch is recognising the potential clients’ challenges and pain points. Addressing them in clear messages. Consideration of the customer journey of what will trigger and support potential actions is essential. Online content will probably be less critical, as it will be a point of confirmation rather than an initial starting point. A possible starting point perhaps should be a bespoke, personalised piece of mail. I almost said direct mail, but this needs to be the level above a piece of DM, it needs to demonstrate a personal approach, attentive pitch. Clever use of some relevant online content, such as a white paper or a planning tool or other want to have exclusive online content, on a hidden URL, which is only accessed from the personal mail. This can then be used as a point of confirmation of a “bite”.

Building a more strategic approach to a higher value client acquisition is all about the customer journey. The tools you use will need to be highly focussed, tailorable and demonstrate true value add, from an intangible point. Materialistic add-ons won’t necessarily create the right bite, but referral and value add proposition from knowledge, empathy and the right service level will create value for both PT and their client.

This example also looks at the marketing strategy moving from being multi-channel, where all guns ablaze at the same time, to a strategic omnichannel, progressive approach.

So why does this matter to a print professional?
• Ensuring your marketing works, matters to us, we want your print to perform, even if it is a limited edition.
• The right triggers can transform your customer journey.
• Skimping on marketing mix tools does not help you.
• We want to see our customers achieve more, even if it is with fewer clients, but clients that have a higher retention rate and value.

Marketing – Back to basics

6 June 2021 Stuart Nimmo

Marketing is all about educating your customer about a product or service.

Ask any educational professional about key learning styles or methods and they will talk about Visual Auditory and Kinaesthetic (or VAK).

Over the last decade, we have seen a rush to engage digital technologies for the ease and convenience they bring. However, the rush has made us forget the key premise of how we learn. The engagement from touch, reality, which builds trust, through physically being there is missing.

The need throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to be still connected heightened the advancement of digital meetings, through zoom, teams and other platforms. We all read each other’s non-verbal language without even realising it, which has been devoid from digital platforms due to only seeing bust upwards of most participants. However, are we missing other communication receptors in this digital advancement? I know from people I have had conversations with, some have experienced zoom-burn-out, with back to back meetings, taxing the individual’s concentration to the max, through constantly staring at a small screen.

Working only with visual and auditory senses, it’s challenged us. When you think that sight is more than a small screen, hearing is more than the immediate speaker on a call. It leaves touch, which when we pick up something, a book, a pen or even a digital device, they are all crafted to evoke reactions. When we meet people we are aroused by the smell from perfume or aftershave or even fabric conditioner, the typical business meeting we’d meet for coffee or something else and we’d remember the taste and flavour of the coffee or the environment we were in. We build a picture of that moment and automatically attach it to the individual, this forming a mental picture and memories, whether favourable or not.

So are we missing a trick? Is now the time to return to being physical, leading the waive in positively creating memories? Of course, I am biased, I feed of tactile engagements, through my own experiences in print and design. Is it time to arouse the senses?

I am fortunate that I can do things differently, that I am accountable to myself. We have even before the pandemic did engagements via traditional mail, which evoked the senses. Our 2nd birthday being one example, where we partnered with CHIPP Coffee to deliver a cupping experience for our guests. The invitations featured physical real coffee beans inside a tactile (Linen textured board) gatefold (opening out from the centre) invitation. This raised a significant level of interest. Plus, once Royal Mail had processed the mail, they had also gently ground the beans to release some coffee aromas. Over the years we’ve inserted enveloped tea bags, chocolate bars and many other things to play on the wealth of sensory receptors of your audience.

The thinking overall is to think about the total experience, not just the design or the visual. In a world where marketing messages swamp us, the need to be different and pronounced and clear is paramount to achieving better results.

Cutting corners doesn’t pay…

18 April 2021 Stuart Nimmo

I know I’ve written blogs around the topics of design, useful tips and quality of reproduction before. But this seems to raise its head frequently and needless to say, things don’t change. The adage of what goes in is what comes out. Whether it be mail merge data, which hasn’t been prepared correctly, or the consistency is random; flyers that are produced without any thought to the target audience or how they will be engaged with are just a few of the many challenges to great results. The small nuances are the finer detail which is all part of what we do. Some might say it’s the 80/20 rule, but of course, it’s the last 20% that makes the difference.

So here are a few thoughts regardless of what your project is…

Planning

Failing to plan is planning to fail as the adage goes. Print is a pivotal point in a marketing cycle, being scattergun with it doesn’t help you. Having a production plan, including textual copy reviews, branding coherence, ensuring imagery is spot on, now’t worse than text saying one thing and your imagery speaking the opposite.

Know your audience

Absolutely critical, mapping this out will provide you with the key approaches to ensuring you successfully engage your decision-makers. This pen portrait will ensure you know who you are “talking to”

Use your budget wisely

This is where your 80/20 rule shows the most. Cutting corners can do more damage than the difference in the saving. Good design artwork doesn’t have to cost the earth. Good printers have experienced designers in-house. If part of something more critical, a graphic designer will add more flair to a larger project. Rule of thumb, design/artwork studio time within a print house will be £25-£35 p/hr whereas creative designers will be £40-£75 p/hr. Getting your design/artwork right will drive the results, so this is money well spent.

Ensure great reproduction

When a printer has been involved with a job from the start, if they have a good background with traditional “repro” as it was called, they will optimise images to ensure great reproduction. Or as one client called it “Sows Ear into Silk Purse”. See the blog on the Lost Art o f Repro

Print has never been as affordable

True fact, print comparatively is more affordable than it was 10-20 years ago. So don’t try haggling, you just rub the printer up the wrong way. The advent of digital print has reduced the cost of entry. However, set up fees; disk/file handling charges still apply, as it still requires someone to get your file ready for print. The downside of short-run print (small quantities) is that finishing set up costs for lamination, foiling, creasing, folding and other bindery work.

Working with a good print provider will help you to control your project costs, they will suggest ways to ensure you can measure the performance of your printed item. Printers are real-world people, with significant experience of working across media to ensure integration. Yes, you can ship your file to a big internet shed, have it squirted through a machine, and we know the chances of total satisfaction won’t be as high, a local printer does a lot more than you probably realise, above all they are human, and love engaging with people like you.