If you’re still operating your print company after all the last couple of years have thrown at us you may think you’ve learned all the lessons there are to learn about running a competitive business. But could these nuggets of advice from Colin Sinclair McDermott, creator of The Print Growth Academy and perhaps better known as The Online Print Coach, help you do better?
1. Build culture and reward staff
It’s important for any business to have a strong culture that breeds the overall mission of the company. A good mission statement is something that is often overlooked, yet it is key to showing your customers what makes you different from the other print suppliers and why they should buy from you. It should also help provide a clear and concise direction for your company and help give your employees defined objectives.
Due to the fact it outlines why your business operates, your mission statement acts as a framework for decision-making. Rewarding your staff for following these guidelines at the highest level will ensure peak performance and help you rise above the competition.
2. Become the expert
By becoming the expert in your field, you very quickly become the ‘go to’ person when someone requires the products or services your offer.
There are a couple of different ways to explore this. The first could be to look for speaking opportunities - networking events or membership organisations are always a great place to start.
The second would be to become somewhat of an influencer, by providing comment either in publications your target audience is likely to read, or perhaps by creating your own blog. Blog posting is wonderful for search engine optimisation purposes and can also be a great source for attracting new customers.
3. Flex your pricing muscles
Don’t be afraid to check the elasticity of your pricing and charge what you are worth. It’s not uncommon in the print industry to see many companies fight it out at the bottom of a low-cost leadership pricing battle. It’s a model that works for some printers who have vastly high volumes of throughput to justify such low pricing but for the majority it’s just not sustainable and in some cases can put some buyers off. We’ve all heard the saying “You get what you pay for”.
Advice worth considering is to work more with a high value differentiation pricing model. Look to increase your prices by as little as 5-10%. Many of your customers will likely not bat an eyelid because they do value the service you provide. Typically, the customers who do push back are the ones who give you the most challenges and in fact, you would likely have much more time on your hands were they to go elsewhere. The thing is, with the extra give to ten percent extra you are now charging, you will probably still be making the same profit, but you don’t have the same challenging customers giving you a headache so you can spend your time servicing the customers who do truly value you.
4. Riches in the niches
After I trained to be a corporate coach, I was strongly advised to open myself up to work with people outside of the printing industry and spread myself about more. The problem with that was that I was setting myself up to compete with the other hundreds of thousands of other coaches in the marketplace. By niching down, I’ve crafted out a career with a lot less competition. Being a corporate coach who has run his own print company makes it more appealing to someone in the industry versus someone with no experience in print. The same rules apply when customers are looking for new print suppliers. If a customer is looking for a fleet of vehicles to be wrapped, are they more likely to order from a generic print company or a specific wrapping specialist who focuses on that area of the industry on a daily basis? It will increase your chances of converting quite considerably.
5. Turn customers into raving fans
Every business should have something called a customer value journey. What it does is represent the different phases each of your customers should go through whilst dealing with your business. It should cover every aspect of communication from when they first heard about you all the way through to becoming a raving fan. These are the best types of customers. The ones who regularly order from you but not only this, they should about your business from the rooftops and refer you to others.
Your customer value journey is all about sequence and you should be able to look and any individual customer, know where they are currently at in that sequence and identify if they are on track to the next stage or whether there is a call to action in place to help get them back on track.
Many businesses I come across don’t initially have a process like this in place and as a result have low retention rates. Implementing a system like a Customer Value Journey can often not only help new customers get to where you want them to get quicker, but it can also help you improve the average lifetime value of your current customers.
6. Understand your customers better
Speaking to all your customers in the same way can be harming your business. It’s why it’s so important to build profiles for each of the customer types you service - customer avatars if you will.
A customer avatar is essentially the profile of your perfect customer. The ones you make the best margins on, the ones who give you the least challenges and take up less of your time. It’s what they look like, what their habits are, their interests, what challenges they face each day, what their aspirations are for their business. Once you know all this, it makes marketing to them far more effective for your business and you can show them how dealing with you will make their lives better.
7. Segment your data
Following on from building your customer avatars, you are now able to segment your audience. Something we can be guilty of is trying to be everything to everything and therefore our marketing message may not be relatable directly to each customer. By having your customer base broken down into business sectors, you can target them specifically based on what you know about them, addressing what concerns they might have and promoting products relevant to their needs.
Likewise, if you can track customer’s or said sector’s spending patterns, you can create targeted campaigns based on products they are interested in or at times of the year they typically order.
8. Keep your competitors close
It’s important that you know who your competition is. It can often be the case that they can provide alternative solutions to your customers that you are missing out on. Are they offering print products or services that you don’t? Are they targeting specific industries and having success that you had overlooked?
Analysing competitors regularly can also help identify things like what value propositions are they focusing on? Is it a free next-day delivery service? Dedicated account managers? Free artwork checks? Credit accounts? Discount on the first order?
Lastly, take some time to check out their reviews. Most businesses these days will use the likes of Google Reviews or Trust Pilot and within there, you’ll find plenty of golden nuggets. Reviews can highlight opportunities where your competitors are falling short and show you how you can gain an advantage and plug those holes in their business.