Marketing in Minutes with Less Money

It's more important than ever to have and adhere to a marketing plan; here's how to stay on track without spending a lot.
March 1, 2009

By Thomas Trimingham, Contributing Writer

Screen printing in a rough economy can be fun and frightening at the same time. Existing clients who have been loyal for years may start to shop around and squeeze prices. In a recession, customers tend to look for less-expensive decorating options than they had ordered in the past. So jobs that may have been embroidered jackets last year could be spot color screen printed T-shirts this year. That can keep the shop buzzing, but the owner needs to make sure there is enough margin built into the jobs that do come through to keep the doors open.

All of this can create quite a headache for a small screen printer. The best way to stay ahead of the curve is to take advantage of the strengths in a small business and put together a marketing plan that will build your customer base without spending a lot of money.

The hardest part of creating a marketing plan is that other busy work tends to get in the way. Since marketing is a sales support function, companies tend to view it as an expense rather than an integral part of the sales process. The truth is that an effective marketing plan will magnify sales efforts and grow a company in multiple directions.

Dedicate a small amount of time each week solely for executing your marketing plan. These are your Marketing Minutes. Once this time and energy is allocated, it is important to be disciplined and follow through every week.

Marketing in Minutes
A way to organize the marketing efforts in a small screen printing business is to take the details of the ideal customer and attempt to duplicate or cultivate this style of customer as a new client. It's just as important to motivate loyal customers whom you encourage to be outspoken advocates of your services. The term "inside marketing" is used here to designate a shift away from old methods of marketing that are rapidly becoming less effective.

What is inside marketing? A simple way to look at it is leveraging your existing customers, resources and capabilities to best advantage. Inside marketing isn't necessarily about the location where tasks are done; it's more about where you focus your marketing time to develop sales leads.

An inside marketing effort looks inward toward the processes a shop does best and then magnifies those qualities. If a company has a strong position with a lot of sports teams, an inside marketing effort might be to approach these clients with a new concept — perhaps bundling decorated bags and team uniforms at a special price.

The way to get a grasp of this concept is to lay out a clear picture of what your company does best by creating a Printing Brag List. Listing your shop's strengths and attributes makes it easier to determine the best direction to take your inside marketing efforts. The next logical step is to go for the low-hanging fruit — determine which marketing targets are easiest to influence using the least amount of your current resources

Analyze how much revenue is coming in from various types of jobs/customers. Now calculate the profit margin on each of those sales segments. Owners are often surprised to find where the profit is actually coming from. The most profitable customer group or type of job tends to be less noticed because your shop is so good at this type of work that there are seldom problems or delays.

Now think of all those "squeaky wheel" jobs and customers that regularly cause headaches and problems. Those are the jobs and customers that take up most of a shop owner's time and, just as often, they are low-margin jobs, or even money losers.

When you make your brag list, you'll also identify your most-profitable and least-demanding clients — and those are the types of customers you want as the main target of your inside marketing plan.

Calculate Profit
Before initiating an inside marketing plan, there are three simple, but critical, steps you must take to develop a profile of a shop's most profitable clients. Your inside marketing plan should focus on attracting the types of clients that fit that profile. Using this approach avoids a lot of painful and costly marketing mistakes that can only attract customers that just are not a good fit for the company.

Let's examine how this might work for a specific shop — let's call it ABC Screen Printing Co. Its core business is custom work for local schools and clubs, but ABC also does a certain amount of contract work for several area print brokers. In this case, an inside marketing study found that ABC generated 70% of its profits from business with schools and less than 10% of its net profits came from the much larger jobs done for the contract brokers.

ABC spent more than half of its marketing budget sending out offers for contract printing because the overall numbers seemed so much larger for those jobs than for the many smaller orders done for schools and clubs. The inside marketing plan that it develops should focus on cultivating the profitable school market.

The following list of inside marketing concepts are unique because they are specific to our industry and have been proven effective for smaller screen printing companies with very little available cash flow for outside marketing efforts.

Press releases: If a press release sent to local news outlets makes it into the newspaper or onto television, it can generate tremendous response. This works best if you build a relationship with local news people so they call regularly to generate stories or to quote you in a larger story about the local business community. Sometimes it is worthwhile to send a press release even if the subject seems minor. Just make sure to send along a photograph, which exponentially increases your chances of getting in the paper. For instance, a press release and photo of a shop tour by a local scout troop can generate better exposure than a printed ad if it becomes a story. (Remember to include a date on the release, and also your phone and e-mail so news people can contact you to ask for a digital version of photograph.)

Targeted sampling: Some small business owners will wince at the cost of providing printed samples, but if your targeted customers and prospects are properly profiled, giveaway samples can generate a lot of new business quickly.

There really is no greater impact in screen printing sales than showing a good prospect a printed shirt with his name or logo on it. And that shirt will have a far longer life cycle than an ad. Clients who like a shirt will keep it a long time and see it more often, and in a more favorable light, than ads.

Lead boxes: Using a lead box amounts to little more than having an attractive box near the cash register in local retail businesses that seem to have potential screen printing customers. A sign on the box invites people to drop in their business card for the chance to win a prize. It's important to follow through, collect the cards (leads) on a timely basis and actually award the prize. I know some small businesses that have done well with this method, and you can, too, if you dream up the right offer and find the right place to put the box (or boxes).

Referral cards: One type of business referral card is given to loyal customers. They can sign the card and give it to someone else, who then brings it into the shop to redeem whatever offer you've put on the card (i.e., waive the setup fee or give 10% discount to jobs placed by a certain date). When a new customer comes in and uses the card, the referral customer gets some kind of reward.

Fundraisers: There are certain printing companies that excel at the fundraising process — benefiting worthy causes while also generating revenue. The idea is to create a marketing effort that can build momentum and motivate numerous people to generate income for a cause. Shirts promoting an event or cause can be resold by an organization to raise funds. Also, the volunteers or participants can order shirts for themselves. The organization may auction off shirts — or the printing service — as a raffle prize. Combine this with sending a press release publicizing the event or group and mentioning your shop as the source of shirts, hats and whatever else the charity gives away or sells.

Up-selling: This type of concept may seem to be more of a sales function, but it actually belongs more on the marketing end. It has been proven that a shop can increase sales by simply training associates to ask three questions at the end of a sale: "When will you buy again?", "Do you know anyone else who needs printing?" and "Do you know that if you reorder a minimum quantity using this design within six months there is no setup or screen charges — and you get a 10% discount?" A satisfied customer will always be one of the best marketing tools for a screen printing company.

Personal billboards: I have seen several screen printers achieve consistent marketing results by just traveling. They always wear their company apparel, drive a car with a company sign on it, carry a company bag with a logo, wear a company hat and a company jacket when it's chilly. The average person comes in contact with, or is seen by, hundreds of people a day. All of these people could have seen the company logo several times. At the very least, the garments are a walking example of what a screen printer does and can be a great conversation starter for networking.

Donations: This topic tends to get the coldest reception in the marketing arsenal, but there is no denying the potency of giving and how things come back to those who are willing to provide for a good cause. The hard part is determining where to give at a time when there is so much need. The best advice is to be true to your values. One company gave garments to help raise money for a local diabetes walk because the owner's family had been touched by the disease. Is it really a surprise that two local hospitals later called on the shop for printing? Put this money into your expense budget and make sure it goes to something you really believe in.

Online networking: A corporate online presence should have regular, personal, updated content that has a value to the reader and forges an emotional and business relationship that reinforces a company's services and core values. There are a growing number of social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) and they have shown increasing success in advertising in recent months.

Choosing among all these tools for your inside marketing plan can be a challenge. Go with what makes the most sense or what will bring the best return on time and money invested. Carefully study your ideal client and cultivate more of the same. A more profitable business can emerge in a matter of just a few marketing minutes.

Thomas Trimingham has been working in screen printing for more than 17 years as an artist, art director, industry consultant, speaker, instructor, and head of R&D for high-volume screen printers. He is an award-winning illustrator, designer and author of articles on graphics for screen printing. To comment on this story, or for more information about the author's training DVD, visit Art4screen.com.

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