The Cure For Summertime Blues

Is the summer a bad time for printers? Over the years I have heard that July and December were down months. Printers could expect to see their sales plummet twice a year as print buyers took vacation or enjoyed the holidays.


That sounds logical, but the more printers I meet the more I begin to think this is just an urban myth. I am finding there are printers have smoothed out the roller coaster sales ride by constantly working on increasing sales. They don’t stop their sales activities when they get busy with printing. They keep making sales calls. They use the same tools and technology they are selling to customers to improve their own sales.

The new products and services driving successful print companies relate to helping customers get more leads. QR codes, websites, variable data printing, mobile marketing, mailing, Personal URLs, ebroadcasts, and social media are tools that help send a targeted message meant to improve a brand and create interest in a company. The successful printers use these tools to get more of their own leads and to demonstrate how the tools can help their customers.

Buying doesn’t stop in the summer and neither should selling activities. Most printing customers don’t shut their businesses down in the summer. The reality is that it isn’t customers who stop buying in the summer. The printer stops selling. Vacations, longer days and warm weather can change a company’s focus and lazy summer days become lazy selling days.


Print companies must continue their selling activities every day. They need to be touching customers in some way constantly so they will be the first printer a customer thinks about when they want to order something.

For a print shop to be successful, they have to develop a sales funnel to keep touching the customers. With websites, e-newsletters, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., printers can easily keep an ongoing dialog with their customers year round. They just got to do it.

No printer should be slow in the summer. They should be busy touching customers, making sales calls and asking for the order.

Mobile Web Site Opportunities

Ever use your smartphone to visit and website and find it is difficult to read and navigate? That is because the site is optimized for a computer screen and not a smartphone. If you have a website or sell websites, you will want to make sure you are selling the additional service of creating a mobile site that is easily read online.

One service you might want to check out is http://iflymobi.com/. It allows you to build and launch mobile-optimized web pages quickly. The site says that you don’t need HML knowledge to create a site. It allows you to upload a logo, create pages, enter text and setup links.

There is a monthly fee. The company has a 14-day free trial so you may want to download it and try it out. It could be another web-based service to add your arsenal.

If you are selling QR codes, you will also want to make sure that your customer’s website is optimized for smartphones. Mobile marketing projects that link QR codes to specific web pages have opportunity to generate a lot of collateral printing.

Don't Forget QR Codes

If you are a printer, one of the first questions you should ask your customer when he gives you a job is if they need a QR code on the printed piece. Quick Response (QR) codes are becoming very common in the U.S. to drive prospects to mobile websites. With the growth of smartphone use, more people can quickly access

CNN reports a February survey of U.S. smartphone users by MGH, a Baltimore social-media marketing company, said 32% of respondents said they have scanned a QR code. Of those, 53% said they used the code to get a coupon or discount. And 72% said they were more likely to remember an advertisement with a QR code.

Another big bump will be for QR code use is coming from the US Postal Service. They are running a discount promotion if you use QR codes in the mailing. Visibility will also be increased when Valpak, the advertising envelope starts putting QR codes on the outside of the envelope and on individual inserts. Over the next two months Valpak will mail more than 80 million households with the QR Codes resolving to mobile pages  providing additional information and sweepstake entry.

People now know what QR codes are. The smartphone is the most popular phone in the US now and the tool you need to read them. Printers should be jumping on this opportunity to get people to throw away their old marketing material and reprint new ones with QR codes include. And when a customer asks why should they throw away the old material, just ask them how many leads are they missing because they don’t have the QR code on their material now? The value is that high.

Don’t Ignore the Web

As printers search for new revenue, selling and supporting websites is becoming an exciting new product to sell. Websites integrate easily with printing companies since many printers are already working closely with customers to manage their message.

But there are some printers who do not want to get into web services. Printes don’t have to sell web services, but they must realize that it is important to understand the web if they want to continue printing for a company. Printers will have to become “web experts” because they need to help customers integrate their print collateral with the current web site information even if they don’t maintain the websites.

Combining the power of the web with print is proving to be a powerful vehicle for getting out a message. Any response generated by the web needs some sort of printed information. It might be in the form of brochures mailed to the customer. It could be leave-behinds from a personal sales call. Print is still an important part of the communication process.

Customers need help making sure the printed material matches the web-based material. Is information available both in print and online? Do the logos and colors match helping build the brand? Do the messages from both mediums match? In the rush of business, many customers haven’t really looked at how they have integrated their message and need help. Printers can help the customer be assured that the look and feel of the web and printed material are the same and the customer’s “brand” is protected.

At the same time, printers can be looking at the web to see what mobile marketing and QR code opportunities are available. Has the customer added QR codes to their printed material to drive customers to websites? Does the customer have online video that can use more clicks?

If print owners ignore the web, they are just putting another nail in their coffin. Printing and the web play well together. Neither can be as powerful separately as they can be together. No sales call should be done without a review of the customer’s current website. Printers must understand how a customer is using their web site and what they want to accomplish with it so they can provide the printing support that is needed.

Where did June go?

I just realized that I didn’t post a blog the entire month of June! It has been a crazy month. Onsite visits to CPrint International affiliates, a week-long sales summit in Chicago for printers from around North America, and a week of R & R in Mexico made the month fly by.

It has just been hard to keep up because of all the positive changes in the print industry and keeping up with success stories and changes. I have been sharing regularly online with my Twitter posts. You can find me on Twitter at JohnG247. As I find cool information I try to get it out immediately. I also keep up with my Facebook comments.

The news I’m hearing from the printers I work with is good. For most of them, sales are up. The reason is that they are embracing new technology and getting in front of their customer and introducing it to them. They are getting into customers who would never see them before because they have a new message: “Let us help you get more leads and increase your business.” Customers who want new business are willing to give time to vendors who might have ideas to help them get it.

Usually I hear that the summer months are slow times for most printers. Yet the printers who I work with who are actively selling to their customers aren’t seeing the sales peaks and valley from month to month. They have steady work that is growing because they are consistently calling on their top customers and new prospects. The owners are out selling and spending at least 50 percent of their day communicating with customers about new jobs.

By the way, selling isn’t making a delivery and then asking if they have any more work. These printers are identifying the customers who need their services and then getting appointments to tell the customers about the benefits of using their services. They are developing a sales funnel that keeps their name in front of customers and generating leads to follow. They aren’t just sitting back and waiting for someone to call.

What type of work are they getting? They are reporting that customers are throwing away their old print collateral and reprinting it with QR codes. They are redesigning print collateral to match the look-and-feel of the website information. They are selling website services and mobile marketing programs. The sales are all related to getting a customer more leads so they can sell more.

I hope June went as fast for you as it did for me. July and August are going to be just as busy. I don’t know if the economic engine is speeding up or if the printers I work with have found the magic formula to get more sales, but it is keeping me busy. It makes for an exciting ride when you are focused on growing your company.

It Is Hard To Believe: Customers Lie

Rising fuel costs are pushing prices up for everything we buy. Printers are seeing jumps in paper and every other thing they buy. The rising costs mean lower profit margins if a printer doesn’t react quickly, but we aren’t seeing a jump in print prices because customers tell the printer it isn’t happening.

Every day I talk to printers who are concerned about raising their prices. They tell me that they can’t raise prices because their customer told them they could get the job cheaper somewhere else. When we drill down in the conversation, I find that usually the printer doesn’t have any facts to what the prices really are. He is just going on what he was told by the customer.

Printers lose jobs every day because of price. A certain percentage of customers requesting a price will make their buying decision on price, but that doesn’t mean everyone buys on price. There is usually one other factor besides pricing that affects the decision.

I think a printer would be hard pressed to find a top 25 customer who buy from them based solely on price. Usually top 25 customers have a history with the printer where the printer has proven it can meet the customer’s needs with a fair price. The printer delivers the job on time. The printer assures the quality is high. The printer will work with the customer’s budget and his emergencies. There are a lot of intangibles that can’t be obtained from the low-priced printer.

Yet printers don’t listen to their top 25 customers when it comes to price. They listen to the person who walked in off the street and is buying his first printing order. He is shocked when the price is high. The printer is listening to the person who just saw a price on the Internet that was low, but doesn’t realize the specifications for the low cost job are limiting. Does he really want the Internet printer’s name and web address on the back of his business card?

Printing isn’t a charity. You can’t give people special prices because they can’t afford the printing. You are allowed to make a fair profit on your products and services. You need to make a fair profit so you can pay your employees and purchase the equipment that gives customers better and faster service.

And the average invoice for most quick printers is in the $300 to $500 range. If you added $25 to the $500 order, would you lose the customer? That is a five percent increase? Would a customer leave you because the bill last time was $300 and now it is $315 to cover your rising costs?

Next time you hear that walk in customer or price shopper complain about your price, just think of your top 25 customers. Did they complain when you stayed late to meet their required delivery date and you charged them the normal price? Your top 25 customers buy from you and your staff because they like you and you give great service at a fair price. Know the facts before you start cutting your prices just because a customer couldn’t afford what you sell.

Now You Can Prove It Is Ugly

Science may have gone too far. You can now have quantified that print design is ugly. 3M has added automatic face and text detection to its Visual Attention Service, a web-based scanning tool that digitally evaluates the impact of creative and graphic designs. Users simply upload images to 3M’s Web portal and within seconds, the Visual Attention Service (VAS) tool analyzes and reveals the results. The suite of enhancements for the 3M tool also include a mobile application for the Apple iPhone, a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, an ability to test key areas within a creative design, and new pricing options.

The tool is supposed to help designers identify problems during the creative process.

The tool will indicate which design elements the human eye will react to in the first three to five seconds, providing the accurate, fact-based scientific feedback needed to speed up the revision and approval processes. Websites, photos, creative content, packaging concepts, advertisements and all manner of creative media can be evaluated in different scenes or contexts. For a free trial of VAS, visit http://www.3M.com/vas.

Is Your Website Ugly? The Critics Will Tell you

Looking at bad design can help you create good design. As more printers start getting into website design, the opportunity to either impress prospects or embarrass yourself with your design skills looms large. Since web design is new to most graphic designers, the site http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com can help you learn what to avoid when design your next website.

The website also includes several lists that outline major or fatal flaws to web design. Some of the flaws include too much Flash navigation, a splash page, taking longer than four seconds for the site to load, and hard to find focal points. Give webpagesthatsuck.com a visit before you start designing a web site and see how your design ideas are going to stack up.

There are good websites out there. Time Magazine has listed the 50 best websites for 2010 at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.htm. 

A printer's experience with good print design will help when it comes to designing a page. You know what looks good and works in print. The same rules apply in design on the web. If you have good designer on staff, let them learn the website creation tools so you can have a new product to sell your customers. Your print customers need websites too.

Don't Forget Designing for Mobile Phones

Your Internet site isn’t just for the computer anymore. More people are accessing websites through their mobile phones. This means you and your customers will need to create a mobile-friendly alternative to your primary website so the smartphone user can have a better experience.

You may need to get together with your website developer and create a mobile website. It does require changes in layout, design and construction. This means the most important information will have to be at the top of the page. You will want to minimize left/right navigation and arrange content in a single column.

Content will have to be easy to read and navigate. You can select what information you want from your regular website to be displayed on your mobile site. You want to help the user keep from zooming around.

Coding really isn’t that different but most mobile websites are created in either XML or XHTML code. Images are using jpeg, gif or png since they are usually smaller files. Some sites let the user browse with the images turned off. Page size for a mobile page is only Kb, You should keep the Kb small since some users are charned per KB of mobile web data. The maximum page size is 20 Kb, but you should shoot for 10 Kb. Experts say a good mobile website design provides back buttons and links. It is difficult to get around on a mobile phone so avoid dead ends. Make sure all pages are linked to other pages. 

QR Codes and Microsoft Tags are a great way of pushing eyes to your new mobile site. Make sure you are printing QR Codes or Microsoft Tags on all of your marketing material so customers can easily find your mobile phone site.