Print Solutions Pre-Show Review

By Roger Buck, CDC

If you have not made plans to attend the PSDA Print Solutions conference and exposition I would like to encourage you to do so. This year's show holds true value for distributors wanting to find new ways to improve their sales, retention, marketing and organization. The combination of a great educational conference with exhibits by the leading manufacturers in our association makes Print Solutions one of the best meetings you can attend. Then add-in the incredible networking that takes place and you can't ignore the value of participation. Here are just a few highlights.

Tuesday has a special 3 hour session by Peter Winters on How to Position your business as a Marketing Service Provider. This is a great opportunity to learn how to take the role of the CMO with your clients. Producing promotional color and variable data projects is just touching the sales and profit potential within your accounts. By entering into a deeper relationship with your clients, learning their customer segmentation, assisting in demographic analysis you can bring new value to the table. You can take the information from this presentation and visit with PSDA vendors on the show floor to find out how they can further assist you.

If you have been wondering how social networking can help your business, you will have several opportunities to hear various ideas on how this process works. Tuesday you can hear Dave Kerpen of TheKBuzz educate you on setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts to drive referrals. Wednesday on the show floor you can hear Joe Walkup of Innovative Business Products, LLC and Randy Eubanks of Suncoast Marketing, Inc. help you understand how using these networks plus others like Linkedin can affect Google search, online ranking and reach beyond your prospect base.

More and more we see business forms decline while color and promotional print (including transpromo) grow. Not only do we need to learn how to use these color products to promote our companies, we need to learn how to sell them effectively to our clients. In addition, we are being asked by our clients to provide other media marketing such as email, list acquisition, SEO and others. Fortunately the PSDA has brought several presentations to this year's conference to help us understand these opportunities. Tuesday at 3:00 PM check out Peter Ebner of Ebner Seminars on Selling Direct Marketing Applications then Wednesday catch Larry Mersereau for a presentation of Successful Advertising Strategies. On the show floor, Wednesday, you can hear Goldstein Group Communication discuss providing email services for your clients marketing. And later hear Ray McCabe of CMFI speak about Inexpensive Self-Promotion Techniques.

During the exhibits you will find various educational sessions provided by your PSDA manufacturers. On Wednesday, John Loftis of Innovative Business Products, will present the Fundamentals of Viral/Word of Mouth marketing. Thursday - look for Lindsay Gray from AccuLink, speaking about QR codes one of the newest methods to link print with cell phone technology to drive business. If you don't know what QR codes are you NEED to attend this session and then hang around to hear Ken Spurling from Printco, discuss multi-channel program sales. These are only a few of the great presentations you can access on the show floor.

This year we have several new, first time exhibitors; Colortree, Foster Printing Service, LT1 Printing and RISO to name a few. What do these new exhibitors and PSDA member exhibitors offer? There's one sure way to find out and that's by coming to the party! Check out the conference programs, floor education and exhibit times so you can plan each day to be the most productive for your goals. Don't miss any networking opportunity!

Naturally stop to visit our mutual friends at Madison Forms at booth 1025! You won't have ANY trouble finding the booth. John and his team have taken extra steps to rescue you from that "lost" feeling. You may know them for their unit set, continuous and cut sheet quality but don't miss learning more about their Jumbo Roll, UV and 6 COLOR capabilities! Stop by and see what's new at Madison Forms in booth 1025.

Roger Buck, CDC, is the President of Emerging Solutions Now, LLC and a 40 year veteran of the printing industry. ESN offers new innovative equipment solutions to printers and print converters. They also provide marketing consulting and list acquisition services to their clients. Buck is a frequent contributor to various magazines and newsletters. He can be reached at Roger.Buck@EmergingSolutionsNow.com. You can follow Roger on Twitter, LinkedIn or his marketing blog.

10/12/2009 /articles Link to this Entry