Use the poor economy to sell more color!

By Roger Buck, CDC

In today’s economy, many companies are considering reducing their marketing and sales budget dollars. Under normal conditions, marketing departments spend more on prospecting than on customer retention. However the current business environment has caused many marketing managers to shift their primary dollars to customer retention to keep clients from moving to competitors.

Your clients send business communication to their customers daily, weekly and monthly in the form of statements, invoices, packing slips, letterhead, envelopes and other documents used in the normal course of business. These same documents can be re-formatted using more color to become powerful marketing tools. As your clients pull dollars in from their sales and marketing programs, they should be educated on how to use a portion of these dollars to increase current customer mindshare.

How do you determine what documents to utilize and how? First, gather all the business documents that are used as communication tools. This should include standard documents as previously mentioned, as well as fax, catalog envelopes, newsletters and even email. Next, consider who receives the document at the end user location. With your customer’s input, determine if the receiver is a candidate for additional sales. Use color, coupons, short term specials, RPN’s and other "push sales" tactics to increase the frequency of purchase or up sell to a higher value product.

Here are a few tips:

• Overprint current statement envelopes with marketing messages.
• Use a "post-it" like image to increase the read rate.
• Add card inserts or coupons for discounts if the next purchase is made within a designated period of time.
• Include a referral card with each invoice which can be passed to other business owners and friends. (Offer a small gift card for any referral who become a client)
• Add marketing campaigns to outgoing fax documents using a cover sheet.
• Add high color images to statements, invoices and other documents to draw attention to products and services.
• Consider extending any 8 ½" x 11" document to 14" to create a removable advertisement which can be saved or returned with the next order for some benefit.
• Extend your marketing suggestions to their email system to include branding and marketing messages on all out going emails to customers.

2009 will be a tough year; however that means most companies will be trying to do more marketing with less money. This is an opportunity to design color into current documents to help support customer retention.

Roger Buck 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.

04/24/2009 /articles Link to this Entry