Marketing Your In-Plant
By Greg Cholmondeley
In-Plant Segment Marketing Manager,
Ricoh Americas Corporation
If you’ve been following along with our series and implementing the suggestions, you now view your in-plant operation as a business, understand your competition, and can clearly articulate the services you provide. The next phase of our series will focus on three important areas for marketing your operation:
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Marketing Motherhood – Key concepts to bear in mind while developing and implementing your marketing programs |
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Marketing Channels – Ideas on ways you can market your services |
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Preparation – Basic tasks you need to perform before you start |
Marketing Motherhood
No one wants yet another Marketing 101 course. There are numerous self-help books available if you do. Still, I want to mention a few basic principles that are often overlooked by in-plants. These are worth noting because they are so very important to keep in mind while marketing your operation.
It’s All About the Customer
All too often I see in-plants describe their equipment and capabilities, yet miss the value they bring to their clients. For example, listing that you have a NexPress or a new Ricoh DDP 184 would only be meaningful to people who know what those do. Instead, a statement like “we can now digitally produce any quantity of brochures, postcards, posters or other high-quality color documents on our NexPress digital press” makes your description clearly about what you can do for your customer.
Use Customer Terminology
Face it; most of your clients are probably not production printing experts. Terms like “perfecting” or “VDP” might not make much sense to them. Make sure that your messages are written and presented in terms your customers – often document creators, owners or users – will understand. A good idea is to always try out messaging on a friendly customer or two who are not production experts in order to ensure your points are being made. Also, taking some time to educate your customers about production via open houses or educational seminars can help strengthen their production vocabulary, introduce them to what you do, and help them design more effective documents.
Offers with Intent
It sure seems that when you provide a high quality service with great delivery, you shouldn’t need enticement offers. But you do. People respond to offers – whether they’re refreshments at your open house, sandwiches at your lunch and learn, specials for new services or new customers, or free samples. It is important to have offers to attract business. It is equally important to consider how an offer will be used and what you want as a result. Free baked cookies to walk-in customers might be popular, but it might also encourage clients to walk in their work rather than electronically submit jobs.
Your Staff Is Your Sales Force
One difference between in-plants and commercial printers is that in-plants typically don’t have sales forces, right? Wrong! Everyone in your organization who interacts with your clients, or who is even just seen by other employees, is effectively a sales person. The impression they make will impact the perception people have of your organization.
Your customer service representatives can be a primary sales channel through their normal customer interactions of job submission, question handling and problem resolution. In-plant managers are, of course, selling in-plant services with every staff meeting or client meeting they attend. Even your delivery personnel represent your in-plant. Your clients and potential clients see their levels of enthusiasm, appearance and professionalism as they do their very public distribution job. The impressions they give will directly lead to how people view the quality of work your entire shop delivers. Finally, every staff member present at an open house event is effectively in sales as they perform their jobs, answer questions and demonstrate their abilities.
Once you accept that your staff is your sales force, it becomes obvious that it is imperative everyone realizes that fact. They all need to know how to interact with customers – and they all need to know the key messages and positioning you want to promote about your shop.
Marketing Channels
Many in-plants feel that they are at a disadvantage with their commercial competitors with regard to marketing channels. This is simply not true. While there are some marketing channels that commercial printers can employ that would be inappropriate for an in-plant; there are several available to in-plants that are completely outside the reach of commercial accounts.
Posters
You’re a printer. Most likely, poster production is one of the services you do well. If so, having well designed and produced posters will showcase your abilities as well as your capabilities. Even if you have to outsource your signage, it is an important way to promote your services. It is probably inappropriate to put up billboards or to tack posters on bulletin boards, but there are suitable places to put them. Your reception area should definitely have signage. Satellite copy centers should have signage promoting your services including special offers or new capabilities. Explore putting wraps or signs on your delivery vehicles. Some in-plants even have special delivery boxes or branded labels affixed to every package delivered.
Website
You should have a website on your intranet. If you don’t have a site – get one. This should be linked to your main internal employee website and will often be the first point of contact you’ll have with your clients. It gives that first impression of how your in-plant operation is run. If you want to be perceived as contemporary, efficient, productive and expert – then your website needs to be designed to give that impression.
In-plant websites used to be static views of shop capabilities. Now, the good ones include their capabilities list, educational reference tools, application ideas, customer success examples, as well as on-line ordering, job submission and status tools. Your website contents and design will depend upon the sophistication and needs of your target customers as well as your own shop. It has, however, become a critical marketing channel in today’s world. If you need help, your Ricoh Production Print Specialist has a variety of ideas and solutions to help you develop a great site. Newsletters
Many organizations have internal newsletters for sales, for marketing departments, for human resources news, and so forth. In fact, you might even produce them. Many of these can be opportunities for advertising your services or for including success stories. For example, an article about how a recent campaign using your new variable data printing service had the highest ever alumni-giving results would be great in a university faculty newsletter. Be creative. The services you provide benefit your organization. Getting more people to use them is a service in itself.
Inserts
Occasionally companies will permit inserts to be included with employee mailings such as payroll statements. If yours allows this and you have a message that will resonate with the general employee base, this might be a viable channel for you to investigate.
Open Houses & Lunch and Learns
Open houses can be a terrific way to educate your clients, to introduce yourself to a larger community, and to generate new ideas. They typically consist of a facilities tour, introductions to the staff who explain and show their work, and refreshments. They might also have short presentations, preplanned demonstrations or give-away samples like calendars. Lunch and Learn events are more like seminars to help key clients better understand some facet of print production and how it can benefit them.
Open houses can be incredibly effective but they do require careful planning, preparation, time and effort. A tour of an efficient and clean in-plant operation with a knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff is powerful. Being unprepared and presenting a disorganized and confused tour will have just as negative an effect.
Customer Support
Your customer service representatives are your first line of customer contact. They need to be pleasant and efficient in their jobs, but they can also help as a marketing channel. We’ve all heard the fast food mantra “would you like fries with that?” This is a prime example of up-selling. How could you implement something similar in your shop? What if as they said “thank you”, your CSR asked if customers knew about a new service, or a special offer?
Meetings
Participating in management meetings and client staff meetings can be an effective marketing channel. You don’t want to detract from the meetings with lengthy presentations, but this is a chance to periodically update key clients on what you do. Provide a status of what you’ve done for their group in the past year – including the benefits to them. Highlight other services of which they might not be aware. Deliver your strategic positioning and goals. Listen to their goals and plans and offer to brainstorm ideas on how you could help them succeed.
Customer Advisory Panels
Have your top 10 customers participate in a quarterly meeting with the in-plant's management to share their concerns, wants and needs. You can also use these to "preview" new possible services and to get honest feedback from those friendly with your in-plant. Beyond a fact-finding event, customer advisory panels are a great PR move that allow customers to feel they have a role in the future of the in-plant.
Event Sponsorship
Do you have employee events? Perhaps you have a summer picnic, or a family day at work. These can be great opportunities to generate awareness. Have a cute giveaway (a calendar, a memo pad, etc.) that people will want and that shows what you do. Sponsor and staff a food booth with your logo on it, making people aware of your existence as an integral part of the organization. Again, be creative in what you do.
Channels to Avoid
There are some marketing channels that are available to commercial graphic arts firms and not to internal organizations. There may be special circumstances where you can use these, but in most cases they should be avoided.
Avoid Spam
Email blasts are common among commercial firms, but will likely be viewed as spam from an in-plant. Exceptions to this might be from existing clients who have “opted-in” for email notifications for new services or specials.
Avoid Junk Mail
Direct mail is another key marketing channel for commercial printers and you probably even do it for your clients – but it is usually considered unacceptable to be used by internal organizations. It is incredibly tempting to show off your direct mail capabilities, particularly if you do personalized mailings. Acceptance of internal direct mailings really depends upon your organizations culture. Be sure you get approval before using this approach.
Avoid Telemarketing
Telemarketing is rarely a good choice for internal marketing. Not only will your organization find it annoying, it will generate the perception that you aren’t really an integrated part of the overall organization. Note that broad-based telemarketing is very different than one-on-one calls to reference contacts offering production help.
Next Issue
This should give you some ideas to get started marketing your in-plant. In the next issue we’ll focus on preparation. In it, I’ll discuss strategic positioning, branding, marketing plans,
Greg Cholmondeley,
Segment Marketing Manager,
Ricoh Americas Corp. An expert in production printing environments and solutions, Greg Cholmondeley is responsible for in-plant marketing for Ricoh Americas’ Production Printing Business Group. He brings 25 years of engineering, systems architecture, solutions development and industry marketing experience to this assignment. Greg can be reached at Greg.Cholmondeley@Ricoh-USA.com or at 561.516.0238.
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