7 steps to re-invent your print business after Covid-19 with these...

Covid-19 created some disruptions in several industries; Manufacturing, Hospitality, Education, Retail, Oil, Printing, Retail, etc. The impact of Covid-19, and the current economic meltdown has brought many businesses down including print. To stem the tide, one needs to reinvent their print business, by bridging the gap between the physical and the digital world.

In this post, we will take a critical look at how to bridge the gap and consider critical issues.

A recent NAPCO research published in May 2020 reported the following findings; sales fell by 53.7% on average between mid-March and mid-April, for all printing companies surveyed in the United States of America.

Declines averaged 59.0% for commercial printers, 51.9% for graphic and sign producers, 68.9% for apparel decorations, and 37.3% for functional printers. Work for Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, and Packaged-Food Industries grew throughout the crisis, limiting the average decline for the packaged printers/converters survey to 15.3%.

Download: Covid-19 Print Business Indicators Research

These figures are worrying, and this is a survey conducted for a little over 500 companies in the US and Canada, where on average, companies sell between $3 million a year to $50 million a year. Amid these disruptions, actions have to be taken going forward:

Here are 7 steps to help you stem the tide

1. Embrace risk that spurs growth:

• • Reinvent your business strategy

    Strategy is very important in any business. Every business needs to be visible, generate leads, retain customers, be productive, control operational costs, enter new markets and many more. These are needs that can be achieved by setting goals. And these goals can only be achieved through a strategy.
  • A marketing strategy could be an effective driver of these strategies. Especially at this time when information through technology is rife. It's reported that nearly 4.89 billion are on Social media. Social media or online business are more targeted, less expensive and has wider coverage than offline marketing.
    Let's get the details:

Traditional marketing strategies largely cover:

• Print media (newspaper, newsletters, brochures & other printed material
• Broadcast media(TV & radio Adverts
• Direct mail (flyers, postcards, catalogues)
• Telemarketing
  

• Websites
• Social network sites
• Content marketing
• Google ADs
• Video Marketing

  • They are more cost-effective:

    a)You can track campaigns daily

    b) have control of where to spend your money

    c) choose a channel that provides high ROI

    d) its measurable: track metrics such as impressions, shares, views clicks and time on page

    e) real-time people results are available: ie exact no of people who viewed your page,

    • • 2. page visited

      • 3. device used

      • 4. where they are coming from

  
  

  Why is this important for your printing business?

  • Not sure what to do? check this link: mimeo.com for inspiration
  • https://www.mimeo.com/roles/marketing-and-sales-enablement/
    

Increase your sales and marketing efforts to apply marketing strategies to attract and convert leads and also to retain and acquire customers.

Use Facebook Messenger and your Twitter handle to manage customers' reviews, questions, and social listening.

Use your Facebook page  and other social media channels to link visitors to your website, and provide more information about what you can do for such visitors

You may also get started with our social media consultation, with this link: https://blog.delprintsol.com/how-to-achieve-your-business-goals-and-increase-returns-on-investment 

• Bridge the gap between the physical and digital world

Printers have largely been production-dependent. Most of the investments in the printing industry are targeted at production equipment to ensure earlier delivery of products and services, increase the quality of work, and other equipment-related successes. Very little is done to increase consumer or buyer engagement, and conversion.

2. Increase Engagement And Customer Satisfaction

Reinventing the business model would mean;

a) putting the customer at the centre of the model

b) finding their needs, goals, objectives, and pain points to be able to serve them better,

c) providing solutions for the above, through value creation

3. Update your business model

Have a critical look at the change drivers impeded by the pandemic, and recent economic downturn and make the following reinforcements:

Take a look at your customer segments. Without customers, your business cannot survive. Your business must identify and understand your customers, and then group these customers into segments with identical personas/profiles. Know who they are and how you can create value for them in the face of the limiting factors brought about as a result of the turbulence in the economic systems. Showing empathy and a resolve to help them through their challenges, pains, and how to reach their goals. Customer relations need to be strengthened more at this time since such relationships can impact the overall customer experience. A section of the NAPCO research above recommends: Staying in touch with clients, particularly on social media.

In a situation like this, the need to create value is now or never. Many of your customers are also badly hit by the pandemic. The effect is declining sales, challenges with pricing, and other unknown problems. Discovering the magnitude of these can only be known through engagement with the right value propositions. Create several of these for different customers in different industries and markets.

4. Redefine Systems Through Innovation

Disruptions such as covid-19 and the recent economic downturn are opportunities for redefining systems, strengthening or overhauling the following: 

• Automating systems
  • Automating print production workflows offer printing companies many tangible benefits that
    influence productivity and profitability. Automation enables print providers to improve their
    company’s financial health and optimise production task execution to improve efficiency. These innovations expand product offerings, improve speed to market, scale investments to match growing operations and
    expand into new segments.
• These laudable improvements however do not come easy. What can be done is to do it in job stages; Pre-press, printing, finishing and reporting/job tracking
• By definition, profitability is revenue over expenses. Print service providers’ key routes to
  profitability includes reducing costs, increasing sales, improving efficiency, or a combination of all three.
• Information technology
  • Information technology comes in readily through ERP systems or Enterprise Resource Systems.
  • It combines the tedious work of estimating and planning work or job flow through the system.

• Intensify the use of social media
  • Social Media is huge. There are around 8 billion people on the globe, and 4.9 billion of them are using social media as of 2023. This is an enormous number. These numbers also mean that over two-thirds of internet users and one in three people worldwide are on social media platforms. According to Demand Sage.
  • How can printers use social media platforms to their advantage? Facebook is the largest social media platform with users worldwide at 2.96 billion. This marks a marginal 0.17% increase from the previous quarter and a 1.75% year-over-year rise. The business page can be customised to increase your business brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention and its messenger works well for customer service. Its Meta for Business suite works well on social media campaigns. You can learn more about Delprintsol by following this link: 
• optimise your website, create landing pages, intensify lead generation, etc. Your website helps create brand awareness and showcase your brand to prospective customers. It helps to establish your image by letting the audience know who you are and what you represent. A website provides reliable information to consumers,

5. Analyse The Impact on Your Business Models

For example, which of your print markets will gain or lose; or how have the scenarios affected key partner’s in your print markets? This will help you to move around into B2B horizontal markets like marketing departments and partner with the executives with market reach materials such as brochures, marketing collateral, proposal contracts, banners, mass media advertising, presentation material and more. 

6. What Are The New Opportunities?

Focus on change drivers that lead to new or changing customer needs, for example, customers are seeking to partner with a print establishment that would help them, retain existing customers, increase returns on investment, become more visible in the marketing space, etc. Do you have the skills as well as resources to create such offerings to the new business models? Work on that.

7. Develop a Post-Covid-19  and current economic difficulties Vision

Build on your purpose, and mission, and communicate with your team, partners, and customers.

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