Impressions - June/July 2012 - (Page 56)

talking SHOP Screen Printing Production Marketing is Mandatory for a Successful Business For the future of your business, make sure marketing is a high enough priority that it gets done. By Greg Kitson, Contributing Writer Samples are highly effective sales tools. If you are targeting a niche, create a sample that is representative of what that niche would want and make a dozen or so of them to give away during your initial visit. All photos courtesy of Mind’s Eye Graphics, Decatur, Ind. ost decorators recognize the need to do some form of marketing to get business. But how many decorators have marketing high enough on their long “to-do” lists so that it actually gets done? By failing to implement a marketing plan, or by shrugging it off because your shop is currently busy, you’re putting fu56 Impressions | June/July 2012 m ture success at risk. Even worse, you’re giving away business to competitors who are marketing their businesses. As any veteran decorated apparel shop will tell you, a big customer will leave at some point, and you’re going to have a sudden slowdown in orders. If you’ve been implementing a regular marketing plan, you already have a list of prospects to pursue. If you have not developed such a plan, you may ﬁnd yourself starting from scratch and looking for new work to replace what you lost. If you have been in business for at least a year, you have a good foundation on which to build an effective marketing plan. Here are some tips on how to do it. Identify your core customer segment. Take a few hours to identify your top 10 customers (those to whom you sell most frequently and those with the most proﬁt). Are several clients in this top 10 list similar? Are ﬁve out of the 10 dental ofﬁces? Hospitals? Small businesses? Churches? It’s likely that you’ll see you have one category or market segment that you cater to more often than any other. Whatever it is, you’ve now identiﬁed your niche. Now, get ready to target more clients that ﬁt within this niche. This may be within a 10- or 200-mile radius. Draw a circle on a map to encompass the radius of your top niche customers. Many map programs have this capability; I used Microsoft Streets and Trips for the sample graphic in this article. Let’s say you draw a circle with a 10mile radius. Now draw one to include that original circle, but encompasses a 20-mile radius (doubling your original “concentrated client” area); then, draw a third circle to include the previous two, but is at a 40-mile radius (doubling your second number). This is where you can ﬁnd similar clients to target. Whether it’s dentists or chiropractors, you have second- and third-tier areas to ﬁnd new clients who need to hear your story. These are the potential clients who need to learn of your services and how they can beneﬁt from them. impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - June/July 2012

Impressions - June/July 2012
Contents
First Impressions
From the Show Director
FYI
Product Gallery
ISS Conference
Trendy Tykes
Teens & Tweens Remain Industry Style-Setters
CPSIA: The Current Landscape
CPSIA: A Screen Printer’s Perspective
Shop Spotlight
Embroidery Technique
Screen Printing Production
Screen Printing Graphics & Design
Screen Printing Technique
Digital Decorating
Business to Business
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - June/July 2012