The Xplor View - October 2008 - (Page 13)

How to start writing your marketing plan that wins new printing clients Where do printers go wrong with their marketing? They normally go wrong when they don’t do any marketing at all. And the reason they don’t do any is because they’re unsure what it is, or they get distracted. So, I’ll chat to you; I bump into you somewhere, in a pub or in a Starbucks and I say, “How are things going Richard?” You say, “Well, great! I am just doing this XYZ thing with Google or with seminars” and I think, ‘Gosh! Richard’s doing well there; perhaps I should be doing that?’ Then later that day or the next day, I’ll bump into Sally and Sally’s doing something completely different—I call it ‘chasing rabbits.’ We often go chasing rabbits in our marketing in the sense that we go after this and we go after that, and we are all looking for a silver bullet. Unfortunately, there is no one silver bullet that is going to transform your marketing. Silver bullets only work in the movies. It is just a little bit of hard work all the time, in lots of different areas. What I want to achieve in this article is take away some of the mystique and, if we can, turn marketing from some sort of black art into a simple To Do List that you can hold yourself accountable for—I am sure you will find that a lot easier. If you ask most people what marketing is, they come up with a different answer; some people might say, “Well, it’s what gets my phone ringing” or “People to come through my premises door, or my shop door” or it’s “How I get enquiries from my websites” or it’s “How I get people searching me out”. We all see things in a slightly different way and I want to give you a simple formula that I think works, that I believe in, which is this: marketing is finding somebody with a need/want, who’s going to get to know, like, and trust you. Let me qualify that the ultimate way; if you ever meet me, I’m 5 foot 11, 16 stone. I need to lose weight, but I want to drink beer, so guess what prevails in my life? So wants are more important; if you speak to any man who’s brought a car, they’ll tell you about all the technical reasons, but men buy cars because they go fast and make them feel younger or sexier. That’s the reason, so we all do things for emotional reasons and justify them on logical reasons. So wants are very important here in my estimation. Then it comes to this concept of know, like, and trust. How can you get people to know you, like you, and trust you? When speaking, I often ask groups of printers, “Which of those three do you think is the biggest challenge for you as a printer—to get people to know you, like you, or trust you?” Some people will put their hands up at ‘Know’ since ‘know’ is important because if you don’t know who people are, then nothing will ever happen. Some people might put their hands up at ‘Like’ but the majority of people put their hands up on the trust factor—how can we get people who do not know us to trust us? That is the key challenge and the reason why prospects are not using your printing business and are going to somewhere more established than you, bigger than you, or maybe a bigger brand than you—because they can trust those people. So, here is my mantra for you in your marketing; wherever you are doing any marketing, you should ask yourself the following question. “Is this going to help people to know me, like me, and trust me?” If you buy an E-mail list and spam 5,000 people, they will know you, they probably will not like you, and they may not trust you, so that may not be the most effective way for marketing. I really got into marketing plans in a much bigger way about two or three years ago when I started to ask printing clients to send me their marketing plan. They would Finding somebody with a need or want, to know, like, and trust you So if we just quickly delve into those points. If you do any sales training, people will talk about needs analysis—what do people need in their business to sort out their problems—and quite frankly, I think that’s a load of old tosh! Needs are not important; we are emotional beings—wants are important, not needs. 13 Issue 6 October 2008 The VIEW Journal Xplor European Edition

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Xplor View - October 2008

The Xplor View -� October 2008 Contents TPE Master Class: Three Ways to Tame your Print-to-Mail Workflow Right Now Mission Impossible: Embracing Environmental Concerns TPE Master Class: Implementing a Lean Working Environment Improving Business Processes Yields Award-Winning Business Performance How Do� You Effectively Win New Business Writing a Marketing Plan to Win New Printing Clients How Buying Strategies Have Affected How the Industry Sells Let's Talk About Integrated Customer Communications Management:�Transpromo...It Takes a Village! Knowledge Management Part 3 XDU: Leading the Education Revolution Kodak plus Xplor equals XDU Around the World Xplor Europe News:�Short News Items for the Xplor UK�Programme and Europe News

The Xplor View - October 2008

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