To All Our Customers, Vendors & Employees – A Big THANK YOU for all your Support, Good Wishes & Hard Work  for making 2010 a successfull year and hoping for a even better 2011 … 

Paul & Shawn

We folks at PrintPapa try to practice what we preach (once in a while anyway). For years we have been promoting direct mail marketing in a big way as one of the most cost effective and cheapest methods of acquiring new business/customers as well as for  introducing new products and services to your existing customer base. However when it came to marketing our own business for whatever reason we somehow never got around to using direct mail as an effective marketing tool. We did dabble in it a couple of times with not so promising results so we never did go all the way.

All that changed however towards the end of 2008, early 2009 timeframe. This is traditionally slow period for our business and this time around it was especially bad because of the economy. Without going into all the gory details, in an attempt to beef up our print volume and utilize all the excess capacity, we decided to do a full scale launch of our Trade or Wholesale Print Program targeted at other Printers, Print Brokers, Copy Shops, Graphic Designers and other Resellers of printed products. The primary mode of getting the word out that PrintPapa was now also involved in the Wholesale Printing business was a direct mail campaign. We purchased a mailing list of apprx. 3500+ prospects from InfoUSA (our preferred vendor for lists) within a 50 mile radius of our location and planned on a 6-9 month campaign consisting of 6 rounds of mailings.

Fast forward to Dec 2009 – as a direct result of our mailing campaign we now can boast of having 200 registered Trade customers of which about 75+ customers place orders on an regular basis. More importantly sales to our Trade customers now account for apprx. 40%+ of total revenue and is the only reason why our company experienced double digit growth in 2009, one of the toughest years for the printing business in recent history, and almost all of that growth came from the trade part of the business. The success of the direct mail campaign (which btw is still ongoing) has prompted us to expand the reach of our Trade marketing program from a regional to a national level thru other channels of advertising. Most importantly the success of the trade pogram has fueled equipment upgrades and expansion programs in this tough economic environment and has positioned PrintPapa as a major player in the Trade Printing business in the Northern California region.

So take my advice and start thinking about how direct mail can help grow your business this coming year. Make it an integral part of your companies marketing budget and execute without hesitation as it is by far the cheapest and most cost effective method of acquiring new business and keeping in touch with existing customers. Pickup the phone and call us at PrintPapa (800-657-7181) or visit www.printpapa.com , we have the expertise to get things rolling for you !!!

So here is another example of how the current recession is driving companies in the US to experiment with innovative cost cutting measures that border on the ridiculous. The other day Jim (name changed ) the Director of Marketing at one of our good local silicon valley hi-tech customer sends me an urgent email saying that he really needs my help with pricing for collateral for an upcoming trade show.  Turns out that one of the geniuses there (engineer – upper management) has directed their marketing deptt. to drop PrintPapa (current print provider with an excellent track record of providing hi-quality prints at very reasonable prices with fast turnarounds) and deal with a printing company in China as part of their latest cost cutting initiative. Now poor Jim is in a state of distress as the last thing he wants to do is go all the way to Shanghai to do (what??)… YOU GUESSED IT.. A PRESS CHECK !!!

In any case the Sales Team at PrintPapa was not about to let a good customer go all the way to China for their printed materials so after some back and forth and negotiations over the prices, we managed to keep the job in the US of A. Jim sure looked quite happy when he did finally stop at our facility to do the Press Check (I guess because he does happen to like the folks at PrintPapa and did not like outsourcing jobs to China). The print jobs turned out perfectly and a potential disaster was averted because there was no way Jim’s bosses would have been happy with the quality of the collateral from China and also it was doubtful if they would have received their order back in time.

It does make me wonder about the future of all businesses like ours in this country who not only have to deal with domestic economic issues but are under pricing pressure from countries in Asia and other parts of the world as the businesses in those countries continue to contstantly evolve and get better at what they offer to the point where even a small print order worth a few thousand dollars is in jeopardy of being outsourced…..

For all of you business owners like myself out there, some of  the choices we have to make to survive in today’s marketplace are actually simple. The one choice that you and me cannot afford to make is to do nothing because it costs money. Hunkering down and hoping for this recession to pass and waiting for the good old days to come back is the same as hoping to win the CA State Lottery. The chances of which happening given my luck is next to nothing. Doing nothing is tantamount to dying when it comes to your business.  So the MILLION DOLLAR question is what to do and the answer is real simple:

GET MORE CUSTOMERS !!!

Now you are going to say to me “I already knew that, tell me something I dont know”. My response to that would be as follows i.e.,  As obvious as the answer is to all the challenges you are facing today in keeping your business going, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY TO ACQUIRE NEW CUSTOMERS ??
My guess is a majority of you folks struggling out there today will not be able to give me a satisfactory answer. The reason for that being most of us did not anticipate this drastic change in the economic climate in the past 1-2 years and were not ready with a clear startegy to respond.  If your only response is that ‘I dropped my already low prices even more so to keep my exsiting customers from price shopping or looking for alternatives’, then my friend that startegy by itself is bound to fail.

Well it’s never too  late to get things rolling again  so here are a few tips to get things moving in the right direction.

1. GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF YOUR OFFICE CHAIR & GO SELL SOMETHING.
2. BLAMING EVERYTHING ON THE ECONOMY WILL NOT GET YOU ANYWHERE. NOW IS THE TIME TO GET CREATIVE ABOUT YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS.
3. GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT THE AWESOME CAPABILITIES THAT YOU HAVE AND THE GREAT THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS. ITS MORE IMPORTANT TO DO THIS NOW MORE THAN EVER.

More TIPS to follow. Watch out for my next blog in this series.

SELL ALL YOU CAN & PROSPER >>>

Xerox Corporation scientists have invented a way to make prints whose images last only a day, so that the paper can be used again and again. The technology, which is still in a preliminary state, blurs the line between paper documents and digital displays and could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in paper use.The experimental printing technology, a collaboration between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.), could someday replace printed pages that are used for just a brief time before being discarded. Xerox estimates that as many as two out of every five pages printed in the office are for what it calls “daily” use, like e-mails, Web pages and reference materials that have been printed for a single viewing.

As the owner of a successfull printing company, at first glance this would appear to be scary stuff. Makes all of us in the printing business wonder about – WHAT THE HELL ELSE ARE THESE PEOPLE GOING TO COME UP WITH TO RUN PRINTERS OUT OF BUSINESS ???

But then again a recent analogy would go something like ‘The Internet is going to drive all Brick & Mortar Stores out of Business’. Has not happened yet and probably never will. By the same token this kind of fancy technology should not have us printers think about doing crazy stuff like stop marketing our printed products and services

BTW I can think of one great application for this new paper from Xerox, if you are not sure your print customer gave you good check then print his stuff on the erasable paper and when the printing disappears a day later the joke is on him…. TO BE CONTINUED