[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:01] DC: Print Buying UKvUSA is a series dedicated to helping printers create stronger, more meaningful, and more profitable relationships with print customers on both sides of the pond. I’m Deborah Corn, founder of Project Peacock and principal at Print Media Centr.
[0:00:21] MP: I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com.
[0:00:26] DC: We may not always agree, but that’s when it gets interesting. So, turn up the volume, get out your notepad, and welcome to the program.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:41] DC: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. More specifically, we are here with the UKvUSA podcast. Although, today, it’s not so much versus as much as it is a collaboration, because Matthew and I are going to share five tips to survive in 2025, aimed at print businesses. Hello, Matthew Parker.
[0:01:09] MP: Hello, Deborah Corn. How are you today?
[0:01:11] DC: I’m fine. I am looking forward to ending 2024 and starting 2025, although, I have some hesitations about 2025, and how that’s going to work out for everybody. But that’s why we are having this discussion today. So, we spoke about this topic before and divided up our tips into, you will offer three, and I will offer two. Of course, mine will be much more meaningful, which is why I only have to offer two, and you need to offer three, correct?
[0:01:47] MP: Absolutely, yes. No, of course, that’s the case. Shall we let the listeners decide? We could turn it into a battle. We could even ask them to vote.
[0:01:55] DC: Oh, God, don’t say the V word. All right, Matthew, we’re already having a little argument. So, there we go. We gave everybody the versus part upfront. So, kick it off, sir.
[0:02:08] MP: Okay. So, the first thing for 2025 is, if you want to survive, you should be reaching out to young people. Two ways to do this, you should be making sure you recruit more young people into your team. Secondly, you should be looking for younger buyers as well, because they’re the ones who are going to count over the years to come. Now, I know that you’ve done lots of good work in this already. I’m also going to give a shout-out to a fantastic organization in the UK called Young People In Print or YPIP for short, who are doing a lot to try and encourage printing companies to make sure they go out to colleges and show young people what they’re all about. That there’s so much more than just putting income paper with an old letterpress machine, which is actually very trendy these days, but you know what I’m saying.
[0:02:55] DC: It’s actually what attracts the young people, Matthew, is the letterpress. They love it.
[0:02:59] MP: Yes, that’s very true. I shouldn’t have said that. But it is so much more than just putting ink on paper with some uninteresting box. There’s all the design. There’s the fact that print is so relevant today as well, and we need to get that message out to people. And there are some printing companies over here who are doing a fantastic job doing that. But there are far too many who are not thinking about the younger people.
[0:03:22] DC: I mean, I don’t have much to add to that. I’ve been saying it for, I don’t know, 10 years. Now, you know, at a certain point, you get too far down the rabbit hole. I mean, the whole print is dead thing, is a very simple concept for people to grasp and they have grasped it, even though we know that’s not true. So, we’re undoing things. And whenever you’re in marketing or PR and you have to undo something, it is a very difficult task. So, I love anybody who’s being proactive, welcome to the fight, and thank you very much for your service to the industry.
[0:03:59] MP: Well, we just mentioned, so I’m going to give a shout-out to somebody else as well, which is the Independent Print Industries Association, the IPIA in the UK.
[0:04:06] DC: Yes, you guys are doing a great job. I see it all on social media, everybody out there. I’m echoing your shout-out.
[0:04:12] MP: Thank you. They’re doing a lot of good research into how print comes across on social media and they’re actually going to be engaging with social media influencers next year, shouting out, “Print made this.” Most importantly, they’re going out to new audiences as well, telling them this. So, I’m really hopeful that 2025 can see a little bit of a resurgence in print because of movements like this.
[0:04:37] DC: Excellent, I love that. My first tip, Matthew, actually tax on to what you said very nicely, and it is investing in trust and authenticity. There’s a lot of noise in the communication channels, whatever. Pick a channel and there’s noise in it, whether it’s your mailbox, or something online. People are constantly weeding through and making decisions about things. The most basic decision is, “Am I going to give this even two seconds of my attention” and you’ll have a better chance of making people stop and make a decision about clicking, opening, reading, something you sent if they trust that what is in front of them, in front of their eyes is something meaningful to them. And that the person sending it is being authentic in the reason why it was sent to me.
Not just, “You might be in the market for – ” well, if you don’t know that I’m in the market for, then it’s not authentic, you shouldn’t be talking to me. But if you do know that I’m in the market for, or might not know about, or have a new opportunity to, whatever that might be, if it comes across in an authentic way that there’s been research done about me, and there’s a reason why I have it, then you tick off the trust and authenticity boxes. This is not new information, Matthew, but the audience is always evolving and they’re fickle.
There is always this moment where people love these ways of communicating and social media is obviously had its moments, but it is really, people are making decisions about which channels they’re going to be on now. They have reduced the amount of channels that they’re in, they’re finding their people on social media. So, instead of having that broad conversation that we always hope to have on social media, we are really speaking to people who are making decisions about how much they’re going to pay attention and what they’re paying attention to. So, I would be pulling back my focus from spraying and praying to creating as many one-to-one engagements as possible. Likes on your posts is not that measurement, a comment, somebody making an inquiry is a measurement of meaningful engagement. Which also means, in my mind, of segmenting the audience, your audience.
At any given point, you probably have three to five different types of people who are paying attention to your business or what you’re sharing on social media in some way. So, meeting those specific segments where they are, not where you want them to be, and then taking it from there is also investing in trust and authenticity moving forward.
[0:07:48] MP: Absolutely. Deborah, I’ve trained you well. When you said about the segment markets, I’ve been talking about that probably for even more than 10 years. I’m letting people know how old they are now, but it’s part of my TPD principle. The first part of it is target audience. You have to work out who your target audience or who your target audiences are, and talk to them about the issues that they encounter every day, not talk to them about yourself. Now, I don’t know if we’ve said this before, but every now and again, we forward each other emails that we get, marketing emails. And it’s amazing if they even get a name right, but there are so many of these. We just pour them to each other for amusement value. But they are real spray-and-pray emails.
Look, people, I do not want to sell my business. I’m not interested in healthcare insurance. I don’t need new air conditioning. I don’t need solar lighting. Now, look me up. I don’t need someone to help with my employment. I’m not hiring, look me up, you’ll find this stuff out. And there are many printing companies out there who are sending emails that are very similar to these sorts of emails. They all get deleted without being read. As soon as I get one that I think is like that, I delete it. I don’t read it. I don’t care. If I have any idea about what these companies work, if anyone reached out to me personally, I would put the phone down on them straight away because they do not understand who I am. They don’t want to understand. They’re just playing a numbers game. And if you’re playing a numbers game in 2025, unless you have got a humongous marketing budget, you are going to lose it. So, go out, be personal, listen to what Deborah said. Rant over.
[0:09:34] DC: Two of my favorite ones I’ve gotten all year is the ones I sent to you. One who was talking to me as Blake. Blake, we know – I mean, the entire email was addressed to somebody named Blake. Then, another one was talking about a company that I don’t own or have anything to do with, but they sent it to me as if it was my company. So, I thought that that was interesting. I’m also getting really weird reach-outs now, and I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m looking for a job. But I went to LinkedIn to double-check and make sure that nothing was ticked there that says, open to work, or something like that. Because I’m just getting a lot
of these weird like, “We hear you’re looking for a job. We saw you’re looking for a job.” I’m not really sure what the scam is there other than to get my data, but there’s a lot of that going on in LinkedIn and in my inbox. What’s your next tip?
[0:10:28] MP: So, my next tip is, be prepared. Have your defenses ready for next year. I’m going to say this in a couple of ways, actually. First of all, as no news to anyone on the planet that we’ve had some weird weather this year. I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me, apart from a few climate change deniers, that we’re going to get a lot more weather next year as well. It’s not going anywhere. Have a disaster recovery plan, everyone. What happens if your electricity goes out? What is your flood recovery? Have you got a partnership with someone that you trust where you can mutually agree to carry out each other’s work? Because disasters are going to happen more and more over the coming years, I fear, and you need to be prepared for them. It’s going to be very difficult to have business as usual.
Even if bad weather doesn’t hit your street exactly, I was sitting recently and I couldn’t go anywhere a few weeks ago because everywhere was flooded around me. Then, a few weeks later, because all the trees have blown over in the strong winds. So, there are many things that could affect your business, and even if it is, how do I get stuff to my clients when they are difficult to get hold of because of the weather?
The other thing I kind of want to talk about as well, because I think it’s going to come up more, is think about and have your defenses ready on the environmental side because single use is going to become a much bigger buzzword over next year and the years to come. At the moment, it’s all on plastic, and we’re going, “Hey, it’s all right, we print on paper. Just so we don’t do any plastic, we’re all right.” Single-use paper is going to come under fire as well. I already personally feel bad about the amount of single-use packaging that I chuck into the recycling, even though it’s paper-based. It’s a lot better than plastic, but I’m still chucking out stuff I shouldn’t.
That is going to be an issue that the printing industry has to deal with in its messaging, but you also have to be prepared that potentially there’s products that you’re producing at the moment that are not going to be products that people are going to want to buy in the coming months. So, those are kind of my warning signs for 2025. I promise that I’m going to be a little bit more positive in my third point later on.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:12:43] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships, and events to the next level? Then, I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast, global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations, and they need the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level.
Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[0:13:44] DC: Regarding the climate issue and disaster plans, I have recorded a podcast with the printer chat guys about this because Will Crabtree from Tampa Media and I both live in Florida. We got hit with both hurricanes within two weeks of each other and a tropical storm right before that. He actually lost one of his buildings. So, we did an entire podcast on disaster planning, so I will link that in the show notes because it is a very, very important topic.
As far as sustainability goes, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but at some point, we’re just going to have to be realistic about this. There are some customers that care about this and there are some customers that don’t. Two, if you have an online printing business and people buying things online, and you can say, “Hey, do you want to use recycled paper?” You could make a case that, if it’s digital printing that it’s more sustainable because there’s less resources being used. If you want to have that top-line message, fantastic. But if you don’t have the customers that actually care, like the brands care in a different way, then focus more on getting new customers than this thing. But I do think a minimal message should be on a website.
Also, the bigger picture is, why isn’t the industry doing more about this? I actually wrote in a post this month on Print Media Centr about that. So, I will link in the show notes to that as well. You want to do your third one, and then I’ll finish up with mine because it’s a topic close to your heart, the one I have.
[0:15:27] MP: Okay. Cool. So, my third and final one is going to be, have some good simple sales strategies for next year. At the moment, a lot of companies I talked to are hoping that the phone will ring or they’re going out, and they’re doing really complicated stuff. They come saying, “Matthew, I’m a small printing company, but I want to get three multinational clients on board next year.” Which, you know, unless you’ve got something special, it’s probably not that realistic. I hate to break to people.
A lot of good sales work that can be done that doesn’t have to take a lot of time that can get really good results. So, things like, do you have an upsell program? Every customer who buys from you, you should be offering the opportunity to increase the value of their order. Every time I go and get a hot chocolate, I’m asked if I want to have a large hot chocolate rather than reading one, or do I want a brownie with that. I would say, yes, because I’m a chocoholic. So, they’ve done their job on that. Every time you go out for your burger, do you want fries with that? I’ve just written my newsletter subscribers, a piece called, “Do you want fries with your print?” Because you should all be upselling more? Have a program to get your lapsed customers back, is one of the easiest, quickest ways to get a good boost to revenue because most people assume that their customers, once they’ve lost them are gone forever. That is absolutely not the case.
Yes, some of them are, but there are plenty who may come back if you have a conversation with them. It’s easy, low-hanging fruit, and you can give these sorts of tasks to your entire staff. You don’t need high-paid sales professionals to do this. We’ll put a link in the notes because I do happen to have a couple of programs that cover those particular sales strategies. But go out and do simple things like this, and at the very least, make sure that you dedicate a good couple of hours, twice a week to actually doing solid sales. Because so often, I hear of people whose sales time is getting diverted into all the firefighting and the production, all those things that we know happen, but you’ve got to make time for sales. So, that’s my third and final point.
[0:17:39] DC: To add to that, instead of trying to do things yourself, if you want to start selling print in other countries, there’s plenty of networks out there that you can join in, and receive orders from other countries, and send orders to other countries. I mean, sometimes you have to form it out to other people, and sometimes, it just comes through, and it dings, there’s an order for you. So, there’s plenty of things like that to get involved with. If you haven’t been involved in the user groups of your manufacturers, 2025 is the time to get involved, find your people, create your own network of resources.
There are fantastic stories in the user groups of how companies on different sides of the pond are working together. So that, going back to your environmental concerns so that people aren’t flying print over the ocean, they can print with their partners. Now, how are they able to do that? They have the same equipment. They can calibrate it the same to the point that it can be calibrated the same or close enough on two different continents with different weather, and different paper, and all that other stuff, all the caveats. But close enough that no one’s going to be freaking out about it. That could be part of your sales strategy too. And in a lot of ways, it is just sitting back and letting the orders come to you if your network is active.
[0:19:07] MP: That’s a great point. Go out, and cultivate partners, those are the sorts of things that you can do quite simply and good results can come from them. Don’t rely on it. It takes time to get those partnerships up and running, but when they do, they can be very profitable. So, just think about having some good strategies for next year, maybe actually on the 1st of January – not the 1st of January, because it will all be partied — but yes, your first day back to work. Sit down and write out three or four simple things that you plan to have a focus on next year to increase your sales. Don’t make them complicated. Make them easy.
[0:19:43] DC: Yes, and one of them could be signing up for a network to get print sent to your whatever the system that it comes through in a ding, an order for you, there it is.
[0:19:54] MP: Absolutely. Right. I’m intrigued to find out what your second one is. It’s going to be so close to my heart.
[0:20:00] DC: Well, it fits with the sales topic, and it is something that I know is near and dear to your heart, which is, do not under any circumstance compete on price in 2025.
[0:20:14] MP: Yay!
[0:20:14] DC: Yes.
[0:20:15] MP: Great advice.
[0:20:16] DC: Now, it’s always a good idea not to compete on price, but let me give you some reasons why next year would be the worst year to compete on price. First of all, now, I can only really speak about the United States because there has been announcements here. I’m not sure if you saw any of them. But first of all, at least six or seven paper companies have already announced pricing increases starting in January. So, already, I don’t know if that means a printer has to raise their prices or not. They have enough margin. I don’t know. All I’m saying is, there’s one instance that you might have to raise a price.
[0:20:57] MP: Can I just jump in here and say that, if you feel that you can absorb those paper increases, you are already selling on price because you’re cutting your margins, because you’re afraid to put a price increase over to a customer. You should be discussing those increases with your customers, not thinking about absorbing that increase in any way.
[0:21:16] DC: Okay, that is totally fair.
[BREAK]
[0:21:21] MP: Do you need some direction or new ideas for your business? Would sales goals setting and accountability improve your revenues? Or do you have a member of staff who could be performing better? I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com, and I offer a personal mentoring service. Together, we work out exactly what you need. We create a personal mentoring program for you, and then we speak twice a month. You get set goals and action points to make sure you progress.
What makes me different is that I’m the buyer. I’ve been approached by over 1,400 different printing companies, so I know what works and I know what doesn’t. If you’d like to find out more, go to profitableprintrelationships.com, click the training tab, and then go to mentoring. Or alternatively, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I look forward to working with you.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[0:22:14] DC: Okay. So, that’s one instance you might have to talk about with your customers about prices increasing. The next one is going to come when the postage goes up again next year. That’s another conversation you’re going to have about price increases, right? Already now, now that’s twice you might have to talk to somebody about raising the prices of the print. The third thing is the uncertainty over the threatened tariffs of the United States against other countries and any sort of retaliation and supply chain disruptions that might cause in response.
I will tell everybody, as someone who worked in advertising for more than 25 years, uncertainty is where marketing budgets go to die. When nobody knows what’s going to happen with the economy, they stop spending. So, this is going to seem crazy, but if I were a printer, I would be looking at all of my customers who printed things last year in the first quarter, and the second quarter, maybe even for the whole year, analyze what they did and try to front-load the year as much as possible. Print in those first quarter as much as possible, try to get your paper locked into the price that it is now before there are potentially any supply chain disruptions and things like that.
I spoke to a printer who said his customer is printing everything for the year in January. They’re not even messing around with. These are high-volume things that they cannot. It’ll either be they’re doing the mailings or they’re not. Once the postage and the paper goes up, then it makes it harder for some of these bigger customers to keep what they’re doing. They’re going to cut the programs and they didn’t want to cut the programs. So, anything you can do to figure out how to gang run, do things before the postage goes up.
If you’re an online printer or anything like that, you just keep raising the prices in your system, there’s nothing you can do about it. But if you’re involved with any customers who have budgeted already for the year, and think that their job is going to be a certain amount of money, I’m going to actually throw this to you. How would you handle that conversation? There’s a lot of people that have contracts, for printing. This is what they pay for the year, or their caveats in it that say, “Hey, if the pricing goes up.”
I just want to say that, I have printed in Canada, for example. When I do that, my estimate gets locked in at the exchange rate at the time for a certain amount of time. Then, if I exceed that time, they have the right to change the pricing. By the way, if the exchange rate is better for the United States, and I get a better price at that time. And if it’s not, then, I would have to pay more money. So, you could say it works out eventually, but that’s not the point. The point is, is that I know that I have a certain amount of time to pull the trigger before there’s uncertainty.
[0:25:18] MP: So. to your point on contracts, a good printer will have made sure that they have those price review terms where they can change the price for paper, for postage, for any elements like that. So, that should be covered. If you haven’t, you’re probably going to have a hard lesson to learn next year. We’ve been suffering those sorts of price increases over here over the years. I’ve got two things I want to say in response to your excellent suggestion of not selling on price. Number one is, you said that there will be a number of companies who may not be able to do the mass mailings that they were able to do before because the price of paper is going up, because the price of postage is going up. Maybe now, it’s the time to focus on those smaller clients who are looking at higher returns for less activity.
So, rather than go after the mass market, big mailings, and obviously, it does depend on the equipment that you have. But now’s a good time to go for the smaller mailings where you can actually increase the price per piece. Go, we’re going to recommend to you with the price of postage going up, with the price of paper going up, you need to make these mailings count more. We’re going to create a smaller number of items with a bigger price per item because we can show you how that’s going to get a better return on investments per mailing piece that’s sent out.
[0:26:44] DC: And stay within the budget that they had planned for is the point, regarding the increases in pricing. It shouldn’t matter. That’s what I’m trying to say here. You don’t want to have this price conversation three or four times next year. At some point, at some point, I’m just saying with my buyer hat on, I’m going to be like, “Dude, you’re killing me. You’re killing me with this. I can’t print this anymore.”
[0:27:08] MP: No, that’s going to happen. That’s why you should be thinking in your strategy about the types of business you want to go after. The ones who fix their mailing budgets already, they’re going to be trickier because, like Deborah says, they’re just going to get killed. Or, are you going to encourage people who are maybe growing businesses who are open to new ideas, who – if you can show that the right level of print marketing is going to improve their results, then you’re in a much better position to win that work from them.
Now, the second thing I wanted to say was, Deborah quite rightly said, don’t compete on price. There’s a couple of things I want to add to this. If you think that you’re not going to compete on price because you’re offering better service than everyone, you’re competing on price. If you think that you’re not going to compete on price because you’re offering better quality than everyone, you’re competing on price. You have to find better reasons for people to use you than the fact that you offer great service and great quality because that’s what everyone expects these days.
Deborah, how many print businesses do you know, who’ve gone under because their quality wasn’t good enough or their service wasn’t good enough? I’m guessing, it’s a big round zero because that’s the number that I know.
[BREAK]
[0:28:22] DC: Like what you hear? Leave us a comment, click a few stars, share this episode, and please subscribe to the show. Are you interested in being the guest and sharing your information with our active and growing global audience? Podcasts are trending as a potent direct marketing and educational channel for brands and businesses who want to provide portable content for customers and consumers. Visit printmediacentr.com, click on podcasts, and request a partner package today. Share long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[0:28:55] DC: It goes back to trust and authenticity. So, if you have established that, then you get to go to those customers now and say, “Look, there’s uncertainty. There’s going to be uncertainty next year, so let’s have – ” and we’ve discussed this before, too. “Let’s sit down in January and have a strategic planning meeting. What are your goals for the first quarter? What are your goals for half of the year? What are your goals for the full year? Whatever the results that you want to generate with your marketing, with your education, with your events, whatever that might be. Then, let’s plan it out as smart as possible to get things in the mail before the price increase, or at least print them.” I guess you can’t really – you can print them, but you can’t mail them.
You can still front load a lot of this stuff even if you can’t mail it, you can still print it when the price of paper hasn’t fluctuated again. But again, there’s not a lot of time left, and I only saw the announcement a couple of days ago about the price increases in January. However, I’m not a printer, and I assume the mills and the merchants have been discussing this with printers, their customers long before they’re sending out announcements to customers and things like that.
[0:30:12] MP: Yes, I wouldn’t mind. Some of the prices going through here have been on really short notice.
[0:30:17] DC: Really?
[0:30:18] MP: Yes. But yes, front load, and particularly for inventory items, people who are doing just-in-time print, they might want to review best strategy for that next year. You’ve got an opportunity here to provide warehousing. There’s lots of things you can do that hopefully can use up that budget well and make sure that you benefit from it.
[0:30:37] DC: And just be as helpful as possible, and understand that the uncertainty is not just business, it’s personal too. Have as much empathy as you can in all of your customer interactions, because you don’t know where they’re coming from, you don’t know what their personal problems might be, or their business problems might be, or anything that happens regarding them having to deal with customers, and raise prices, or them having prices raised on them for things. So, just be a partner in this thing, in this moment of time.
Like the pandemic, we come out of it together. You come out of it with strengthening your relationships as long as you’re not predatory about it. I don’t know, like, “Hey, what do you got coming up?” Printing is not the email anybody should be getting in 2025. It should be, we have a special. We’re doing something we want to – we’re focusing on real estate. We have a new program for real estate agents. We have a new program for restaurants. We have a new program for, whatever it might be, just make it really personal, really meaningful for that marketing spend if you want to even open the conversation in 2025, at least in the beginning of 2025 when things are up in the air.
[0:31:59] MP: Well, I think that’s kind of a really nice way to round off our tips at 2025, should be a year of empathy. I think we should all remember that as we go into it. I think we did far more than five tips here, to people to survive. I think we’ve got at least double that number, if not, more if I counted them up.
Hopefully, this is a real value-for-money way to start 2025. I’m going to sign off by just wishing everyone a good year, both personally and in business in 2025. I hope it goes the best way possible that you develop, and you have some great challenges to rise to, and you enjoy the year as well. Things are always changing. We don’t know what’s going to happen later on in the year. In fact, we don’t actually know what’s going to happen very early on in the year either. So, just know that we wish you all the best with that, and I’m going to hand over to Deborah at this point.
[0:32:45] DC: Thank you, Matthew Parker. And of course, we’re here to help if anybody needs our help. Links to the information that Matthew mentioned in the podcast are in the show notes. I also want to thank everybody for listening to this podcast. Oh, we’ve been doing it for several years, but especially in 2024, we look forward to, you know, speaking with you again in 2025. And until then, everybody, happy holidays, stay safe, stay warm or cold if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, and print long and prosper.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:33:24] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
[END]
