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A Taste of Marketing Success
BY DARIN PAINTER
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MARKETING IS THE MAIN INGREDIENT OF A
PROACTIVE COMPANY. A healthy dash of it, and your company can be ripe with
new customers and growing sales. A total lack of it, and your competitors could
have you for dinner.
Until marketing campaigns can be bought at the corner grocery store (Aisle 7, next to the cans of time management), companies will need workable strategies to promote their products and services. Problem is, effective marketing methods require preparation and creativity.
Who really has the time? Who really has the patience? "Who really has the advantage," says Selina Oppenheim, president of Boston-based consulting firm Port Authority, "is the company that knows what it wants, then takes the right marketing steps to get there. Those are the ones who see the fruits of their labor." Flash-in-the-pan marketing ideas? "Those turn out to be the pits," she says.
Marketing is a large problem for many distributors and manufacturers, says E. Brooks Warner, president of 101, a North Granby, Conn.-based marketing services company that targets the document management industry. Warner has 15 years of experience marketing forms and related products. "Marketing is overlooked and misunderstood," he says. "Most document companies focus on selling and production, not marketing. It's hard to have a sales rush without a marketing recipe."
Prospects simply ate up the four marketing methods shown on the following pages. We invite you to follow the steps each company took, enjoy some quick and easy tips from marketing experts, and craft your own plan with the help of our guide on page 48. Bon appetit!
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NOTICE:
The successful marketing
recipes shown on the following pages involve common
ingredients--brochures, web sites, CD-ROMs, etc. We encourage you to
substitute any ingredient with another that blends better with your
company's capabilities, customers and goals.
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1.
Align product with a clear message.
Remi Sawyer began his company in 1989 with "a business card, a briefcase and a telephone in hand," he says. Today, the president of Salem, N.H.-based distributorship A&R Sawyer Co. places technology in customers' hands.
A&R Sawyer's new brochure and web site promote ePrint 2020, a proprietary, secure e-commerce system that gives customers comprehensive internet print management capabilities. Users can go online and access customized order forms for business cards and stationery, business forms, commercial printing, on-demand digital printing, promotional products and more. Users also can view online proofs and access shipping dates with order-tracking numbers, full cost-center allocation tables, and weekly or monthly activity reports. Companies with multiple departments or branch offices can customize ePrint 2020, enabling those divisions to place orders separately or send them to central purchasing for approval.
"Brilliance is stated in simplicity," Sawyer says. "That was a hard lesson for me to learn." The $1.4 million firm wanted a clear message on the front of its 4-color, 5-panel brochure. The concept had to encompass the distributorship's ability to eliminate clients' bottlenecks. "We sell printing, but our value added is no longer a custom central watermark or cross-web gluing," Sawyer says. "It's providing tools for clients to reduce costs and save time." For its message, A&R Sawyer chose, "Streamline your business printing through our new online technology."
2. Get a target audience.
Sawyer divides prospects into two groups: "There are people who sit in rowboats and don't want to move, and there are forward-thinking thirty-somethings who can't develop technologies fast enough," he says. "We're not looking to align ourselves with the old guard and the old rules of business."
For the brochure mailing, A&R Sawyer targeted only 100 prospects interested in business-to-business e-commerce, firms that wanted to manage without administrating. "Everyone wants to save money," Sawyer says, "but smart buyers also care about things like peak periods and stock statuses. They want control, but don't have the head count to conduct a hands-on approach. That's the type of company we're targeting."
3. Add a freelancer.
As the company acquired clients and generated new print volume, it temporarily halted production of the marketing piece. The firm hired freelance designer and copywriter Stephanie Donald, owner of Stephdon Designs, to give the brochure a professional look. "This might have been our smartest move," Sawyer says. "If you can get a designer who's also great with copy, you have a gem."
4. Mix in customer testimonials.
The brochure includes testimonials from high-profile clients such as Boston-based bank Brown Brothers Harriman, the oldest and largest privately owned bank in the United States, and law firm Morrison, Mahoney & Miller LLP. Their quotes reflect A&R Sawyer's "streamline your business printing" message.
5. Blend printed and online content.
Sawyer wanted to drive brochure recipients to the distributorship's web site, which includes an online demonstration of ePrint 2020. After meeting with three CD-ROM suppliers at an ASI show in Dallas, he chose Sussex, N.J.-based CD Source Direct to produce an informational CD-ROM that includes a link to www.arsawyer.com. The CD-ROM is included on the last panel of the brochure.
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| A&R Sawyer Co., a distributorship in Salem, N.H., used a 5-panel
brochure and its web site (www.arsawyer.com) to promote its proprietary
ePrint 2020 internet print management system. The firm used freelance
designer and copywriter Stephanie Donald, owner of Stephdon Designs, to
design the brochure and web site.
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"The brochure has an electronic feel because readers can scan page by page to get a sense of what we offer," Sawyer says. "The CD-ROM is basically a taxi cab to drive recipients to our web site." The site's color scheme (futuristic purple and black) is consistent with the brochure's. "If we can get a potential client to log on," Sawyer says, "we can draw him in deeper with a live demo. It's a great marketing tool."
