In light of all the changes brought about by the Internet for marketing and advertising and reading so much about how newspapers, radio, television and direct mail dollars are being shifted to the Internet I wondered how printers are doing.
I quickly found sites that tell me they too are experiencing the exact same shifts as clients post their product information online and print fewer brochures. The future doesn’t look good either as the predictions for direct mail are dismal, Kindle is getting traction and there is a recession to deal with.
One very respected blog in the industry felt that the answer was for printers to think of themselves as Content Distribution Providers and take the assets they have from their clients and do more than just print something.
I think he is onto something there as we too have seen an interest in marketing communication portals to expand into more things. In our world clients want their dealers to come to one online site and build a newspaper ad, build an online campaign with landing pages, customize a TV spot, manage an email campaign and order customized brochures.
I’ve worked with a lot of printers over the years and have always admired their work ethic and customer service attitude but I’ve never really thought of them as marketers and deep down I don’t think they love the marketing aspects of what they do enough to learn a completely different discipline or they would have left printing years ago.
No one is asking for my advice but the best way for a printer to morph into a Content Distribution Provider is to partner with one.
And as the printer’s blog went on to say, “…we are witnessing far reaching changes on how marketing is done.”
Yes, indeed.