Business monitor july:Layout 1 12/06/2009 14:49 Page 21
BUSINESS MONITOR
The
power
of
printwear
In the current financial climate, it’s more important than ever to identify new markets. It may require
some lateral thinking, but our marketing specialist Paul Clapham has some sound ideas to help you
win new business and boost profits
C
ompetition is good for business. This is a through in at least 70% of cases. As a control I
statement ingrained in everybody’s mindset also asked if they had advertising sales people
and substantially it’s true. At the same time, contact them and 100% said ‘yes’, some ‘every
all businesses like a situation where a customer day.’ The ‘they’ in question were typically owners
automatically chooses to buy from them and or sales managers.
doesn’t bother going through competitive quotes. This is a mixture of good news and bad. The bad
This happens for lots of good reasons – previous news is that overall potential customers don’t
excellence of quality, service, price, reliability and a know the printwear benefits story – they don’t
host of other factors. ‘think printwear’. The good news is that there are
In a recession having locked-in customers like this untapped markets waiting to be exploited.
is all the more valuable. Seeking out sectors where Personally, I find this surprising because, being
there is less competition has to be a way to printwear conscious, I seem to see people wearing
defend margins. It will be instantly apparent that competitors use it; had they recently had anybody it everywhere and every day, but I now suspect I’m
this doesn’t mean high volume business where trying to sell it to them. wrong. What I’m seeing is the highly visible few
competitive quoting is automatic, but I well recall Now, the county of Kent may be totally anomalous rather than a sample of the many. Again this is
a former MD saying that the way to survive a but I can’t think of one reason why it should be. good news because, if a relatively limited number
downturn is to have your eggs in lots of baskets. So I’d suggest that the outcome is pertinent to of users gives an impression of universal use, then
So I took a look at my local Yellow Pages and most parts of the UK. the printwear proposition is clearly working.
visited a local business club. The businesses I The blindingly obvious overall reaction was that So I suggest that the industry needs to rethink and
contacted were, I concede, a small sample (dozens printwear was off their radar. They didn’t know go back to basics. You’re all busy providing a
rather than hundreds) but I asked them all the what it was; they didn’t know any of the benefits; valuable marketing tool with applications to every
same questions and got some interesting and, I they neither knew nor cared if competitors used it; business and they don’t appear to understand
thought, surprising answers. What I wanted to they couldn’t remember seeing a salesman of the what it is you’re offering. The primary issue is the
know was did they use printwear (I had to explain product and their overall cost perception was that
what it was every time); if not why not; did their it was rather expensive. Those responses came
continued over
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