By Editor Morten B. Reitoft

I don't believe there is a "one-solution-fits-all" when it comes to success. However, I am totally hundred per cent certain that doing nothing results in nothing. A couple a days ago, my Business Development Manager Henrik Klem Lassen and I, had a meeting with a potential INKISH customer. It was a printing company. Actually a quite big one. At the meeting we spoke about the industry, our respective businesses, and of course, narrowing down to the reason why we were there; what we offer, the value, and, of course, the prices and terms.

From that perspective, it was pretty much business as usual. The meeting went well, and the output of it; I am pretty sure you will see on INKISH within a couple of months. However, what stroke me was the readiness to invest in the company's own brand - and market.

Marketing activities serve a purpose, to market your products, services, solutions, etc., and to generate interest, leads, business and brand awareness. It's an investment equally important to staff, production equipment, to everything that makes your business a business.

Marketing is mostly seen as an expense and less an investment. Expenses you can reduce, investments you have to judge in the perspective of an ROI. If your ROI isn't high enough, you need to evaluate your investment and figure out means that will give you an earning. Earnings when it comes to marketing is measured differently.

As mentioned above marketing MUST give you interest, leads, business, and brand awareness. You must be able to set measurements for your investment as you do with all other investments. Vendors and distributors can wonder who don't market their products or representations hardly believes in their own brand and the return the investment gives their customers in my opinion.

Imagine you represent a product in your market, and you don't market it - how should that ever resonate positively? Why would a vendor ever need a distributor, if no marketing activities are offered? Are the distributors assuming too only take whatever would have come anyway, or are distributors merely the extended service organisation for a vendor? I, of course, understand that the cost of marketing has to be put in perspective of the market size and potential, but most media have prices based on this already. If you advertise in a local trade media, the reach and circulation obviously reflect the price, and therefore there is no excuse. You have to. Some vendors even share marketing cost with the distributors, since they obviously have an interest in broadening their brand.

Some distributors, I guess, see sales activities like marketing, and yes, of course, all activities are marketing activities, but is it marketing for a specific product/brand? Or is it just marketing of the representation, maybe down to a person?

But let's move on to printing companies.

Too many are doing nothing. Our industry has declined double digits over the past 20 years, and we blame 'the internet', 'postage rates', and thousands of other things - but we don't do anything ourselves. I suggested once that part of the salary packages should be magazine vouchers so all our employees would start buying magazines. Why? Well - when I do keynotes I often ask how many subscribe to a newspaper - numbers also in the printing industry is declining. I ask the same about magazines. The numbers are even lower. I ask how many frequently buy a book. Close to zero. We do not even support our own industry by consuming some of the products that we try to convince customers to use.

Same will eventually go for vendors. Smart vendors market their services and spend a lot of money on positioning themselves. If you look in your own printing company, you can see the results. You have the same equipment as your neighbour, and your differentiation in the market is less and less based on what equipment you have. The vendors know this and continue to invest in both R&D and market to ensure their spot in the future print market. The future print market may be smaller, but don't fool yourself to believe it's not very valuable. It's extremely valuable, and the fewer printing companies left will be the ones that are smart enough to invest in all the things that are needed to secure his own future.

What sometimes strikes me. A considerable part of printing companies in the world is family-owned/driven. A lot of you are 2nd, 3rd or even more generations old. If you look at your fathers and grand-fathers, I am pretty sure these guys where tough men who wanted to be winners, who wanted to be influential in their local city/business community. They invested. They took chances. I am pretty sure that none of these men (for the most), would have accepted a decreasing revenue and profit without considering how to do something. Do something. Get something. Do nothing. Get nothing.

It's as simple as that!