Page 56 - Print21 May-June 2020

Business Intelligence
Jumpstart your future
Bouncing back post-Covid is critical to future survival, but
what can we do to help our businesses attract sales? Kellie Northwood, CEO at the Real Media Collective, provides insights and tips.
Printed media channels can do many things: inspire, engage, entertain, persuade, educate. But one of their key strengths
for brands is keeping customers informed and loyal. There’s something about a well-produced brochure, reference book, postcard, or direct mail piece that’s impossible to put down. They provide time out from a trusted source, and build a strong connection between brand and customer, a connection that can result in a customer choosing a single brand above all others for months, and even years. This kind of loyalty is exactly what your customers need now as they start re-opening and prepare to attract their customers once more.
Printers have the opportunity now to do the heavy lifting for their customers and reap the rewards. Prepare your new business approach with ideas for how your customer or prospect can get back on their feet post-Covid. A lot of small business owners are uncertain of where to begin. Printers can look to preparing marketing kits and begin good old- fashioned door-knocking to ensure they too are back in business with new orders, streamlined to suit your business models.
Consider preparing base packs of how your customers can kick-start their businesses. Develop packs with rate cards or a flat fee – opening store packs, which might include window signage, floor decals, bags, product brochure or a mailer design to help business shout loud and proud the store is open. If you have digital solutions, develop an EDM
or website option that is included to support the print solutions.
When developing the promotional packs, consider including the facts about why print is powerful in bringing customers in store. We have seen in recent weeks the major retailers reduce if not cancel catalogues. While this
has been a painful halt to the heatset printers, a conversation I had with the CMO of a major supermarket brand said to me, ‘The catalogue’s greatest strength is currently its greatest weakness. Catalogues get people in store, and we can’t have that right now’. This is a pretty powerful statement endorsing print from one the largest Australian brands.
In a world where switching brands of anything from washing powder to broadband providers is increasingly simple, explaining to your customers how print brings customers in store, and keeps them engaged well after they have left the store, through a postcard or brochure that reminds them of the store experience, is king.
Australian focus groups held in Sydney and Melbourne revealed customers hold printed material in their homes for ‘future reference’
and this isn’t a day or two, this
is a week and more. Roy Morgan Research shows that 75 per cent of Australians keep printed material for future reference, 37 per cent generally keep material for less
than a week, 45 per cent for 1-2 weeks and 17 per cent keep them
for longer than two weeks. With more than one person living in most households (average according to the ABS is 2.5 people), this means the printed piece is now reaching more than one person across a period of some weeks. A great opportunity for secondary marketing.
Whether it’s something the customer takes with them or something mailed, the stats for print remain strong – according to a report from Accenture released this year,
we know 81 per cent of Australians report opening and reading their
mail immediately and 74 per cent pay complete attention when reading mail. Additionally, mail prompts purchases with 74 per cent going online to purchase and 47 per cent going in- store, as well as emotional triggers
– 62 per cent of 18-34 year olds
report receiving mail makes them feel
81% of Australians report opening and
reading their mail immediately
74% paycomplete attention when
reading mail 74% buyonline
62% of 18-34 year olds report receiving mail
makes them feel important
56 Print21 MAY/JUNE 2020
75% of Australians
keep printed material
for future reference
37% keep material
for less than a week
45% for between
one and two weeks
17% forlonger than two weeks