Paper Matters Blog
Power of Partnership

Domtar has had the pleasure of sponsoring and attending many of the industry events for the last few years.  As an attendee, it’s been nice to the shift in focus from printing technologies to more services and building partnerships. Many of the sessions at these conferences challenge the attendees to rethink their offering and the way they promote themselves, INTERACT stands out as a truly unique event in the industry.

Throughout the sessions, keynotes and conversations with attendees, three themes stood out as pillars of success:

1. Know Your Audience Today. Know Your Audience Tomorrow. Printers are notorious for speaking about their equipment and capabilities, but not explaining to their customer how this information is relevant to their business. This doesn’t provide a partnership environment where the customer’s needs come first.  At INTERACT, the focus was on knowing your audience and understanding what the customer values.

Another component of this was the focus on considering the customer of tomorrow. During the first keynote at last year’s INTERACT conference, Ken Gronbach gave a riveting presentation on human analytics (i.e., measurements of population shifts) and how studying predictive demographics and learning the nuances of each generation can better position and secure your business for the future.

I’m looking forward to reading his book Upside: Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead. If you’d like to learn more about generational marketing, check out Domtar’s download on the topic titled Print, Digital or Both? How Brands Can Reach Multiple Generations.

2. Embrace the Omni-Channel Experience – Omni-channel marketing is defined as “using the strengths of various communication mediums to integrate a single message and sell to customers, seamlessly and interchangeably.” In other words, you’re not just using multiple channels, you’re presenting a unified message that crosses them all.

Many of the sessions at INTERACT were focused on the multiple facets of the omni-channel experience, allowing the attendees to understand the opportunities to both promote themselves and better understand print’s valuable role. The sessions on social media drew the largest crowds and sparked the most conversations!

3. Embrace the Advances of Print Technology, but Be More Than a Vendor – There’s certainly a lot to get excited about with digital print these days, but to be a “go-to” printer you have to be more than a vendor to your customers.

Many sessions were focused on how to be a better resource to customers beyond printing the deliverable. In order to be successful today and tomorrow, printers need to come to the table understanding a customer’s goals and providing solutions instead of taking orders.

When building a partnership, you need to bring value to your customers. You must earn their trust and prove that you understand their business, understand their needs and have the capabilities to help them achieve their goals. Whether it’s educating customers on personalization, omni-channel opportunities or a multitude of other facets, printers have a lot to offer their customers.  Thus, the reason why for our website and collateral.  Feel free to use any of our blogs, downloads or magazine stories to help your business grow.

Related Blogs

3 Tips to Become a Go-To Commercial Printer

3 Ways Direct Mail Improves Your Omni-Channel Strategy

5 Critical Conversations Between Printers and Designers

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Contributors

Nicholas Pearson
Marketing Specialist
Meredith Collins
Customer Marketing Manager
Danielle Sinclair
Vanecia Carr
Sr. Director Marketing Product & Management
John Parke
Customer Marketing Manager
Paige Goff
Vice President of Sustainability
Deborah Corn
Domtar Paper
Roland Basdeo
Graphic Designer
Susan Jones