Most small print businesses are not good at, or have the time and resources for marketing. Marketing is as much about changing customer perceptions as it is with support of sales. This is where national industry groups have a big role to play. Andy Tribute recently made some poignant comments on the topic at the 2008 on-demand show.

As the print council discovered in the US, it inevitably means working with those in other industries - i.e. Print buyers. This in itself is a challenge for many of our traditional print organisations. Their leaders or staff simply aren't comfortable communicating with their members own customers being agencies, marketers or corporate print buyers.

The need to be more connected with the marketplace is what Dr Joe Webb has been saying for many years. Certainly PrintNZ here has a low profile when it comes to market education. Most work is focused upon helping traditional printers cope with employee issues. No initiatives around helping printers here 'sell the value of print' as Andy described.

Even regular educational seminars on how to better sell digitally printed products, workflows or marketing tools, common in the US, are rare here. Organisations like PrintNZ don't need to actually run them, just be the catalyst, co-ordinating venues and provide much needed marketing support for qualified industry experts. I can think of dozens of companies and topics that would appeal to printshop owners.

It's not exactly new here either. Together with Roger Park, I recall working closely with PrintNZ and key suppliers back in 1997-8, running a dozen well attended seminars throughout the country on prepress and selling tips. There's likely been others as one-off events, but not part of any bigger, cohesive strategy. 

As for Andys suggestion of a setting up a new Print Industry Marketing Officer / Print Evangelist role? Sounds like a great job! Where do I apply? 

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