An overview of the DMA IMW 2014 event, a potential resource of new business for smart print providers.
by Thad Kubis
Based on my experience and my attendance at the very interesting, active Direct Marketing Association (DMA)-sponsored Integrated Marketing Week (IMW) 2014 event, I would say the key to developing new business for any print provider of any size is to accumulate targeted knowledge, specific to a desired business vertical.
What you will find below is a summary of the well-attended DMA event that took place recently in New York City, which I attend and covered for Print Media Centr and Deborah Corn.
This event was a goldmine for print providers—not for direct business but to understand how your prospects or clients think about the future of marketing, social media, print, ROI, measurement, tracking and much, much more. What attendees could garner from this event was a deep insight—an almost spiritual understanding—that print is far from dead. While print, the once first step in nearly any marketing effort, has now taken a back seat to other non-print related media, read on and you will see that much was discussed at the meeting about digital media and the need to be responsive, supportive, interactive, and action-based in dealing with client need. You will also learn that, except for the Keynote speaker’s remarks, print and the use of print as an integrated tool was mentioned in nearly all sessions.
A key takeaway is that not everyone is joining the marketing community in moving to a digital (non-print) process. Nearly all the sessions included strong and positive comments regarding print, direct mail, and other direct marketing print-based, print-managed, or print-supported tools. Discussions focused on purls, micro sites, squeeze pages, and printed downloads. Integration of emails and print was also cited as a powerful tool that many of the major corporations featured at the two-day event rely upon.
The key, main takeaway is noted below and related to the trend for print providers to attract or attack vertical markets.
Vertical Markets come with a warning label!
There is caveat: Vertical Markets by definition demand intimate knowledge of and understanding of their pain points, what keeps them up at night, what their customers want, and what suppliers need to provide!
Become a purveyor of intellectual capital (soft) products and not only print (hard) products.
To understand the scope of the future of your business, you will need to begin to think very differently. As a print provider, you will not only need to rethink the way you approach vertical marketing for new business generation but also realize that you can no longer glean the cream from the top of the new business bucket and be satisfied. The new model is to dig deep, drive to a level of learning unfamiliar to you and become that subject matter expert, that source of intellectual knowledge, that is focused on your clients’ increasing their profits and you, in turn, increasing yours and securing your future.
A by-product of this event was the understanding that your prospects are looking for vendors, but they are looking for vendors with a twist—vendors that support profit advocacy and can become a trusted advisor and long-term valued partner not a job-by-job source.
You cannot reach this new level, this strata, without understanding that your traditional methods for generating new business need to change and be aligned closely to the verticals you have targeted. You need to develop a deeper knowledge base regarding those and related verticals.
Need to learn more, read the supportive article that expands upon this overview.
Thad Kubis | Founder & Chief Integration Officer
Thad.Kubis@tifmc.org | www.tifmc.org | @Thadcmce
Integrated Marketing • Media Convergence • Profit Advocacy • Curriculum Development | Strategic Messaging I Key Note Speaker | Business Coaching l Multi-Media Management l Forensic Review
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