Marketing For Survival

From all over the South—and beyond—university printing managers came together to share ideas and learn from each other.

With a large dose of Southern hospitality, Auburn University recently welcomed the 23rd annual Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference to its Auburn, Ala., campus.

Despite his Midwestern roots, Auburn Printing Service Director Harv Dahl had no trouble providing a warm Southern welcome to the more than 40 attendees, whose ranks were slightly lower than expected due to the approach of Hurricane Georges, which kept almost a dozen managers home.

One of the most helpful sessions featured a panel of managers discussing their efforts to market their in-plants. Moderator Joe Goss, of Indiana University, said that when he started out as director of Printing Services, the marketing program consisted of waiting for the phone to ring.

"In today's environment, I'm convinced that marketing and promoting your in-plant may be the only thing that keeps you in business," he remarked.

He told managers to identify the distinct market segments at their universities, as well as the experience level of customers, so that they can be targeted for the appropriate type of marketing.

Goss suggested getting permission from customers to add a credit line on jobs so that others can see where they were printed. This shows that the in-plant is proud of its work, and it gets the shop's name out.

Mike Loyd, director of Graphic Services at Louisiana State University, said that he periodically sends out a customer survey card with jobs. He can use the mostly positive responses to tout his in-plant's benefits to his management, and the few negative responses give him an opportunity to talk with those customers to learn how the in-plant can improve its services.

Loyd has established a customer advisory panel so that customers can candidly reveal what they like and don't like about LSU Graphic Services. He can also bounce ideas off of them to find out if they would be interested in specific new services. Additionally, Loyd has hired a marketing coordinator whose job it is to meet with customers and prospects.

At North Carolina State University, such a marketing coordinator would not be allowed. The university prohibits its in-plant from advertising itself. As a result, Catherine Armitage, director of University Graphics, has marketed her in-plant in more covert ways.

Like Loyd, she sees direct customer contact as a great way to drum up business. She puts her staff on various university committees so customers get used to seeing their faces and hearing about the in-plant. Tours of the printing operation are given frequently as a way to show people the shop's capabilities.

Armitage has developed a good relationship with the university purchasing department, and as a result she gets notified when a department is sending a print job off campus. She can't interfere with this, but she uses this as an opportunity to educate that customer on how to check prices with outside printers without going through the official bid process. That way they can make comparisons and perhaps choose the in-plant.

Though Armitage can't employ a marketing coordinator, she does use a customer service representative, who interacts with customers and "sells" the in-plant's services in subtle ways.

Other methods the in-plant uses to get its name in front of people include printing the University Graphics logo on boxes used to deliver jobs; sending out informational flyers about the latest in-plant news; and contributing to scholarships, an act that garners a lot of attention.

Adding New Services

Other conference sessions focused on adding new services. Auburn University's Glenda Miley talked about the wide-format printer recently added at the copy center so that students could have a local place to print the posters they had designed. The in-plant also added CD storage capabilities after customers asked to have documents scanned and stored.

Ray Chambers of the University of Louisville caused some consternation when he declared "Offset's dead for me." In a session on document management, he revealed that he is moving black-and-white work to his DocuTechs and wants to put forms up on the Web as PDF files.

Technical issues were not ignored either. Stephen Neumann of Eastman Kodak, gave an excellent and detailed presentation on digital technologies, including thermal imagesetting films, digital color proofing and computer-to-plate.

Jack Zanone of Raster Graphics discussed wide-format printers, including ink durability, the differences in print heads and the increasing range of colors being offered.

The conference was capped off with a tour of Kodak-Polychrome Graphics' Columbus, Ga., operation and a visit to Auburn Printing Service. IPG

Contact Bob Neubauer at:

bneubauer@napco.com