February has long been the publishing sector’s greatest foe, stealing two to three days from a typical work cycle. The calendar may read March, but we have some unfinished business from February to address from an editorial standpoint.
As we turn with hopeful eyes toward spring, we’d like to say adios to February’s State of the Industry report on marketing by providing a glimpse at the strategies and changes our dealer panel will embark upon for 2023. The dealer community is hoping this is the year that the term “supply chain” gets purged from our collective consciousness and that they can resume a message-based campaign that entails the entirety of their catalog.
Communicating and building upon her company’s rebrand will be a top priority for Alexandria Moran, marketing director for Applied Innovation of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Crafting cohesive messaging among all the firm’s lines of business will be essential to helping customers better understand Applied Innovation’s identity.
“That was the biggest thing holding us back, especially when it comes to cross-selling,” she said. “It’s about educating people on who we are and learning how we can communicate those needs we can help address. We’ll be recreating our content, plus doing research and customer interviews, digging in and really getting to know who our audience is.”
For a dealer such as Advanced Imaging Solutions of Las Vegas, the play for 2023 is to get back to the basics with its email campaigns, according to Keven Ellison, vice president of marketing. That will be the key to maintaining top-of-mind awareness for the dealer’s brand when it comes to its roster of offerings.
“It’s important to be there when a prospect needs a new technology solution service provider,” he said. “We need to continue to work toward being that trusted advisor with prospects when they are researching or are in their own buying process.”
Upon wrapping up its 2023 business plan meetings, Datamax seeks to forge a tighter alliance between sales and marketing to focus on objectives, while continuing to monitor costs and overall marketing investment closely, according to Robert Caldwell, vice president of marketing. The Little Rock, Arkansas-based dealer, with offices in Texas, is hopeful that a resumption of normalized business activities will be a catalyst to welcoming customers and prospects to visit its robust technology solutions center.
Being able to showcase its product and service portfolio enables Datamax to shine brighter. “While Zoom meetings can be effective, there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction,” Caldwell noted. “We’d love to resurrect some of the lunch-and-learn initiatives that were so successful pre-pandemic, as well as looking forward to celebrating our 40th year in Arkansas celebration.”
Much of the 2023 focus for Impact Networking will center on optimizing local SEO and campaigns, ensuring it can support each region on a local basis, notes Karlee Travis, CMO for the Lake Forest, Illinois-based MSP. The company will also launch a new website that is better optimized for leads. It’s not so much touting Impact’s vast service and solutions portfolio, the drive will be toward providing more guidance for clients and prospects.
“What we’ve seen the past two years is business owners don’t know exactly what they need,” she said. “They know that they want to grow, but they’re not exactly sure how to get there. So we’re really going to be focused on shifting our messaging perspective to talking directly about their business challenges and how we can help them accomplish their goals.”
The need to diversify and change one’s approach to the market is not just good business, it’s a means of survival. Joe Blatchford, CEO of Image 2000 in Valencia, California, is seeking to garner more measurable results from his marketing efforts and will be employing solutions such as MPS Toolbox to achieve that end. With clients juggling a more decentralized workforce, that only raises the ante on the need to expand services.
“You can’t just look at the copier model and think ‘that’s it,’” Blatchford explained. “Some companies may be able to rely on it, but that’s not for us. We have to diversify; we’re an authorized postage meter company, and we have to continue to look into other areas. Los Angeles is a very progressive market, so we can’t sit back and relax. You need to continue to innovate; otherwise, you’ll get swallowed up.”
