Doing More With Less: How to buy print in the new decade

Below is the first edition of a new series of guest blogs from D&K's clients. Our aim is to have a guest publish a new column each week with helpful advice, criticisms, forecasts, etc. Stay tuned. If you're interested in being a guest blogger for the column, please contact us at blog@dkprinting.com. 
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The author buys nearly one million dollars worth of printing each year and has been in the industry for more than 10 years.
Enjoy....


As the year comes to a close with headlines of more marketing budgets being slashed and more layoffs from Marketing/Creative Services/Communication departments are prominent, I’m prompted to write a few thoughts on what we all can do as professional communicators to advocate for printed materials. Just as in other aspects of our life, when we are faced with financial challenges, we have to be wise consumers. We have to be able to do more with less.


1. Quantity:
Do your research to create very targeted distribution plans and accurately predict the quantity of printed materials needed. If you are producing a printed piece, that means there is a reason for its production which means there should be a fine tuned distribution plan to go along with it. If it is a general use brochure, make sure you know how many have been used in the past and over what time period.

2. Quality:
The quality of the printed piece needs to match your brand. You cannot sacrifice quality for price at the expense of not delivering on your brand promise. 
When I go to a very nice restaurant and am handed a Kinko’s produced menu, I immediately begin to question the attention to detail in all aspects of the experience. My $50 bottle of wine is not being served in a paper cup. Why has the quality of the menu presentation been overlooked? 
I was recently looking at high end spa packages in Beaver Creek, none of the brochures I picked up matched the quality of services they were supposedly offering. By saving cost on printing, these companies are representing their brand poorly and losing out on business.


3. Paper:
With the paper market continually evolving, do not set yourself up for unneeded challenges by choosing paper that isn’t readily available or has no equivalent substitutes. This is one of the steps in the process you should involve your print sales rep at the onset of the project/conception. It is also a place to save significant money. If you are painting the sheet with heavy coverage, choosing a #1 grade sheet, typically isn’t worth the added cost.

4. Environmental/Sustainable Considerations:
Print local: save time, energy, and shipping costs. Gang-run internet printing may be appealing from a cost standpoint, but that is it. Support your local businesses, so that when this economy swings to more lucrative times, we have local vendors to chose from. Large conglomerate print shops are not interested in providing exceptional quality. They are only providing the price point to get the work in the door, at the expense of quality. Refer back to #2.

We live in a tactile world. No matter how much of our commerce and information is found online, people still have a propensity to printed materials. 
Watch in a restaurant where you order at a counter. People invariably ignore the large menu boards, and pick up the same printed menu to hold in their hand to peruse. 
Students and families choosing a college still want to see printed materials matching the quality of education they will be paying for. 
Print is a tangible, portable representative of your brand. If the message is worth sending, make sure that you consider the above factors to make the delivery potent and memorable.