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Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and it is my pleasure to be here with Dustin Ritter who is Vice President of Marketing for PTI Marketing Technologies.  Welcome.

Dustin Ritter:  Thank you. Thank you very much.

Cary Sherburne:  And you’re a marketer and I tend to think I’m a marketer sometimes.  But a lot of times in the printing industry because we’re so used to selling to procurement and other parts of the organization we really don’t understand what it is that marketers who drive the business really for us, what is it that they’re looking for?  What are some of the pain points that they have?  What are the pressures they’re getting from the boardroom?  Let’s talk about that.

Dustin Ritter: Yeah, well, today’s marketer really they’re focused on driving revenue.  That’s the new thing in marketing is to drive revenue.  For the past few years, it was social media; how to get in to social media.  But really this past year, year-in-a-half, it’s been about driving revenue.  So I think the difference between how they used to sell to marketers versus how they sell now is about how what’s your business objectives.  How can I solve them?  What role does print play in that total marketing mix with each campaign?  You have to ask the right questions.  I mean it’s not new but it’s a different focus and you got to say okay, exactly how can print fit because it doesn’t fit in every scenario.  You got to find the right ones, drive the value there, and then, of course, use the best-in-class technology that brings something new to print.

Cary Sherburne:  So really two kind of key aspects of that are return on investment or return on marketing investment that they have to really justify that marketing budget to the board, right?

Dustin Ritter:  Absolutely.  And it changed in 2008, dramatically.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, oh of course.  

Dustin Ritter:  Yeah, I mean the acceptance and emergence of digital media really was forced upon marketers in that time.  So then it drove the value of print; where’s my print value.  How much am I going to spend?  Print was probably one of the first things to go with marketing budgets, so it needs to be very, very clear value.

Cary Sherburne: And then the other piece is how do I support the sales force because we all know how expensive cold calls are and what a waste of time that can be.  So the marketer would like to be able to provide warm leads or hot leads to the sales people to follow up on and not have them waste their time on cold calls.

Dustin Ritter:  Yeah, I think that’s the goal for all marketing groups to drive those warm leads.  But I think there’s an opportunity with print and new technology to engage marketers in a new way, whether it’s the QR code or whether it’s the Pearl or whether it’s image personalization.  I use image personalization quite a bit and I think that drives awareness.  It also gets them to think about how they can market, and there’s a new day with print when you use the technologies correctly.

Cary Sherburne: Well you know the other thing is, this is sort of a pet peeve of mine and people are probably tired of hearing me talk about, but we always sort of I think take a little bit of a defensive posture about print.  We need to protect print.  We need to save print.  We need to promote print.  But you made the point I mean print isn’t going to fit in every campaign.  And so from my perspective, if the sales person can get higher up in the value chain and be more knowledgeable about what the marketer needs then they’re going to get a seat at the table that maybe will help them at the design point of the campaign be more involved.

Dustin Ritter:  Absolutely and it’s kind of a situation you’re not sure how to approach sometimes.  But should I come in with creative ideas or not but in general, marketers are pretty open to creative ideas especially if it’s about a new way to address something.  I mean if you know exactly what they’re going for and you know their objectives, a print service provider who brings something to the table versus who doesn’t, who says what are you printing this year, how can I get some of that budget, you’re going to go with the print service provider who at least has ideas about how to drive that revenue.

Cary Sherburne: And I know one of the things that I’ve been really impressed about with PTI at marketing specifically is the fact that you guys are out there in the venues where the marketers are, talking to them.

Dustin Ritter:  Yeah, we have to understand the enterprise marketer.  I mean the Director level and above, the CMO, they have complete different objectives than one might think.  And so we are living, eating, breathing those kind of campaigns to the marketers.  And we use email, we use direct mail, we use Google Ad Spend, we use everything in the mix.  And I think our marketing kind of reflects what most enterprise marketers do.  So yeah, our goal is to engage them immediately.  There’s a lot of clutter.  I mean marketers get hit with – I mean I get about 300 emails in my inbox a day.  Probably half of them are solicitations.  I pretty much don’t answer my phone.  That’s where cold calling doesn’t work; there’s no question about it.  And so you have to engage them in a way that’s innovative and I think that’s the biggest thing that print service providers can take away is how can I bring something innovative.  Yeah, it could be, you know the gloss on there and the texture and so forth, but I think really it’s more about the marketing behind it.  I think if you have a great marketing idea and can demonstrate it to an enterprise marketer, then they see you as a leader, a thought leader, or somebody who can help them.

Cary Sherburne:  And by the way, they should be using this promote their own businesses.

Dustin Ritter:  Absolutely.  I think that’s a number one rule that’s broken honestly right now.  I get a lot of pieces, not that many to be honest with you.  I think I received one with image personalization in my entire tenure as a marketer.

Cary Sherburne:  Except the ones you send yourself.

Dustin Ritter:  Except the ones I send myself, of course.  But, in general, if I get a piece from a print service provider, it usually has my first name, comma, and a headline.  That simply doesn’t cut it.  That’s not innovative.  It doesn’t make me think that they’re innovative.  And so they really need to bring something more and that’s where our company can help with things like that.  But I think it’s really up to the print service provider and people who run it to bring something whether, again, it’s QR codes or.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, I was just going to show the back of business card here with the QR codes, yeah.

Dustin Ritter:  Yeah, it doesn’t matter if it’s the business card.  Even that, we have so many compliments on the QR code in the back of the business card.  One goes to a video.  One goes to LinkedIn.  And when those marketers pick up that card, they say I should do that.  Any time that a service provider can bring something to a marketer where a marketer says they should be doing that, you’re going to win.

Cary Sherburne:  That’s great.  Great advice.  Thank you, Dustin.

Dustin Ritter:  Thank you so much.

 

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