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McCurry Associates Marketing Idea Exchange Archives
Volume 26 - October 31, 2002
PMA/DIMA 2003
Thank you to those who have called/emailed about sessions
Bill McCurry will be doing in Las Vegas March 1 and 3. Bill's sessions are as
follows:
- Saturday, March 1 - 1:00 - 2:10 - #D53 - Digital Marketing for Retail in
Tough Times or Super Effective Digital Marketing without a lot of cash
- Saturday, March 1 - 2:30 - 3:40 - #D63 - Marketing Idea Exchange - bring
an idea to share and take away a dozen more.
- Monday, March 3 - 7:00pm - 9:50pm - #N5 Guerrilla Marketing Night School -
Each attendee will receive a copy of the NEW Digital Guerrilla Marketing
book - if you're serious about getting results from your marketing, you have
to be at this session!
We envision space to be limited so please sign up soon.
If you're thinking of not attending this year's PMA, please
think again. Would you agree the industry's changing? Come and attend every
educational session you can. You can then determine how you should change to
best capture the abundant opportunities the Digital Revolution is presenting to
astute marketers. If you're in Imaging, you have to be at PMA 2003.
Idea #1 - Phil Gresham's ideas from Australia last week were well received,
thank you Phil - and thanks to Chris Lydle you can view Phil's posters at www.photoimagenews.com/gresham.htm
- Thanks to both these fine gentlemen.
Idea #2 - In Issue #24, we profiled a concept by Allen Showalter of King
Photo Supply in Virginia. He solicits customers who had work done by other labs
and does free comparison prints. He makes a second set so he can display them
but destroys them if the customer won't allow them to be publicly displayed.
Ted Dickens of Oxford Photo oxfordphoto@ameritech.net
responds with these ideas:
Revision of idea #2: If the customer balks at having the
pictures posted, why throw them away? Instead, give them to the customer. It
costs you nothing (since you've already paid for the second set of prints).
Same holds true for any time a lab mistake leads to extra or
incorrect (wrong size, wrong paper surface...): If the quality is good, either
sell it at a reduced rate or give it to the customer. It takes less time to do
that than to destroy the prints and it usually makes the customer happy.
This actually stems from an incident I saw at McDonald's:
Customer returned to the counter saying "You gave us an extra bag of French
fries, but we're missing a hamburger." The McEmployee apologized, took the
fries from the customer -- and threw them away in front of the customer -- then
handed over the missing burger. Seemed like a no-brainer to me: Apologize, give
the burger, and "Please keep the fries, too!"
Throwing away perfectly good food -- or perfectly good prints
-- is foolish when they could be put to better use: Doing something for your
customer.
It might be interesting to start an online discussion about
common practices for common situations, like "Do you charge your customers
for processing a blank roll of film?"
Idea #3 - Increasing Digital Printing Sales
Mike Woodland, Dan's Camera City, Allentown, PA - mwoodland@danscamera.com
Several (PRO) dealers have commented to me about their
feeling price pressure from discounted digital prints. They point to Wal-Mart
and others at low prices as reasons they need to reduce their
prices/margins/profits. We went to a Wal-Mart with a digital camera card. We
ordered 15 images of varying nature. 5 of their prints were absolutely horrible,
5 were well beyond anything we would send out and the remaining 5 were
"OK" but not what we would deliver.
So we have created sample boards to hang around our store
showing the actual prints for customers to see. We have done this for years with
our conventional D&P services, but now realize we need to do the same for
this. Many customers assume digital cameras are more accurate than film, since
the images usually look good on their computer. Because the people at the
discount stores don't know what a good picture is or how to correct the image in
the system - we definitely deliver superior prints.
Educating the customer about this reduces your need to cut
prices. We are receiving literally hundreds of images a day for output at 49 to
59 cents per 4x6. We also play up our advantages in options: sizes up to 20x30,
matte finish option, borders option... All of this is combined with testimonials
from customers signing our praises.
You will notice every page of our DigiPrint information has a
new testimonial - http://www.danscamera.com/Services/processing/digiprints/index.html.
We will be adding the "theirs/ours" sample to our website shortly.
Before you give away profits, educate & demonstrate why
you are better. If you would like to see an actual sample of what WalMart sold a
customer and how Dan's Camera City reprinted it, please send an email to editor@McCurryAssoc.com
and include "Dan's sample" in the subject line or body text. We will
email the pictures to you, you'll be amazed.
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