Lyons Leadership

After payroll and merchandise, print media management is the largest business expense for a retailer. Effectively managing that expense can be a major challenge. Ensuring that goals for market penetration, market share and ROI are acheived is a complex task that many retailers outsource to print media management firms.

An established and experienced print management organization can minimize the retailers involvement in a campaign to setting the objectives and providing feedback. Professional firms should have the resources to manage the campaign from conception to conclusion.

Planning the campaign is the obvious important first step. Based on input from the retailer regarding objectives and budget, the print management firm has to develop a plan that is unique to the product or service and takes into account the time constraints that might apply. The retailers desired demographics, psychographics have to be integrated with media with appropriate readership, circulation, cost per thousand, reach and measurability.

Obviously the largest expense in print media is purchasing the media itself. A print management firm should have an extensive history dealing with a variety of media sources that they can use to leverage the buy. Just buying cheap does not insure a successful campaign. Each source needs to be evaluated against the objectives. If the metrics are right, then negotiating price is an exercise in horse trading.

If possible, the retailer should select a print management firm that has a policy not to accept commissions from the media providers. This makes the firm a true agent and will result in the best media prices. Unfortunately, most print media management firms do not operate on this model.

Analysis of the campaigns performance and the ability to make rapid informed adjustments is key to a successful campaign. The firm should have a geographic information service that will allow a quick evaluation of market location, customer location and store location and the efficiency of the campaign.

Accounting for the spend efficiently and having a strong auditing capability is also a desired trait for a print management firm. Monitoring the buys to insure they ran as agreed upon and matching Insertion Orders to media provider invoices is an important task and one that a professional firm should be able to offer.

When evaluating print management firms, retailers should examine what similar clients they have, their media buying history, technologies available and their fee structure. The print management firm is going to be a key player in deciding how the third largest cost is going to be spent.