Our Weird (But Effective) Approach to Marketing
When I first started FGS, I knew that I wanted to do things differently than other companies in the print/marketing industries. I wanted to be able to help clients who had very customized needs, but also offer the flexibility and speed you couldn’t usually find with highly customized jobs. As we developed our customer base, we helped a lot of clients who checked all these boxes.
We also had clients who didn’t match what I had first envisioned as an “FGS client.” That’s not to say they weren’t valuable, as any business owner knows, every client is important. But their needs were different than what I had created our company for. The most common example was clients who wanted one-off jobs, or just needed simple work completed, like business cards. With the help of my team, I realized that we were doing a disadvantage to our clients by offering a one-size fits all solution.
We wouldn’t advise our clients to send the same mailer to every prospect. We recommend they customize their product, make it relevant and beneficial to subsegments within their audience base. We know by trade that highly customized marketing and customer experience leads to better conversion and better satisfaction for the client. With this in mind, we set out to segment our company in the same way. We split our client-base into verticals and focused on our largest verticals. We now have employees who are experts in certain industries, such as mortgage and restaurants. As a result, we’re able to offer highly intelligent marketing solutions that have had great success for our clients.
This year, we took this approach a step further. We created another brand, entirely, for our direct to consumer (DTC) business. We developed it just as we would if we had started a new company, creating its own set of values, its own voice, and establishing its own identity. While FGS remains an established, trustworthy business to business (B2B) marketing company, our DTC business is now being funneled through PrintColumbus.com. We’ve developed an online storefront for ease of ordering and simplified the processing and production for common DTC products, such as business cards and flyers.
While all of the work is still done by FGS, separating these clients allows us to address their needs and customize the process for them. Where FGS does a lot of up-front consultation and advising for our clients, PrintColumbus.com is there to take what you give us and produce it with speed and quality.
By segmenting our customers, just as we’d advise our clients to do, we’ve seen a lot of success and customer satisfaction. Our specialized knowledge in our verticals has led to some solid referrals and helped us to continue growing our business. It seems like every print company is trying to be a one-stop-shop, offering all manner of products for all manner of client. We’re not here for that. We’ve developed services, processes, and products that are extremely relevant and valuable to our selected client base. And as we grow, we continue to expand our verticals, but maintain the specialized service that has done so well for us.
Author: Galo Fraga
Running an award-winning marketing firm with sales growth of more than double the industry standard comes innately for Galo. With over 30 years of experience, he has worked with many notable brands, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Congressional Bank, Alliance Data, Limited Brands, DSW, Merck, New York & Co, Pfizer, and many more.
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