Stepping Away From The Plant To Rethink Your Marketing Strategy

I recently received a glossy magazine in the mail that I’d never seen before. It’s called Pages and it is published by Lane Press. The front cover is textured. It almost feels like a basketball. The subhead of the magazine reads “The Magazine For Those Who Love Publishing.”

At 36 pages, it’s not a big magazine but it contains 4 feature articles and a number of smaller pieces, all of which appeal to professionals that publish content for a living. The articles focus on the changing labor market in the publishing world, typography, lessons from fiction writing that can benefit business writing and the evolution of a magazine brand.

Here’s my point. Lane Press isn’t a publishing house. Lane Press is a printer. The Publisher’s Note on page 3 is written by Philip Drumheller, the Company’s president.

Instead of simply competing on paper and manufacturing costs against other printers, Lane Press is engaging in brand publishing. They are looking to inform their customers by providing useful information about their industry. The inside and back covers of the magazine feature Lane Press display ads but the rest of the book is Lane Press neutral.

What are some of the ways you’ve found to help your customers in their careers beyond your product line? Can we draw similarities from the articles in Pages aimed at the publishing audience with content that your customers in the water and wastewater industry would appreciate?

Changing Demographics

The first article in the magazine discusses the shift of workers from large publishing houses to small start-ups, content marketing firms and self-employment. In the water industry, labor questions abound from the mass retirement of the baby boomers to the difficulty in competing with other professions for technically-minded graduates. This is a great theme to provide content on and help your customers understand in greater detail the challenges ahead.

Product Packaging

The second article about typography is harder to correlate with our industry. Typography is one way that a publisher draws attention to specific articles or sections of articles. One of the battles of the water and wastewater industry is gaining the attention of local politicians and the broader population base (until something goes wrong). How about partnering with one of the many software startups around our industry to provide a free app for utilities to interact with their consumers more efficiently? Wouldn’t it be nice to win business because your customer appreciates the help you’ve provided over time and not simply be in a dogfight with your rivals over price?

Self-Publishing

The third article explores the expansion of a regional consumer-based publisher into a merchant of locally-produced products. What ways are traditional utilities re-positioning themselves for today’s world? As energy-capturing technology has evolved, many wastewater treatment plants are rebranding their operation as a resource recovery facility. Can you help your customers through this process?

Applying Skills

The final article suggests ten lessons from the world of fiction that can support writing professional magazine content. Applying a similar concept to the water and wastewater industry, we should ask ourselves what skills our customers have outside the plant and how could those skills be applied professionally. For example, aquaponics is a growing phenomenon where the waste produced by farmed fish or other aquatic animals supplies nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which in turn purify the water. Many in our industry are hobby fishermen and outdoorsmen. Can you come up with a way to interest your customers in uniting their personal and professional worlds?  If you can, you’ll again create a strong bond and an incentive for them to work with you moving forward.

It’s becoming harder and harder to win on product features or market share alone. Competitor information is now available at the click of a button and there are plenty of ways software can source vendors and automate the buying decision. Against this backdrop, it’s becoming ever more important to look beyond your traditional product marketing for unique ways to engage your customers with your brand.