AUSTRALIA’S largest print franchise, Snap, is hoping to become the preferred ad agency for small businesses following chief executive Grant Vernon’s announcement of three key initiatives to grow the group into new markets.
Mr Vernon used Snap’s national convention to highlight Snap Level 2, a new marketing service, and Snap Promote, a self-service online print portal.
The new products were created in response to a long-term downturn in the traditional printing industry, which has suffered 38 consecutive quarters of falling prices, coupled with a boom in online business.
Speaking from Snap’s head office in Burswood, Mr Vernon said the diversification was part of Snap’s “natural evolution” and leveraged off its existing reputation as a reliable Australian brand.
“We still see print as very important and it’s a big part of our future, but it’s in the context of providing a broader marketing service to clients, not just a printing service,” he said.
Mr Vernon said Snap Level 2 would offer full service marketing for small businesses, which he believes are largely ignored by the big advertising agencies.
“The reality is that an average small business spends $28,000 per year on sales and marketing, and most of them don’t really have a strategic plan about how they are going to spend that money,” Mr Vernon told WA Business News.
“So what we’d like to do is sit down with them and come up with a plan for how to get the best possible return for their business.”
Snap has been working on the marketing sub-brand for three years and launched a pilot service just more than two years ago.
To date, 61 of the existing 148 franchises now offer the service, which Mr Vernon said was the only one of its kind offered by a print franchise in Australia.
Trial and error with the pilot franchise meant the group dropped the initial requirement to fit-out each store with a customised ‘pod’, as the cost was proving to be a significant barrier.
Mr Vernon said Snap Level 2 franchises would use a unique system to take clients through a “marketing health check” that would identify their top priorities and then link them up with suitable suppliers, depending on their needs.
“We have suppliers that specialise in each of the key areas – we’re not trying to pretend we’re going to do everything in house. We’ll help source whatever they need,” he said.
Snap has also added another string to its bow, Snap Promote, which is an online service where clients can seek to create their own professional marketing material.
“The shift of buying patterns to online is significant; it’s actually the fastest growing print segment – 39 per cent of all print is ordered online now,” Mr Vernon said.
“Snap Promote is the first private label version of Quark Promote in the world. And we have exclusive rights in Australia to that. So no-one is going to be able to match us.
“We’ve very excited about the ground that we’ve covered and the advantage we have.”
Mr Vernon was confident the existing relationships would not be overlooked, or that there was a risk the new initiatives would take the focus off Snap’s bread and butter printing business, which kept the group profitable through the GFC.
“There is a risk [of losing focus] but I think that risk is diminished by the fact that if we treat it as a natural evolution, then it becomes an extension of the existing business,” he said.
“The print relationship presents the opportunity to talk about other things – that’s how we’re encouraging franchise owners to approach it.”
Snap is hoping to hit its target of an additional 50 franchises by 2013 by appealing to a younger demographic of franchisees with Snap Level 2 ‘satellites’.
A satellite franchise will have a low entry cost of about $100,000 and be occupied exclusively by a sales team.
Mr Vernon said it would be the standard way of entering vacant territories and it would then be up to the franchise owner to decide whether they want to expand into a larger operation in the future.
“Marketing is a lot sexier than print. So the appeal may draw in a much younger franchise owner who doesn’t necessarily have the capital to invest the $250,000 it costs to set up a [traditional] Snap franchise,” Mr Vernon said.
“I keep saying to franchise owners that this is the natural evolution of our brand, but I also did say to them [at the convention] that the market is dictating the pace of change, so you just have to move with that.”
