It’s for the same reasons that printers are only minimally marketing their “green,” or their ability to improve marketing effectiveness, or anything else. Printers are just learning to be marketers — and that includes their own services.

When I created the Marketer’s Primer Series (primers on digital printing, 1:1 (personalized) printing, personalized URLs, and Web-to-print), the intent was for printers to purchase these reports as marketing and educational tools to distribute to their customers. The reports have sold very well, but instead of selling licenses to distribute these reports, I’m selling single-user versions — for a single user at a time.

I’m glad that I’m selling a lot of reports, but the entire point of the series is getting missed. It’s not to be sat on printers’ desks. It’s to be licensed and distributed to the people who need them most — their customers.

It’s just that whether it’s marketing green, marketing nationalism, or anything else, I think it’s all just part of a paradigm shift that—just like the acceptance of digital printing, 1:1 printing, and other major conceptual shifts—could actually take decades to happen.

What I am curious about, and maybe someone out there has some insight into this, is why aren’t American print providers, who actually produce their work on American soil, and provide American’s manufacturing jobs, promote this aspect of their operations? With more and work industry being moved to other “cheap” countries, why not promote to your clients that by buying from you they are getting the quality that they demand, a at competitive price from “green” aware and locally operated company.

I hate to sound nationalistic, but a strong manufacturing sector here in the US is a crucial part of our economy. If we can market this value to print buyers, perhaps this could help stem the loss of more our our industry to other countries.

So what am I missing? Why isn’t this more heavily marketed?