Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn — do these sound familiar to you? Since the social media and digital marketing boom, these three social platforms have stolen the hearts of marketing professionals everywhere.
In a world filled with iPhones, tablets, and advanced technology, your customers are easily distracted. Businesses have been shifting marketing efforts to the web, but smart marketers are integrating traditional media for MULTIPLE touch points with their customers. {Tweet this.}
It’s time to rethink print-based marketing.
Why?
1. PRINT Provides Credibility — There’s something about print that provides the feel of professionalism and trust. The web is filled with digital pollution: pop-ups, unrelated ads, and linked content. There’s simply a sense of calm with print that you don’t get through onscreen text. Anyone can create a webpage. But not everyone is going to take the time to design, develop, and distribute a printed piece.
2. PRINT Builds Your Brand — Print is essential for building your brand. Week after week, when someone opens their mailbox and sees the same font, colors, and types of photos, they are becoming familiar with your brand. Take Target, for example. The moment you sift through your mail and see the explosion of red and white with that adorable little Bull Terrier, you instantly know it’s Target.
3. PRINT Is Tangible — A print piece is something you can actually hold in your hands. When you go to a friend’s house or a doctor’s office, they don’t have iPhones or iPads laying on the table for you to look through. What do they have? A table filled with magazines, newspapers, and brochures. Print items stay in houses and offices for months — even YEARS — unlike digital material, which often disappears into cyberspace within seconds.
4. PRINT Reaches Your Target Markets — Placing ads or columns in specialty publications can effectively reach niche audiences that may be difficult to target online. If your company sells bridal gowns, would you place an ad in a hunting magazine? No, because that would be impractical. So why risk getting your product or service lost within the millions of niches online?
5. PRINT Is Engaging — Let’s face it, when you’re online, you have the ability to click multiple links, open several tabs at once, and — in a matter of seconds — become deeply entangled in the multi-layered World Wide Web. This is where print prevails. Print pieces hold a person’s attention. When you’re looking through a magazine or newspaper, you don’t have the option to click links or have multiple pages open at once. Thus your customers’ attention is much more focused with print media.
Certainly, the most effective way to market your business is to utilize as many channels as possible. Even though social media and digital marketing are vital pieces of your marketing puzzle, the whole picture won’t be complete without print. There are those who still rejoice in the majesty of a printed page, so it’s important to reach them, too.
Creating balance in your marketing strategies and tactics will increase sales, engage new customers, and — most importantly — bring your marketing plan back to LIFE!
Interested in learning how print can take your company’s marketing to the next level? Or how to fuse the print and digital worlds via flipbooks? Follow us on social media to receive industry news and updates: