In a Forbes article on the top marketing trends of 2019, creativity is identified as a key trend. At a time when it seems that web marketing and digital is the way forward, creative companies are finding print stands out. Standing out against the background noise is a dream result for your marketing strategy.
You need to include printed marketing materials in your marketing plan. Read on to learn 7 reasons why.
1. Some Customers Don't Prefer Digital Media
Marketing has always been about being customer orientated. Understanding your customer is key. At a time when there is so much communication, it's especially important to understand how your customer communicates.
Social media, web pages, email, digital advertising, and digital content. The landscape of digital communication is familiar to all of us and this is how we all like to communicate. Right?
Get to know your customer and you might find that not all customers want to receive all their communication in a digital format. Sometimes there's nothing better than a physical brochure or a smart business card to get across your brand or marketing message.
2. Better Branding Opportunities
Successful branding is about standing out. Impact through consistent and coherent communication of the brand is a characteristic of much successful business from Apple to Starbucks. A straightforward approach is to make your logo and brand message available to potential customers.
People feel most comfortable with things they are familiar with. Familiarity with your logo and brand will result in greater confidence and engagement. To achieve this don't confine your marketing plan to one or even a few media.
Printed marketing materials offer a diverse range of options. Letterheads, posters, business cards, billboards, and flyers are a few of the options available. They offer multiple ways of putting your logo and brand in the customer's line of site or even into their hands.
3. Raising Awareness
Making your customer aware of your business and your products or services requires a recognizable brand. A print design agency or a printer with design capability in-house can help you develop this brand. The brand can then be replicated across any media including both digital and printed materials.
Limited your marketing exposure to digital media or worse still only to one channel is missing the point. Awareness is raised by the diversity of media and channels used. By all means present the logo on email, but have it repeated on letterhead and re-enforced on a flyer, too.
Awareness and familiarity are better achieved with multiple and diverse methods.
4. Customer Engagement
Awareness is a worthy objective for any marketing plan but there is a further step that all good marketers hope to achieve. The elusive goal is customer engagement.
Engagement is more than awareness. It suggests a transformation of sorts. A customer whose emotions, intellect and behavior are changed by the marketing communication can be described as engaged.
Grab attention, give your customer something to hold and keep, even if it's a business card, and you begin the engagement process. Paper material engages the reader more effectively than digital media which is more ephemeral. While the digital content may be great it's often lost in the vastness of the internet while the simple brochure sits conveniently on a desk.
5. Feel Your Brand
There's something special about holding a printed brochure or postcard advertisement that can't be replicated by email or web content. That's not the vain hope of a print enthusiast. It's the considered conclusion of research into the effectiveness of print and email.
While only 45% of recipients deal with an email immediately but 79% of direct mail recipients act on it immediately. A response rate of 4.4% for direct mail makes email with a 0.12% response look very much the poor relation. That's why so many brands still use newsletters, brochures, print magazines, and business cards.
Holding printed material in your hands makes a difference to our experience of the content. The tactile experience seems to connect more effectively with something in our nature. Using printed marketing materials makes use of this human characteristic.
6. Builds Trust
Consumers trust print material more than digital content. Something about the physical nature of printed material seems to afford it more status than screen-based material. Perhaps this reflects the consumer perception that digital content is easily created, faked, infected with viruses and used as part of scams.
Printed materials can, therefore, be a way of establishing credibility and trust. Use it alongside digital to benefit from both digital speed and reach as well as print credibility and integrity. The result could be that you provide your digital marketing with some reflected credibility.
7. Hard to Reach Market Segments
Some niche markets are difficult to get to with digital marketing alone. Very localized geographical markets can't be reached through digital marketing methods. There's no substitute for printed mail shots to specific addresses for getting your brand out there.
This approach is perfect for a local fast food outlet or gardening service. It's cheap, effective and simple. Why try to develop email lists, digital content or social media strategies when a leaflet delivered to your customer's door with a price list and your contact details does the job.
The same principle applies for other hard to reach market segments. Visitors to a trade show could be diverse but those that stop by your stand are self-selecting as potentially interested in your product or service. By all means, try to get their email contact details from them but at the very least give them your business card so they can call you back.
Order Printed Marketing Materials
Printed marketing materials can be very effective for your business. Make sure the materials reflect your brand consistently and coherently. Choose a print partner that will deliver your vision.
Request a custom quote here.
