The digital age has rapidly transformed the world in recent years, changing how businesses operate and how consumers interact. Statistics clearly show that mobile devices and apps are the preferred choice for many business owners, allowing them to manage their operations while traveling. However, despite the benefits of digital marketing strategies, traditional marketing approaches also offer significant advantages that are often overlooked. Here are four ways that demonstrate how effective print marketing still is in growing and expanding a company’s customer base:
- People Like Engaging with Print Materials
Although the numbers seem to point to a multitude of benefits when it comes to digital marketing, print media is still very ingrained in the consumers’ collective memory. This means that people continue to be attracted to and willing to read print media, regardless if we’re talking about magazines and newspapers, flyers or catalogues.
These examples of print media have every type of content you can imagine – this way entertainment, education, news and information is skillfully mixed with the products and services offered by various companies. This combination is usually very attractive to the consumer, who will be more inclined to remember a certain brand and consider it among its future purchase options.
- Stimulating More Senses Pays Off
One exclusive quality that print has and the digital media can never match is just how tangible it is. Consumers are able to browse a magazine, feel the paper through their fingers and even distinguish between certain paper densities and compositions. For example, one specific ad may be printed on a thicker, more porous paper that is easy to take notice of, compared to the rest of the glossy sheets in the magazine.
What’s more, consider how there’s also the smell of ink on paper or the added scent of a page – all of these are powerful stimuli that will give a tremendous boost to your ad’s efficiency. These are important senses that cannot be stimulated in the digital environment – or not yet, at least. This is why brands everywhere should take advantage of the multitude print media at their disposal, as these are accessible and versatile, as well as a great opportunity for considerable ROI.
1. Catalogues & flyers 62%
2. TV 52%
3. Press 40%
4. Radio 32%
5. Personalised direct mail 29%
6. Email 25%
7. Outdoor 23%
8. Social media 17%
9. Online 12%
10. Telemarketing 4%
- Each Print Channel Comes with Its Very Own Series of Benefits
Throughout time, each print channel found its own niche of readers, playing a very specific role in their lives. For example, magazines use entertainment to promote and advertise brands. Newspapers lure their readers through impartially written news and information, while catalogues are a mere source of information for consumers to use before actually purchasing online.
Direct mail and door drop print are also very powerful, since these types of print reach the consumers right at home, offering great engagement and impressive profitability.
- Print Can Truly Captivate
Another great perk you don’t often see in digital media is that a printed material is still very straightforward in terms of structure. This basically means there are no distractions for a reader that’s committed to finishing an article. Once they start reading an article or absorbing an ad, there are no other bits of news or pop-ups hovering over and taking the spotlight off of the article.
The reader’s full attention is oriented to that specific written material. This guarantees a greater engagement with the brand, since the consumer is more likely to be impacted by it and remember it long-term. The unique way in which written materials in newspapers and magazines are written, with subheadings, headlines and pictures further offers the consumer the opportunity to isolate a certain passage into their mind and return to it, whenever they need to. This happens a lot more rarely in the digital space, where you first need to remember to bookmark a page in order to later return to it.
As you can see, traditional advertising techniques, which are mainly employed through the power of print, are very powerful tools that any brand can make use of as they develop. They are easy to implement, cost-effective and are a definite boost in reach and profitability.