The digital age makes it increasingly easy for us to track and record the success of our online marketing campaigns. Google Analytics, social media insights and many more online tracking tools encourage us to use digital advertising and inbound marketing strategies to attract and convert customers. However, with the growing use of digital advertising, print marketing has actually hit its stride.
As the internet becomes crowded with brands competing for attention, printed media actually resonates with audiences on a deeper level. Since there are many reasons to continue using print campaigns in your company’s marketing strategy, the question remains: How do we measure the return on investment (ROI) from printed marketing campaigns?
These two tools that can help you do just that.
The Power of Three
Multimedia marketing campaigns promote interaction amongst audiences, increasing your chances of building quality relationships with your customers and leads. The Power of Three is a strategy that entails capturing an audience in three different ways – personally, tangibly and socially – and print marketing campaigns actually take care of two at a time.
Imagine, for example, a potential customer walks into their favourite coffee shop. While adding cream to her cup, she finds a stack of your company’s pamphlets, takes one, and reads while she sips by the window. She’s now learned of your company in a way that feels personal, attaching her first impression of your business to a moment in her daily life.
She has also experienced your message in a tangible way: holding your pamphlet in her hands. Interactive print ads take this idea to the next level. By invoking multiple sensory experiences, your message resonates more deeply. Finally, by smart design, you’ve included your social media handle alongside a call-to-action on the front of your pamphlet. This coffee-lover is also active on Twitter, and so she decides to follow you to take advantage of what you’re offering there.
By harnessing The Power of Three, your print marketing campaigns not only become more effective, but they allow you to keep track of how your target audiences are responding to your printed media. Use a specific call-to-action (such as “Tag @ManorPrinting on Twitter and share your print marketing success story” or “Mention this pamphlet on our online order form to receive 10% off”) so that you know when people are acting upon your printed campaigns. Whether the social aspect invites leads to your social networking platforms or to your front desk, it’s the key element in The Power of Three strategy that will help you measure ROI.
The Print-to-Digital Analysis
While you can’t digitally monitor the number of people who look at your flyers, you can track and analyse the number of people who are responding to it – who are acting upon it. And isn’t that the goal anyway?
Analytics, if organised properly, can help you determine what exactly is working with your marketing strategy, and what isn’t. The best part is, this also holds true for printed campaigns – not just digital ones. By creating specific paths for users to follow, you can compare which paths are the most successful.
Google Analytics offers free tracking services that range from general to specific. By syncing your website with Google Analytics and setting up goals to measure how often users are completing certain actions, you can measure the ROI from all sorts of campaigns, print included.
By directing your leads to a specific page on your website via printed materials, you can track how many users are responding to your print campaigns. Explore Google Analytics to get a better understanding of how to make this system work with your website, and keep in mind The Power of Three as you decide how you want to engage potential customers and where you want them to take action.
For print campaigns aimed to attract potential customers to your social media networks, use specific hashtags and calls-to-action that will allow you to analyse the insights offered by most social media platforms.
Measuring return on investment is an important aspect of doing good business. Measuring ROI helps you make better marketing decisions and smarter investments. The key to measuring ROI from a printed marketing campaign is taking the time to plan out your campaign from start to finish. By organising a strategy for analysing customer action and interaction before printing your campaign, you can make more specific (and thus more useful) comparisons between various digital and printed marketing campaigns.