Print advertising in a digital world- it’s not a dead end street. Even though there is increasing emphasis on everything digital, a well-rounded marketing strategy may include print advertising as well.
The biggest complaints of print advertising are the expense and the return on investment. However, it’s not as expensive as you might think considering the results. By most studies, every dollar spent on print ads results in a 12-dollar return. That’s a good return on investment by any measure. When you use it in addition to digital advertising methods, print advertising is a great way to boost marketing results overall. Let’s look at reasons why this is true.
Engaged Readers Equals Higher Conversions
Print readers are a different breed than people who only read things online. Print readers are often more engaged and read the ads in the publications they are consuming. One reason is that print ads are often more interesting to look at, and depending on the publication they usually are trusted more.
Easy to Target Your Market
There is an illusion about online marketing that it’s easier to target your market online than with print offline publications. But, this is not true. Every publication has the stats available for you to look at who their audience is. You can tie the ad to a QR code, or a particular landing page, which is a good way to test the results of print ads.
Boost Social Engagement
By adding information about your online social media networks, you’re going to get a certain percentage of people who do go online to follow you and still like to read print publications. This will then build your audience and social engagement faster.
Get More People to Your Event
If you’re having an event that you’ve promoted to your online people, you should also place a print advertisement in the local area where you plan to host the event. This is a great way to attract an entirely new audience who didn’t know about you until you had the event.
Give Them the Right Information
When you do place an ad in a print publication, it’s imperative to study the audience of the publication, know your audience, have a well-developed brand identity, and to get the information correct so that no one has a problem contacting you and connecting with you. If you get the info wrong, there is no chance to fix it until the next printing.
Ads Are Usually Run Repeatedly
Even if a magazine only goes out monthly, the best practice is to run ads in more than one issue of the publication. Plus, keep your landing page active forever for print ads because print tends to live on through donations to doctor’s offices, the library, and other places people congregate. As a result, they are often read by more than one person.
Increasing Your Marketing Mix Increases ROI
If you already run ads online, adding print to the mix is the next step to boost your marketing results. Add a QR code to your print ads, or a distinctive URL that they can’t forget. Use color to make your ad stand out. Run the same advertisement online and offline so that you can be seen multiple times in many ways to increase ROI.
Not Everyone Is Online
It’s hard to imagine, but there are people who don’t like to stay online all day long. So, if you only run your ads online, they’re not going to see it. They may have the technology, but they just don’t see the use of it. Yet. So, even if you’re teaching people how to work from home online, running an ad in a print publication can still make high returns.
Print advertising is an effective way to boost marketing results. A good way to get into it is to try putting an advertisement in some local publications or trade magazines related to your industry, as those are usually less expensive. Track your results and keep doing more of what works.
Do you have some questions about marketing your business online but don’t know who to ask? Why not ask me? I can help you with both strategy and implementation to make your business more profitable and more popular. We can do this together in 75 minutes; though my whiteboard session. Learn more about it!
