1 — Print material is tangible. When someone has something that they can hold in their hands and refer to, or put it on their fridge, they tend to hang on to it longer. It won’t get lost in the many web pages or emails they may be weeding through. Be creative with your printed piece, make it something that the recipient enjoys looking at and wants to hang on to.
2 — Print ads can be placed in areas that you know your audience is reading. If you own a B&B, placing a print ad in a magazine specific to the travel industry can be very worth while.
3 — Save money by placing smaller ads and referring to your website with an incentive. If you strategize all of your marketing opportunities, you can actually save money by placing smaller, more attractive ads that entice your reader to visit your online presence, where they will receive more information, or maybe even an incentive to do business with you.
4 — QR codes (Quick Response Codes). These are an under-discovered gem that will become more popular as more and more people use their smart phones to search products and/or services. A QR code can be scanned by a smart phone that automatically brings the user to the website and right in front of the information you want them to see. Look for our next eNews where we are going to tell you more about how to use these, why you would use them and how it’s FREE!
5 — A study at Arizona State University found that students had lower reading comprehension of scrolling online material than they did of print-like versions. When someone is scrolling through the internet, they are looking for something in particular and scan over a lot of information. A printed piece may not be ‘scanned over’ so easily. https://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-retain-information-in-print-like-formats-better/22088
6 — With so many pop-ups, scrolling messages and banner ads the web can sometimes give us an uneasy feeling about how credible these advertisers are. When we see a glossy ½ page ad in a reputable magazine, we tend to immediately give it a sense of legitimacy.
Professor Neil H. Borden’s Marketing Mix – The 4 P’s of marketing
- Product
- Price
- Place (distribution)
- Promotion
In 1964 Professor Neil H. Borden published his ‘Concept of the Marketing Mix’ which is still the foundation in which we need to consider how we do our overall business marketing strategies. It’s still the difference in medium, not message.
Print material may not be as necessary as it once was, but as marketing professionals, we still need to identify the balance between printed material and digital material and how it will facilitate the ultimate marketing goal.