Adapting Print Marketing to a Digital World
The world has gone digital. Everyone loves technology – even kids! It amazes me how much kids know about technology when they are only toddlers. I think having a toddler computer is a little ridiculous, but that’s just me. My point is the world is going digital in all facets.
I don’t remember the last time I wrote a check. Read the “real-life” newspaper – the offline version? Not recently. Went to the movie store to rent a movie? Got Netflix for that.
With everything, including marketing, going digital, the best thing to do is to adapt print marketing to the digital realm. People still like to read printed items like magazines and newspapers. It’s much easier to tote around a brochure or postcard instead of sitting down at a computer to print out the brochure info while you’re shopping. Then again, there’s nothing that says you have to even leave your house to go shopping anymore.
Expert Opinion #1
Two experts weighed in at DMNews.com about the subject. Pamela Girardin, President of Q2 Marketing, says the print industry has many advantages – notably, the touch-and-feel advantage. That’s part of the reason why I like my magazines so much – I like feeling the pages. I like smelling the perfume samples. I like being able to take my magazine on the plane, to the beach, or wherever I want without having to worry about Wi-Fi access or a laptop battery running low. Plus, looking at a computer monitor all day would hurt my eyes. She says the biggest hurdle for the print industry is rising costs.
I agree with her that rising costs are a factor. I would also note that as more consumers are becoming more “green” and concerned about the environment, the print industry needs to take note and offer more green options. Many printers already offer recycled paper and soy inks, which is a great start. I think a key to integrating print into digital is to offer people a choice: do they want the online version of a brochure or a print version? Do they want to get their bank statements by email or by regular mail? I think that giving people a choice will help to integrate print and digital.
Expert Opinion #2
The other expert that gave his two cents at DMNews.com was Jeremy Knauff, CEO of Wildfire Marketing Group. He says that technology has reduced the need for print jobs, but marketers can use printed materials to follow up with people that clicked thru to your Web site. He also mentions that people love customized products geared specifically for them. He advises to use short-run printing and customize marketing materials for specific clients.
I think that he has a good point of using both digital and print to market to the same people. I don’t think people will see a postcard and an email as being too “in your face” because they are different media. You could follow up sooner with an email or postcard than you could with another email or another postcard the following week. I think using all the different media available could really be successful when integrating print marketing in a digital world.
7 Design Tips for Better Print Marketing
1. The headline: Use words that catch readers’ attention in the headline and that will pull them into the rest of the copy. Words like “free,” “save” and “secret” work well to intrigue people into finding out more about what your print marketing has to say.
On average, the headline is read five times more than the body copy. That means people have read the headline and it wasn’t good enough to motivate people to read on. Don’t become part of that statistic! Include a clear benefit to the reader in the headline and you’ll draw them in. If you can pair a benefit with an eye-catching word like “free,” your headline will have real stopping power.
2. Use white space. Any space in your design that isn’t filled with text or graphics, or is in other words blank, is considered “white space.” Don’t feel like you have to fill every square inch of your print marketing materials. Whether it’s a flyer, postcard or brochure, a simple, uncluttered design will look much better and will draw people into your marketing piece than a cluttered design.
3. Limit yourself to two fonts. Any more than two fonts will make your design look cluttered. Unless you have a huge poster or a big marketing piece that can handle the extra fonts, stick with two. You should use a sans-serif font for your headlines and subheads (sans-serif means “without feet” in French; examples are Arial and Century Gothic) because sans-serif fonts are harder to read when they font size is small. Use a serif font for all of your body copy, or your smaller size copy. Serif fonts have “feet,” which make them easier to read. Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman and Garamond.
4. Address your audience. Make sure you talk directly to your audience – say “Attention CEOs” or blatantly ask “Are you a stay at home Mom?” By talking directly to your audience there will be no mistake who your message is for.
5. Use before and after ads when possible. People have an above average understanding of before and after ads, and I think many women like them because they are like makeovers. When you can give proof in a photo format that your product works, there is no contesting it.
6. Use photos instead of line drawings when possible. Photos are more believable than line drawings. Photos are better at drawing people’s eyes in because the colors are generally more saturated than in a graphic.
7. Test your ads again and again. Readership increases with repetition. Keep testing new ads against old ones to see which ones are more effective. There comes a time when repetition gets boring, so be sure to switch up your design to keep consumers interested.
How to Integrate Print Marketing with Online Marketing
It’s no secret that many marketing venues are online that were once exclusively offline. Everything from television to brochures are online now. But does that mean that print marketing is dead? Hardly. It might not be as big as it once was because people now have multiple outlets, but that just means print marketing has to share the spotlight with its online counterparts.
People typically do their initial research about products online by checking out forums, review sites and the product manufacturer’s Web site. Some people do all their research online, but many still request brochures, catalogs and other printed materials from the manufacturer. People like to be able to relax on the couch without a hot laptop on their lap and just look through a catalog. The glare from looking at a computer screen all day is not appealing.
All of this means that you must integrate your print marketing strategy with your online marketing strategy.
Here are a few ideas on how to do that:
Use your print marketing to direct people to your online marketing. If you use postcards to draw people’s attention to your product and then direct them to your Web site for more information, you’ve just drawn people in with the information that would have been on a brochure for the price of a postcard. Since Web site hosting is cheap, you can put as much info on your site as you want and not have to worry about paying for an extra four pages of content like you would a brochure.
You can also cut back on catalog printing costs. Send out a 40-page catalog with your best products instead of your usual 56-page catalog and direct people to your Web site for more catalog selections. You save money on printing and people can still see all of your products on your Web site. You can focus your catalog on your best moneymakers and feature the not-so-popular items on your Web site only.
Create an e-newsletter. Include info that your customers crave, like how to save money on products in your industry and info on the best products on the market. If you already have a print newsletter, include a link in the newsletter for consumers to sign up on your Web site to receive the e-newsletter. You can build your email database this way and also keep in touch with consumers in the way that they prefer. Older consumers prefer to get their news in print while younger consumers would rather get their news online.
Include an interactive copy of your brochure or catalog online. Make it searchable so people can browse to exactly what they want online. Many people will note what they want from your print catalog and then get on your Web site to make their purchases. Make it easy for them by including a search box for the online catalog and making it easy for people to find what they’re looking for.
Greening Your Print Marketing Materials
Is there such a thing as green marketing when so much marketing is still in printed form? Yes, actually, green marketing can exist. More and more environmentally friendly inks and papers are being made all the time.
People might think that going all electronic all the time is one answer to greener marketing practices with e-newsletters, marketing emails and other electronic forms of marketing, but the carbon footprint of keeping up this constant access 24/7 isn’t doesn’t make it much better, if at all better, than green printing methods.
Richard Romano went into greater detail about electronic newspapers versus print newspapers in his blog post “How Green is my Media” on Expert Business Source. Romano cites some studies conducted by the Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) of Berlin, Germany, which found that the electronic newspapers have a bigger environmental impact than print newspapers. The studies found that “the environmental impact of the hardware required (that is, mobile devices) is much less than with conventional PCs or laptops, but the energy consumption that individual data transmission requires for the energy-hungry UMTS network more than compensates for the energy savings from end devices.”
It boils down to using paper versus using energy. The argument that electronic newspapers are more harmful to the environment stems from the fact that fossil fuels that create energy are not renewable, while paper (trees) is renewable.
Although these studies were about newspapers, they can be adapted to any kind of printed medium, including marketing materials.
So how can we print more environmentally friendly marketing materials? By using sustainable paper and good-for-the-environment inks.
Sustainable paper
Eco-friendly papers are recycled, processed without chlorine, are synthetic or are made from renewable fibers other than trees (like bananas and lemons!). Neenah Paper has an Environment line of paper and a Green Paper line as well as an environmental savings calculator so you can see how many resources you save by choosing green paper. You can get synthetic-free papers from companies like Polyart and Yupo. There are also companies that only product sustainable paper, like EcoPaper, which uses recycled paper fibers and fibers from bananas, coffee and cigars.
Sustainable ink
Traditional printing inks contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are thought to produce health problems and are known to produce air pollution. Alternatives include soy ink and waterless printing.
Soy ink uses a soy base instead of a petroleum base like traditional ink. Soy has much lower levels of VOCs so it doesn’t create as much pollution as petroleum-based ink. Paper printed with soy ink is easier to recycle because the ink comes off the paper more easily. Soy ink is brighter than regular ink as well.
Waterless printing is an offset printing process that doesn’t use water to dampen the ink like in traditional printing. Not only is water saved, but VOCs are eliminated in the printing process. The waterless printing process removes the need for solvent-based press solutions and blanket wash solutions, which are typically where all the VOCs come from.
These are just a few choices in sustainable ink and paper options. More and more are being discovered and hopefully soon, all printing can be less harmful to the environment.
