Why print media also belongs in your marketing mix
That the digital world has evolved tremendously in recent years, we don’t need to tell you. We are connected anytime, anywhere and spend countless hours online. The Internet is the place to be, especially for advertisers. Yet people sometimes forget how effective print media can be. Because let there be no doubt: paper communications are the perfect complement to all that digital violence you unleash on your target audience.
Fast forward to the topic that interests you:
- Print media strengthens your brand
- Quality printing increases the value of your products
- Special paper choices and finishes stand out
- Print materials stick
- Print media is read more concentrated
- Print media vs. digital media
- Brand perception: people are more positive about print than online communication
Print media strengthens your brand
The way your brand communicates largely determines how people will perceive it. On that front, print media has a solid edge. Indeed, unlike digital media, print media responds to multiple senses: you can not only admire print visually, but also feel it and even smell and hear it. That alone makes it a great tool to bring your brand closer to your target audience. Tangible printed materials loosen up much more, which also makes your message stick much longer.
Quality printing increases the value of your products
Do you sell products of greater value such as cars, kitchens or designer furniture, for example? Then quality printing can add to that valuable character. The purchase decision of such products often requires more time from people. A handsomely crafted brochure or catalog not only underscores the value of your car or interior object, it effectively draws people over.
Special paper choices and finishes stand out
With strong printing, you set yourself apart from the competition. The right combination of paper, binding, form, finish and also not to forget your concept, creates a unique and eye-catching piece of communication that is guaranteed to get noticed.
Print materials stick
Unlike digital media, paper is less intrusive. More to the point: paper-based communication invites to be held and looked at. This is at once the great strength of printed matter: it often passes effortlessly from hand to hand. People take your brochure out of the mailbox, they flip through it once, put it back on the table, and someone else picks it up again a moment later… Before you know it, it’s been viewed, screened or read multiple times.
Print media is read more concentrated
One of the great strengths of digital marketing is that you reach your target audience quickly and very specifically. Only, in one fell swoop, that is also one of its weaknesses. People these days find the deluge of online advertising just primal annoyance. Many messages are therefore deliberately ignored. Moreover, info via the Internet is usually served in bite-sized blocks of text. Those make you nice and easy, that’s for sure. But do you also notice that it makes you much more distracted?
It has been repeatedly proven that those who read printed texts stay focused longer. As a result, people get much more involved. In other words, print media increases attention to your message. For that reason alone, you should integrate paper into your marketing mix.
Print media vs digital media
Media channels can vary greatly in use and perception, which has an effect on how ads are perceived. Social media, for example, has a high entertainment content. Facebook and Instagram are ideal tools for building more brand awareness in an efficient and relatively affordable way. Only, many users see those channels as mostly non-committal. There is little engagement, so ads quickly come across as intrusive.
Then you can use print media in a much more targeted way. People who dive into a newspaper or magazine do so with a very conscious purpose: they want to be informed, relax, get inspiration, you name it.
In fact, the July 2020 Media Experience Survey shows that print media scores better with advertisers compared to other media channels such as social media, television and radio.
Brand perception: people are more positive about print than online communication
Not every platform is suitable for ads. Advertising on social media, apps and streaming services, in particular, is something people typically find annoying and even distracting because it distracts from what really matters. A study by Sapio Research shows that 69% of people simply ignore online ads if they do not fit the context of the platform. In addition, many users worry about their privacy when online ads pop up.
With print media, you don’t have that phenomenon. People are much more receptive to advertising messages on paper precisely because the info is often more appropriate to the context of the medium itself. As a reader, you are more at ease and easily decide whether to view or bypass ads. By the way, the same is true of outdoor advertising, which people appear to enjoy paying attention to, according to the same study.
