It’s a well known fact that when your print and social media/digital marketing work together, the results of BOTH are boosted. In this day and age you’d be forgiven for thinking investment in social media is where it’s at, but you’d be missing a trick if you didn’t put aside some time and budget to enhance your marketing efforts through print.
Print reaches an audience in a way that the digital world will never be able to replicate, which is why it’s success has elevated since the digital marketing boom. Campaigns which utilise both commercial print and digital marketing allow your message to reach your audience at multiple times and places throughout their day. That regular reminder is the difference in them acting on your message, and forgetting all about it.
Learn how to work print and digital marketing together to get the most from your campaign
Firstly, consider this:
For every (digital) action, there should be an equal and opposite (printed) reaction.
Ok, we might have ever so slightly pinched that from Newton’s Third Law. And we might have ever so slightly tweaked it to suit what we’re trying to say. But the point remains the same, if you’re doing something digitally you should be reflecting it with something printed, and vice versa. This way you’re reaching the largest portion of your audience as possible, as many times as possible.
Digital Marketing
To help you understand how you can use print and digital to back each other up and work together, firstly we need to get you started with ways you can market digitally:
- Create the artwork you want to use for your campaign (unless you know your way around some decent design software, you might want to pay a Graphic Designer to put this together for you professionally. Don’t panic though, it doesn’t cost the earth and once you have your main piece of artwork it’s easy to tweak it in future).
- Upload the artwork to your blog with a write up about the campaign – if it’s a competition give all the details of how to enter, prize(s), terms and conditions etc.
- Send an e-newsletter out to your customer/contact database promoting your campaign and driving people to the blog post on your website.
- Schedule the artwork to post to the social media profiles that you have for your business (ie Facebook). Include a carefully crafted message with up to three hashtags to increase your organic social reach.
- Pay to boost your posts and to advertise your campaign on your chosen social media sites, all with the aim of driving people to your blog post on your website. Here you can also encourage them to sign up to your e-newsletters so they can be the first to hear about your next campaign. Did you know advertising on social media sites starts from as little as £1 per day?
- Promote your campaign in relevant groups and pages on social media.
- Create follow up artwork that links back to the campaign and reminds your audience to act.
- Write a follow up blog.
- Send out a follow up newsletter.
- Schedule follow up posts on social media, pay to boost your post and advertise your campaign.
- The big finish – if for example you have created a campaign based around a competition, when the winner is selected make a very big deal about it and promote it everywhere you can online.
Commercial Print
Now consider all the varied ways in which you can reach people using print. Extend the reach of your marketing to:
- People when they are not online.
- Who don’t use the social media platforms you market on.
- Who don’t spend much time online or who don’t use the internet at all…yes, there are still people who don’t need it.
- And of course to reach them at times and in ways which stick in the memory much more firmly.
To help you, here are some of the ways you can use print to promote your campaign that you can work with your digital marketing efforts to increase the all round impact of your campaign:
- You already have your artwork created for the digital part of your campaign, so the most you are going to have to do is re-size it depending on what you want to print – this is usually really quick and cheap for your designer to do
- Post out a newsletter to your customer/contact database – 75% of people open every single piece of mail they receive – is there a more certain way to guarantee your message is seen by the right people?
- Direct Mail – for the same reasons as no.2 (75% open rate!!) direct mail is a brilliant tool to get your campaign in the hands of the right people, using either your own existing database or a tailored list which you have bought from a reliable source.
- Leaflets are a really cheap and impactful way of getting your message out there. They are really versatile too and can be used from everything from handing out at events, door to door and shop windows, to including in every delivery you make to existing customers.
- Brochures are a professional way of asserting your credibility. They give you pages of space to showcase your business and are perfect for using in all your marketing activity from Direct Mail to face to face meetings.
- Banners can be used both inside and outdoors to promote your campaign, in a busy environment they give you massive stand out.
- Exhibition stands and pull up banners give you a professional presence with high impact. They can be used not only at events and exhibitions, but anywhere you have a presence as they simply roll back up and pack conveniently away.
- Outdoor advertising is a great opportunity for getting your message in front of commuters passing by twice a day, and as it’s in situ you’re not fighting with anyone else for that space, so it’s just our message being read by the commuter.
- The power of compliments slips…compliments slips are far more diverse than you may think. You can incorporate them into your marketing campaign by printing ones specific to the campaign and sending them out with every quote, enquiry, delivery and invoice.
- Printed adverts are a very powerful means of advertising when you find the right publication for your audience.
- Car window stickers make your car, your customers cars and your employee’s cars a moving advert. Everywhere they go so does your advert.
The Marketing Coin
So, just think of print and digital marketing as two sides of the same marketing coin. There are so many ways you can market your campaign and using both digital and commercial print opens up so many more options. By increasing the ways you reach people, you are increasing your impact and increasing the success of your campaign.
Contact our #PrintGeeks
0800 093 2960
More interesting reading from us
Small Business Marketing and Why Print is Key
Direct Mail: How To Make Your Campaign A Success
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