For years you might have heard marketing experts say that “print is dead” and the only way to market a business is online. But despite what experts might say, print is alive and well and just as effective as ever.
There are a variety of ways you can use print to market your business. From promoting a sale to raising awareness of your products or services, print advertising is an excellent way to spread your message and reach target audiences of all ages. This includes advertising in your local paper, direct mail, flyers and much more.
Here are four reasons why print advertising can still help you to attract new customers and generate more revenue.
It may be more expensive than running an online ad, but a single print ad in a local paper can reach hundreds, or even thousands, of customers. More importantly, you’re reaching the right customers, because these readers are local to your area.
Placing a print ad in a local magazine or newspaper guarantees the paper’s readers will see your advert and are likely to be interested in it, because they live and shop locally. This makes print advertising extremely effective for letting local people know about your products or services, especially if your advert appears near articles and editorial relevant to the audience you want to reach – for example, a record shop could advertise in the entertainment section of a local paper.
Placing a print ad doesn’t just help you to share your message with the regular readership of a publication, it also reaches wider, ‘passive’ audiences who aren’t specifically searching out information. How often do you pick up and read a newspaper someone else has left behind on a train or in a cafe? What about quickly Googling a business when you’ve seen a print ad in a newspaper or on a billboard? This is a ‘passive’ audience – someone who isn’t specifically looking to buy but who might be interested if the right advert catches their eye.
So when you advertise in a local paper, it means your advert will be in front of ‘active’ readers specifically looking to buy and interested in local businesses, plus an even bigger audience of ‘passive’ customers. Next time these ‘passive’ customers are on the lookout for products or services you provide, your business is likely to be one of the first they think of.
One of the most interesting benefits of print marketing is that it’s less tiring for customers to look at. On a screen, the image is constantly being refreshed and emitting light, which is very tiring for our eyes. That’s why printed materials are easier (and faster) for people to read. Research from Temple University in 2015 also found that people are more likely to remember an advert and where they saw it one week after viewing when the advert was printed, rather than online.
As a business, you can use this to your advantage. You could write longer articles and submit them to your local paper, or create a printed newsletter for customers, which will be easier to read and remember than the same information on screen. And if people read more from you, and are more engaged with what you’re saying, they’re more likely to remember you in the future.
63% of people think that print is the most credible method of advertising (PrintPower, 2013), in part because we trust printed materials – we’ve grown up with books, magazines and newspapers being reliable sources of information. So running a high quality print advert, or producing high quality print marketing, can tap into this perceived credibility.
This doesn’t mean that online advertising isn’t credible or that people won’t ‘believe’ it. The key point to improving your business’ credibility through advertising is to make high quality, well-written and consistent adverts – wherever they are. For more information on this, you can read our article: How to Build Trust in Your Company Name.
If you’d like to learn more about how to use print advertising to effectively market your local business then read these articles for further ideas:
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