Although digital marketing appears to be taking over, no one should underestimate the power of print or traditional advertising.
It is very easy to ignore or forget about print marketing considering the hype surrounding digital marketing. However, sometimes the best strategy is to combine the efforts of the two.
There are many advantages of complementing digital marketing with print marketing. Although achieving this might be tricky, there are a number of ways the two marketing strategies can work together.
Use of social media reviews on print
Most people have social media managers that spend a lot of time promoting their business on different social media platforms. Likes and positive comments should not necessarily be confined in digital format only.
Such comments and reviews can be printed out in the form of newspaper ads or printed on hard material such as handbags or even T-shirts. The newspaper ads can then be mailed directly to customers to accomplish the following:
• Give customers an opportunity to know what other people are saying about the company
• Bring about the element of social proof
• Help to showcase the popularity of the business
Give digital opt-ins on direct mails
The connection between digital and print marketing is reciprocal. This means that the two marketing strategies can be used to complement each other. They both can direct customers towards each other. This will also help attract people who are not active on social media or don’t have internet access.
A great way to do this is through the use of digital-opt-in forms on websites to encourage customers to sign up for print material. The mailers can either be newsletters, catalogs, or exclusive offers. The idea is to integrate digital marketing and print marketing in a simple and cost-effective manner.
Include QR codes on print material
Placing QR codes and personalized URLs on print material can be a great way of tracking both the online and offline activities of your business. There are many companies that are still using this strategy and there’s no doubt that it is yielding positive results.
The QR codes and PURLs included on print material is a great way to lead customers to specific and personalized landing pages. This will also help you to know who exactly is using your print campaign information.
Use of call-to-action on print materials
Your print materials should not only concentrate on disseminating information to customers. You should take that opportunity to urge customers to follow you on various social media platforms or do something specific through calls to action.
Some of your customers may be active on social media but have never heard about your business. That’s why including such persuasive messages on print material can easily help grow your following and drive traffic back to your website.
Take advantage of variable printing
One major advantage of variable printing is that it gives you a chance to quickly and easily personalize print materials in a range of ways.
This means that you can combine all the important digital data about your customers and use it to enhance your digital marketing strategy. You can also use variable printing to customize emails according to the past purchase history of customers.
Perhaps the simplest and most effective way to use variable printing as a marketing strategy is to create personalized materials using the names of customers.
Use marketing campaign hashtags on print
Printing hashtags on materials is another great way of combining different marketing channels into a single campaign. Combining specific campaign hashtags together with call-to-action and sharing it on various social media platforms complements digital and print marketing.
All you have is to ensure that you are creating hashtags that can quickly grab anyone’s attention and prompt them to take action.
In a nutshell, print marketing and digital marketing can work together in different ways. Instead of leaning too much on digital marketing, you can leverage the above ways to create a more powerful and effective marketing strategy.
