“Print is dead” they said. But is it? Even a global pandemic and the following lockdowns didn’t change the fact that we all love a bit of print on occasion. Print is here to stay for a while from what we’re seeing.
Yes, we know that online is the new and often only marketing businesses think about, but you’d be surprised to hear that even those who sell online marketing buy printed materials from us.
Even those who sell online marketing products need (and use) print…
The web designer who wanted print marketing
Just a few weeks ago a web designer asked us to create some flyers. Yes, that’s right, a creator of online brochure sites wanted a printed leaflet to sell themselves. Printed materials are still needed even if you sell a product that lives online. Print is powerful, even if your business is 100% digital.
A brochure, a leaflet, or a printed portfolio, does the job like no other medium can. The web designer wanted to show some processes and how they work in a real-life face-to-face meeting, and they felt that a tangible and – more importantly – transportable and take-home leaflet was the best way to do this.
Printed marketing works… everywhere!
When you think about it, what other medium of marketing communicates what you do, anywhere? Sure, a cool iPad app or mobile optimised QR code-based presentation might be swish and cool, but what happens when the internet is down?
What about if you forget to charge the device?
Can you easily transfer it to your lead or customer?
Sometimes a printed brochure or handout is the best option. They don’t need planning, load speed, big ram, or a charged battery. How else can you communicate how you work in all places? We don’t think there’s a better option.
Would you like a power supply with your show stand?
If you’ve ever exhibited at a business show, then you’ll have been asked if you’d like power for your lights and audio visual (AV). You’ll also be supplied with the WiFi code which offers access to a trickle of the world wide web.
Many exhibitors know not to rely on this though, and we think it’s the reason so few of them use AV at business expos. If you’ve been to one recently, we bet you saw a 99/1 ratio in favour of those using print over AV.
Printed materials at a show are perfect. Visitors can take your brochure away and even make a few notes with your branded pen! Those printed materials will also be on the desks of those visitors for weeks to come, as your AV set-up gathers dust in your storage and the memories of what they shared on screen drifts away.
Print is ‘sticky’!
Print hangs around. What’s the lifespan of a Facebook post or a website visit? We suspect if we asked our website developer client what the average time spent on a website is, they’d say it’s seconds, and not even minutes.
We know print lasts longer than that, and you do too. We bet you have some printed material in eyeshot now.
Look up and around you. You can see some, right?
Print lasts longer and it keeps reminding people about you for longer – much much longer – than anything digital can.
Print can work with digital, too
Hey, we’re not bashing digital here. We love social media and you’re reading this on our blog right now. What we really love is when they both work together.
We have a client who created a successful eBook, it sits on their website, and they swap it in exchange for email downloads. But they also print it out, too. It’s a great handout at business shows, a good present at networking meetings, and something they can pop into their direct mail, too.
It’s a digital piece of content, turned into real life print. It’s simple and really effective.
We could turn this blog into something printed. A little work on the design and some trimming here and there and we’d have a cool “Why print is still the heart of your marketing” guide/leaflet/freebie.
Print isn’t dead, it’s evolving like everything else.
Even a web designer needs a leaflet… so we’re thinking you do too. How could you use print as well as online marketing to keep in touch, remind, or follow up with your audience?
We loved creating the leaflet that supported the 121 conversations for our web developer. Maybe we’ve given you some ideas you can run with…
Need some ideas or help? Let’s chat – contact us and we’ll get our heads together. We could even swap business cards!