Old School Print Materials Still Needed For Marketing Success

Published on Thursday, 04 April 2013 07:42

Darin McGilvra

When a business creates a website, or has a Murrieta Web design company do it, it will usually focus its marketing efforts on driving traffic to the website. However, leaving out print materials in your marketing plan could be a mistake.

While the world has become more digitally focused, printed materials such as business cards and brochures can still have an impact on your target market, and in some cases this impact can even be greater than online marketing efforts.

For one thing, consumers tend to distrust a business that is completely online, especially if that business’ mailing address is a post office box. They feel more comfortable with trusting a business that creates professionally made business cards, brochures or letterhead.

Also, with so much competition online, you could actually get a leg up by advertising with print materials, since there is less competition. Also, a mailed brochure will tend to get read more than an email since many people may consider the email spam or may be concerned about getting a computer virus when opening the email.

Printed material also could have a greater impact because people tend to skim over online text. Also, they average only about 15 seconds on a page of text despite reading text on a digital screen 20 to 30 percent slower than text on a printed page, according to a study done by AlShaali and Varshney in 2005.

One trend in marketing that is becoming popular is the face-to-face approach. Numerous marketing businesses have been popping up that focus on using salespeople to talk directly with consumers instead of using advertising to attract the consumers to the business.

Murrieta Web design company can also help you create print materials

These marketing businesses have models that show that this approach creates a much bigger impact with individual consumers. Of course, the downside is that it is difficult to reach a large number of consumers, so these businesses focus on ways to make sure they are reaching an accurate target market.

Of course, this approach would require basic print materials, such as business cards and brochures, that can be handed to consumers in the course of an interaction with a salesperson.

The best way to do all this is to make sure that the print materials are used in conjunction with any online efforts, such as a website. This means you want to make sure that both use the same logo and same style of written language so that you consistently present the same brand to customers.

You also want to make sure your print materials direct customers to your online presence. All print materials need to have your website URL and your email address. Also, you can use a coupon code that can be used to get a special deal when ordering products or services online.

Print materials also can include a quick response (QR) code. This is a unique black-and-white symbol printed on a brochure or the back of a business card that can be scanned by a smartphone. An app will read the symbol and direct the smartphone to your website.

The key to any marketing plan is to be as diverse as possible. Using print materials created by the same Murrieta Web design company that created your website will allow you to maintain your brand and maximize your return on your marketing efforts.

Darin McGilvra

Darin McGilvra has been a professional writer since 1997. He currently writes about personal finances, information technology and sports for numerous websites, including mycashtime.com, mchelper.com, and Yahoo! Sports.

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