Unless you’ve been living under a giant pixel lately, you no doubt know the entire world has become increasingly digital in the way we interact and do business. We communicate via text, email, and Skype, read our books on electronic readers, and create ad campaigns that can be accessed through mobile technology. Oh, and we also insist on sharing all the morbidly boring details of our family vacations (including uploading embarrassing photos) through our social media pages.
And yet, despite this obsession with digital technology, print marketing is more alive than ever before.
Here are five reasons why print should be part of your marketing mix:
1. Print Material Triggers Multiple Senses 
Admit it: doesn’t much of your world seem plastic? We spend all day touching our mobile phones, computer keyboards, and TV remote controls. It’s nice every once in a while to touch a printed newspaper or magazine. The feel of the paper and glossy pages, the smell of the ink – these sensory experiences are a big part of being human.
Triggering multiple senses adds to the effectiveness of print advertising. Martin Lindstrom, writer of “Brand Sense,” believes brands that appeal to more than three senses will be more successful with their advertising efforts than brands that don’t.
2. Print Creates True Engagement
Much of the content that lives online doesn’t truly engage (this blog post being an obvious exception!). Well, it’s not that it doesn’t engage, it’s that humans don’t engage with it. For many of us, we become impatient when shopping or surfing the web. We feel we don’t have time to stop and read a whole article or blog post, so we merely skim and move on to the next, and we skim that one and move on to the next, etc.
The real key to successful marketing though is to engage your prospect, to entice them and gain their full attention with great content before you present them with your valuable offer. Print is so effective in this regard because people slow down when they have a magazine or newspaper in their hands and actually read, not only the news, but the ads as well. That’s right, in the printed world the ads are as much a part of the reading experience as the editorial content.
3. Your Brain on Paper vs. Your Brain on Screen
Recent neurological research has shown the human brain processes information differently depending on whether that information is presented in print or on a screen. The studies have uncovered a fact that all marketers should know: readers of print have a longer attention span because print doesn’t offer so many distractions. This is called deep reading – and the act of deep reading creates deep thinking, which means readers can become fully engrossed in the content. And when they then see relevant advertising next to that content they actually think about it as well.
4. Print Drives Users Online
A survey by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association found that over 47% of consumers are most likely to start an online search after viewing a magazine ad. That is big news because all ads have one goal – to get people to take action and interact more with your brand.
5. Adding Print to the Mix Increases ROI
An effective marketing campaign works best when print is integrated with other digital solutions. In fact, research has shown print’s ability to increase ROI by as much as 240%. A BrandScience analysis of over 500 European campaigns consistently showed an increase in a campaign’s overall success when print was combined with other channels.
If you haven’t been incorporating print into your marketing mix, it’s most likely because you had no idea of its effectiveness. So now that you do, what are you going to do?
RELATED POSTS:
- The Death of Print Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
- Here’s a Little Secret: Traditional Advertising Channels Still Work
- What Multi-Channel Marketing Is and Why You Need It
Image credit: Pixabay
