With the increase in digital marketing, you may think that physical marketing is on its way out and is of no good to anyone anymore. However, there are several reasons that printed materials are, in fact, still worth thinking about for any business owner.
1. Exposure
How often have you sat in a coffee shop, waiting room or various forms of public transport and read the flyers or magazines left there? They may have been left for a specific person or aimed at a particular audience, but most people would at least give it a cursory glance when there's nothing better to do.
While you may not hit your intended audience, there's scope for others who are not as far into the buying journey to see your products and start considering you as a contender for their purchase.
2. Targeting
With the advances in technology, you can now directly target mail so much more effectively. A generic letter can seem much less generic through a simple mail merge. Insert the client's name, the products they are interested in, the date of their last visit to your premises and a discount code for the above-mentioned product and your generic letter now seems more personalised to this client. While this can be done through email campaigns, some clients find it nice to have a physical letter every now and again.
3. Enforcing your brand identity
Branding should be something you can see, feel, and connect with. You may not notice it, but when you touch and feel something, it gives it more credibility than something you have only seen on the internet. For example, if you had a website designer who only advertised online and another one who also handed out flyers and leaflets explaining the exact services they offered, the flyer would make them seem like a more legitimate business as they had money to spend on the flyers and then took the time to distribute them. So, therefore, you are more likely to go for the business with the printed materials.
4. Leaving physical reminders
When was the last time you went to a networking event? What did you take away from it? As well as leaving with new connections on LinkedIn, you probably also left with business cards, flyers, and other physical materials.
Unless you've put all of these in a drawer and forgotten about them, they're probably sat on your desk as a constant reminder about the business you've seen and the connection you made. Now think about how many materials were handed out and how many physical reminders are sat on desks. It can be a lucrative form of marketing.
So what does all of this look like in practice? You might be thinking that print marketing is a thing of the past, and digital is the way to go. But print can still be relevant depending on who you're targeting and the reach you want to achieve. So don't rule it out completely before considering what print could do for you.
