Driving sales (51.3%) and building brand awareness (48.4%) are the top two digital marketing priorities for small business, according to research by digital advertising firm Leadpages, with the average small business spending at least $10,000 on growing its digital presence. Targeted emailing, social, display ads, SEO and mobile are just a few areas that are attractive to small businesses, because of the small spend for the expected return. If your company has a solid digital marketing strategy in place and you would like to stand out from your competition, could print marketing play a role in your strategy?
Who is Using Print Marketing and Why?
Small business make up a big percentage of companies relying on print marketing. According to research conducted by FedEx, four out of five small businesses say that printed material helps their companies stand out from the rest. Their decision is undoubtedly based on the fact that over 90% of consumers feel there will always be a need for printed materials. One reason is the attention that print-in-hand commands.
Ensuring Clients See Your Crucial Information
User experience firm Nielsen Norman Group notes that users stay on a website for just a few seconds before clicking onto the next best thing, and that means that if you are pushing a specific campaign, offering special deals on products or services, or trying to get customers to join a loyalty program, they can sometimes completely miss the page your information is contained in. Printed material can capture the attention of your readers long enough to impart your crucial message. Small businesses can avail of this effect while keeping costs and time expenditure low. Professional printing services can lower amounts spent on printing out brochures, reports, ad company magazines, while companies can print postage stamps online at OnlineStamp, thus avoiding long queues at the post office.
Making Your Printed Material Stand Out
Ubiquitous connectivity and the extent to which users are connected to their mobile devices means that your printed material has to be good if it is to stand a chance of being read. Keep text informative and use simple English so as not to drown readers out in facts and figures. Use colorful and professional imagery to draw readers to your material and provide them with a link to further information into the campaign or program you wish them to form part of.
What Type of Information Should You Print?
Popular items small business turn to print for, include business cards, brochures, and announcements of special deals or loyalty programs. Print can also be very useful if you work in a technical sphere such as engineering or law – particularly for B2B dealings. Statutes in particular can be very uncomfortable to read online or on ISSU, since readers may have to turn back and forth from particular articles and clauses, which they may prefer to mark with a post-it for quick access. Real estate companies may also wish to print their market reports, complete with useful graphs and photographs, for clients and colleagues. Any company dealing in the luxury sector – be it five-star resorts, Michelin-starred restaurants, or plastic surgery clinics, can mark their leadership in the sector by providing clients with newsletters, lifestyle content, or technical/professional information that requires deep focus.
If you are a small business and you are trying to keep expenses down, print can form a party of your strategy, even if you rely on this medium occasionally. New offers, changes to the law in your sector, or new advances in your industry are a good reason to keep your clients informed and abreast of change. To make your material impactful, give high importance to beautiful visuals, clear and succinct content, and a design style that reflects your brand’s ethos and vision.
