Direct mail, signs and postcard campaigns can result in effective touches to your target market. Print still is very powerful and you should be using it, planning it and making it a significant part of your marketing.
Print marketing is even stronger when it’s combined with other marketing channels, strategies and tactics.
Most of the time, customers and prospects don't jump to order things and purchase the minute they see marketing. Most of the time marketing leads to research by a prospect or customer. They usually want to learn more about you, your product, your service, your brand, your trust and more.
The number one reason customers buy is because of trust. Customer and prospects need to determine if they can trust you, if you understand their challenges and problems and, how you can solve those problems for them.
Social media is one of the channels to determine that trust.
Integrating print campaigns with social media, allows you to interact with your target market in a whole new way.
Social media marketing can help you build trust before a purchase is made. Social media marketing can be a customer service tool to those purchasing from you that will increase future purchase frequency and upsells.
Social media marketing can start with print marketing and vice versa. Once interacting with your social media, you can nurture that trust a customer or prospect needs with your brand.
With social media and even print marketing you can communicate your story. Customers can then understand what to do next after learning of your story. Social media marketing and print are two parts of a conversation necessary to nurture customer relationships, turning inquiries into paying situations.
Here are some considerations in getting the two marketing channels to work together:
Consistent Identity and Branding Across All Platforms
Print marketing and social media marketing need to be compatible; compatible from the standpoint of having the same look, feel, messages and voice to create a unified brand and identity across all fronts. If one is different than the other in look, identity or message, prospects and customers get confused. Confusing prospects and customers lead to no action being taken, no conversions and no sales.
Attract and Communicate All Segments of a Target Market
Social media is becoming more common with individual consumers and businesses but is still considered a new way for businesses to connect with their target market. There still may be older customers who have held out from using social media or who are still confused by it. With these customers print marketing still is used to communicate your marketing messages. Print is what this part of your target market knows. Don't stop printing.
In contrast some of your younger target market members are very social media savvy and expect to be marketed to with social media marketing.
There are many competitors competing for the same social media conversation space as you are. Using print will separate you from those only using online marketing. In fact, studies show that younger people are surprisingly still receptive to print. A survey from Two Sides showed that 69% of 18 to 24-year-olds in America prefer to read print and paper communications rather online.
The best way to make sure your marketing covers both parts of these target markets is to use both social media marketing and printing marketing at the same time.
Tell Customers and Prospects What to Do With Social Media Marketing
A call to action should be used in any marketing. Make sure your target market knows what to do as a result of your marketing. It can be as simple as visit our website, or call us today. You can also instruct the target to like us on facebook, follow us on twitter and connect with us on linked in.
Print marketing designs require a call to action so that the audience knows what to do with the information they’ve received. This is usually a simple command such as “call for a free estimate” or “visit our website and sign up today.” However, you can also use a call to action to direct customers to your social media sites.
These are just a few considerations. There are more that we will write about another time.
Keep this in mind: For a truly effective print marketing program you need to maintain a professional relationship with your print service provider. The ideal situation is to maintain a relationship with a professional provider of both print and social media market. Together, all involved can look at the big picture and talk to all members of a target market.