Newspaper ad sales are down – down enough that newspapers all around the country are either shuttering their doors or scrambling to find ways to compete in a world where news is increasingly consumed off the page and on the screen. Meanwhile, sales of online ads are way up. Giants such as Google, Google’s YouTube, and Facebook are swiftly siphoning off advertising dollars that would normally go to network TV, magazines, and major papers.
In such an environment, it seems as if print marketing’s days are numbered. Why should businesses print catalogs, for example, when online catalogs are infinitely more scalable and cheaper to produce?
However, in some ways it is precisely because of the Internet revolution that print is in a better position to succeed than ever before. What do we mean by this statement? Consider the facts that online competition has made print more affordable than ever before and that, in today’s cerebral, digital era, print remains tangible and touchable.
Print is More Affordable than Ever
If you’re not a part of the print industry, you probably didn’t notice that the last ten or fifteen years have brought an utter revolution to the industry. Here are some of the changes that have forced printers to adjust their business models:
- Affordable laser printers: It used to be that if a salesperson wanted a full-color sales packet for his meetings in the field, he would have to go to his local printer to have them produced. With high-quality color laser printers in nearly every corporate office in America, salespeople no longer have to rely upon outside printers. Their marketing department produces a PDF sales sheet, and the salesperson presses “print” from his computer.
- Improved digital printing: Mass quantities of postcards or brochures used to only be produced by offset printing. The technology has improved so much for digital printers that offset printers have been forced to lower their prices to stay competitive.
- Online ordering: The combination of the wide availability of professional design software and the ability to order print jobs through the Internet has changed the industry more than any other set of factors. It used to be that if you wanted to print a brochure, you looked up “color printing” in the Yellow Pages and went in to negotiate a price for your job. Now, you can Google “color printing” and skim through thirty different printers in a matter of seconds. Printers are reducing overhead – and prices – by eliminating sales positions and (ironically) relying upon search engines to market their products for them.
It is because of all these changes in technology, rather than in spite of it, that investing in print marketing is a better decision than ever before. Due to increased competition within the industry, along with competition from in-house printers, the prices for offset printing have fallen dramatically. If you haven’t printed a brochure or a catalog in the last few years, you’ll be flabbergasted by how affordable offset printing is.
Print is Touchable
When it comes to print marketing, print materials are still tangible and touchable in a way that online ads certainly are not.
There is a reason why places such as coffee shops and restaurants still have community bulletin boards littered with business cards, postcards, and posters: Printed materials are still something that you can touch, look at, put in your pocket, and come back to later. You will never be able to pin an online ad to a bulletin board and encourage people to take it home with them.
Instead of printed materials directly competing with online marketing, marketers should see them as complementary to their online marketing efforts. Placing a QR code on a poster that goes into a shop window or on a postcard that gets mailed out, for example, is the perfect way to integrate print marketing with online marketing. Instead of being mutually exclusive, print marketing and online marketing should go hand-in-hand. For instance, a marketer could send out a postcard to a mailing list as a teaser, with a promise that more information for a special deal can be found on the business’ website.
In short, your print marketing efforts should never be in competition to your online marketing efforts; the two should always complement each other. Online marketing capabilities offer something that print cannot in terms of inexpensive scalability and the ability to reach potential customers through a wide variety of interactive channels. However, print marketing still offers capabilities that online marketing cannot. Print will always be tangible, touchable, and portable. And, thanks to the online marketing revolution, print is increasingly more affordable.