Utilizing a variety of advertising mediums, such as emails, flyers, social media, and direct mail, can create a multiplier effect on your marketing efforts, helping you to reach your businesses’ different audience segments. The integration of marketing channels amplifies your brand in a chaotic marketplace and allows a company to speak with a unified voice regardless of channel or device.
Direct mail, business cards, and flyers are all print marketing opportunities that a business can utilize for engaging with customers. By mixing print marketing with digital marketing, and getting the maximum value from both, businesses have a greater opportunity to cut through the noise and make a greater impact with their marketing strategy. By applying an integrated marketing plan, companies will be better able to create consistent and cohesive content across their various marketing channels.
How do I design a marketing plan for print businesses?
Print businesses should start creating their marketing plan by identifying specific marketing goals which should be tied to the business’s overall goals. Print businesses can then build their marketing calendar, taking into consideration their marketing budget and allocating resources based on importance.
Direct Mail is a Key Print Market Opportunity
Direct mail postcards are particularly strategic because they appear directly in a customer’s mailbox, and the physical document provides a long shelf life. One key to effectively using direct mail is to ensure that your message is personalized. Direct mail recipients are much more likely to read a message that’s relevant, specific, and responsive to their needs.
Sending postcards by utilizing Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is an affordable and effective method to get in touch with new, existing, and former customers. A business might use direct mail as invitations, to announce grand openings, or as coupons with special offers specific to their local area. Depending on the message you are sending, paper communication often has a more formal feel for recipients. Regardless of what the business is promoting, the goal of any direct marketing campaign is usually fairly simple: to build the business and achieve its desired ROI.
Stand Out with Memorable Business Cards
The right business cards can make a person memorable, and the most effective business card design is an extension of the company’s brand. Business cards are often the first impression someone receives about a company, which means their look and feel matter. Whether someone is meeting a client, customer, or new coworker, exchanging business cards is one of the best ways to share contact information for future business relationships.
Not only are business cards an easy way of exchanging contact information, but they are also much more personal compared to a digital contact exchange. While it’s common practice to include information such as your name, title, email, phone number, and website on a business card, businesses should also consider taking the opportunity to include their social networking profiles on their card as well. Alternatively, businesses may put a QR code on their business card that directs someone to their website contact page with links to all of their contact information.
Businesses also have the opportunity to use their business cards in other ways as well. For example, business cards could be used as appointment reminders, coupon cards, or customer loyalty punch cards.
Interactive Print Marketing
Businesses have the greatest opportunity to see the most benefit, and reach a wider demographic, when they combine print and digital marketing efforts. The combination also reinforces a company’s brand in the minds of its customers as they are more likely to recognize a brand more quickly when they have seen it in both print and digital formats.
One of the best ways to do this is to include some form of digital media on print marketing materials. Businesses can build bridges between their print and digital marketing channels with these ideas:
QR codes or custom URLs – businesses can use QR codes or custom URLs on postcards, brochures, or business cards. They can then use tracking data to discover when or where consumers are interacting with your printed materials.
Social media hashtags – the use of hashtags on print marketing materials can encourage customers to then follow those hashtags online and further engage with the business
CTA’s – The right call-to-action (CTA) can work just as well in print as it does in digital, and a powerful CTA is one of the keys to integrating your print and digital efforts.
To successfully execute a combined digital and print marketing mix, it’s important for a business to keep everything consistent. Graphics, colors, and wording should all feel like they’re coming from the same brand, whether customers encounter them in print or online.
Businesses of all sizes can take advantage of a marketing strategy that integrates print and digital marketing channels. DFS will work with your print business to help your customers grab attention with a wide variety of custom design materials. Your customers will get marketing materials exactly how they want them, with solutions designed to fit all business needs, formats, and budgets. Contact us today to be matched with a DFS business advisor.
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Key Takeaways
- Businesses have the greatest opportunity to see the most benefit, and reach a wider demographic, when they combine print and digital marketing efforts.
- Direct mail and business cards are two key print marketing opportunities that a business can utilize for engaging with customers.
- QR codes, custom URLs, social media hashtags, and powerful CTA’s are all ways businesses can integrate print and digital marketing channels.
- Print businesses should start creating their marketing plan by identifying specific marketing goals which should be tied to the business’s overall goals.
- DFS will work with your print business to help your customers grab attention with a wide variety of custom design materials.
