Is Your Marketing Too One Sided?
The death of print – especially in marketing – is a hoax.
According to a study done by the Direct Marketing Association, more than 100 million U.S. adults made a catalog purchase last year. They also reported a staggering 190% rise in direct mail response rates.
But how? How did marketers get such huge response rates and even sales from a channel that had been pronounced dead a decade ago?
Well, for starters, they listened to data instead of clickbait. They leveraged this growing wealth of digital data to segment their mailing lists just like their email lists. Their multi-channel campaigns actually included physical and digital for a much greater array of touchpoints and better effectiveness of each thanks to higher recall rates. And they used the same insights their digital counterparts were using to create mailers that addressed where their prospects are in their buyer’s journey.
They found a powerful balance between print and digital. And you should too.
Is Your Marketing Too One Sided?
As your competition overcorrects in their wholesale rush from print to digital, your competitive advantage lies in the balance.
Human nature is a funny thing.
If you’ve ever seen the line stretching around the block on the day the latest iWhatever is launched, you know humans love novelty beyond reason. Countless books written by serious, pipe-smoking psychologists no doubt explain this in excruciating detail, but for our purposes, we just need to recognize this tendency: People love what’s new, tend to follow the herd, and almost always pursue our gut feelings beyond what’s rational.
Case in point: The digital marketing gold rush.
As digital marketing channels emerged, early adopters cashed in. Their success sent CMOs the world over scrambling to get their share. They went all in on digital and print was pronounced dead on the spot.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to prove that’s not true, why you should combine print and digital, and how.
What you’ll learn:
- Why print deserves a place in your marketing mix
- How to combine print and digital better to do both better than your competitors
- How direct mail and targeted ads give you bulletproof delivery
- eCommerce branding vs physical branding
- How to pull off email and direct mail together
We’ll also have a free guide on how to write for digital vs print – because they are different and knowing how to do each is pivotal to doing each well.
Speaking of which – get that guide now and all this will make more sense.
Why Print and Digital Work so Well Together
Like a classic food pairing, print and digital complement each other by being different in exactly the right ways. Donuts are sweet while coffee is bitter. Fries are hot, salty and crispy, while ketchup is cold, tangy, and slightly sweet.
Print is tangible and lasting while digital is pixels. Digital is perfect for action – you can buy in a few clicks – while print is perfect for engaging the brain at a deeper level to deliver a complicated message.
The Canadian neuromarketing firm TrueImpact recently did a massive study that found direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media. This gives marketers a great way to take a user from totally unaware of your brand/product/service to highly informed in a single touch. Now they’re ready for that targeted digital ad. Compare that with a digital-only approach where your ad is supposed to introduce your brand and get a user to take action in the same half second while trying to actively avoid it?
I’ll take the first approach, thank you.
Use each medium for what it’s best at, create seamless handoffs between the two, and align both from the start of the campaign to the final sale and you’ve got a smarter process than a huge portion of your competitors.
It turns out that the magic of combining print and digital, isn’t magic at all, but logic, data, and knowing enough about human nature to counter it.
Next up: E-Commerce Branding vs. Physical Branding
Learn the pros and cons of each and how to get them working together. This post will also have Facebook targeting advice you can put into action immediately. Click here to get it sent right to your inbox.
