Social media marketing matters. It’s effective, you can track it easily, and you can target a specific audience or demographic. But there’s still a place for printing and print media marketing, and combining the two gives you a killer marketing platform. Here’s why.
Immediacy vs permanence
Social media is very ‘now’ – and its very impermanence is one of its great strengths. You can quickly and easily engage your customers directly, creating conversations that build your brand’s presence. But printing offers permanence, credibility and tangibility, an opportunity to reinforce visual branding and target an audience who may not access social media. Print advertising gives you an opportunity to stand out from the competition when all their efforts are focused online. Is print dead? Forbes doesn’t think so, check out this recent article: Print is Dead? Not so Fast.
Combine and cross-promote
By combining your social media marketing strategy with printing, you can cross-promote effectively between the two. Ensure your commercial print i.e. flyer printing, leaflets and business cards all point to your social media presence. Then tweet or post directing your customers to your print ads to build a real buzz around them (cross media marketing).
Get creative
Study the Twitter feeds of companies who are effectively working cross-platform to see how they incentivise and drive web traffic to their print ads, and vice versa. Then get as creative as possible with your own printing ad – beautiful, customised graphic art is set to be the next big trend in website design, so tap into that to produce something unique that your audience will want to share and tweet and post about.
Engage with meaning
Don’t ignore customers who respond to your print ad online. You need to engage them and keep the conversation going. Be timely and interesting in your responses, and engage with positive and negative responses to learn what you did well and what you could do better in future. The more people tweet or post about your print ads, and the more engaged you can be with them, the better.
At PrintUK.com your local printing company, we specialise in high quality printing and print design to get your brand out there, so contact us about that print ad that will set social media buzzing and grow your business sales.