Digital Print Management

In last week’s post I talked about why I love print.

In past posts I’ve focussed on content personalisation and where it fits into your marketing efforts.

Content personalisation is important, it isn’t about getting the recipients name right but making sure you are targeting your niche audience with the right information and content.

Social media platforms are a great place to find your audiences and engage with but they can also be a great time waster and an even greater distraction and they aren’t the only place you should be broadcasting your messages.

Telesales, emailing, tweeting, blogging, advertising are also part of the process of getting your message heard. But you, your brand, your company, services and products are just another load of noise that disappear into the social void.

The marketplace is noisy with your competitors trying to get their message heard too and your potential customers are having trouble hearing your message let alone finding and engaging with your marketing efforts.

Shouting loudly and sending the same marketing collateral into the social media world hoping that some of it will resonate with a few might work, the only problem with that approach is that people will tune out very quickly or throw your marketing collateral in the bin.

I’ve said in the past that direct mail or a personalised marketing piece can be a great way to start the conversation going and get the prospect started on the journey to purchasing.

89% of consumers get their ideas from a print advert or a direct mail piece I should know I’m one of them so I know it works.

Transactional and marketing mail is a huge market, in 2012-13 Royal Mail handled 58 million items of addressed mail everyday and supplementing your social media marketing efforts with print and mailing services is a natural starting point for multi-channel marketing messages which includes digital and paper based communications.

With economies of scale, savings on printed collateral, postal discounts either via the Royal Mail or DSA (downstream access providers), short lead times and sophisticated highly personalised targeted marketing using digital colour makes print and mailing fulfilment a great place to start the process toward customer engagement.

How do you deliver the right messages to your audience?

Aim to provide unique and valuable information and content on your brand, service or products. Make a strategic plan for developing your audiences’ engagement through a planned process for example – a blog – email campaign – direct mail – promotion on social media. If you know where you are going you can make sure your marketing efforts aren’t wasted.
Focus on one simple message not lots of different messages or content so it becomes distracting for the customer.
Use the power of pictures with words, the old adage a picture paints a thousand words rings true. We associate images with brands and we want our customers to remember us the next time they need our product or services. We also want them to associate any imagery we use with our company so it reinforces the message.
Using more words wont convey the message using the right words in a more vivid and simple way are more likely to be remembered.

Steve Jobs once commented that his most hated words were branding and marketing. He went onto say that “people associate brands with television advertising and commercials and artificial things. The most important thing was people’s relationship to the product.

Marketing is when you have to sell to somebody. If you aren’t providing value, if you’re not educating them about the product, if you’re not helping them get the most out of the product, you’re selling. And you shouldn’t be in that mode.”

If Apple is right then we shouldn’t be in the business of selling but rather educating our customers, telling them they have a problem long before they know they have one.

Getting to a position where your audience see your marketing and recognise your brand gives them confidence in you because they see the information that you are providing as useful and is helping them in the buying process by adding value to their lives.

The are interested in hearing from you because they’ve become accustomed to receiving excellent information and expect it. It will excite them enough to start the buying process with your brand or company when they are ready.

Whether your marketing is driven solely into the social media stratosphere or you use the ubiquitous bit of paper to get your message out there your content and your message must be unique, original and consistent.

What do you think?

I’m a walking contradiction. I’m a big advocate of print and paper but I love the digital world too. In fact I live in both worlds for a large part of my time.

I’m a digital subscriber to The Times but I love the touch and feel of my monthly glossy fashion magazines and just for good measure I also take two digital magazine subscriptions I know I can’t help myself.

The ongoing print vs digital debate has been done to death, a long debated subject about it’s place in the order of things. You would think people would stop perpetuating the myth that all things electronic are marvellous and that the utopian ideal is a paperless office, worse, a national paper free day.

What harm has paper or print ever done. It is the first medium that children come into contact with as babies and when learning to read because they can see the words and pictures.

89% of consumers get their ideas from a print ad, which starts them on a journey toward purchasing. Paper volumes have dropped and print is likely to be a secondary or tertiary medium but used in conjunction with cross media marketing it is extremely effective.

What does it feel like to pick up a hard back book? (my preference over paper back) I love it, I love smelling old books there is a sense of history to it, I’m a bit anal about print.
Print really gets to me in a different way than screen viewing. Paper doesn’t contain hyperlinks whereas interactive screens are full of distractions with online ads which often annoy and distract my viewing. You can google a search term and end up never going back to the original text. Screens are more taxing mentally, it’s hard work navigating around a screen than a piece of paper because you are having to navigate from one screen to another to find information.
Books, magazines, catalogues, any paper medium gives you a sense of progression as you turn the page but with a screen once you have read it, it’s gone and it feels never ending.
Finding typing or spelling errors on screen is far harder than if you print out the manuscript and then the errors appear as if by magic.
Good design grabs your attention and communicates the idea, an advert can take advantage of a full page and is very effective, it has no distracting links, pop up ads or videos.
Print is everywhere – newspapers, magazines, outdoor billboards it touches you on a deeper level often unconsciously. Digital is very different. People try to work out the differences between print and digital, which one is better or more effective, why bother? The reality is each one is very effective if employed in an intelligent and thought provoking way ultimately engaging with the reader.
Fashion brands use visual imagery to promote and define their brand through fashion magazines. But they use digital channels to really engage with their target audience by telling their story, showing the personality and style of the brand and what their values are. But print is the first point of engagement that consumers have with a brand.
Multi-channel campaigns start with print then move to the digital channels. Print is a great starting point when coming up with a new idea, concept or design. When that is done it’s easier to adapt it for multi-channel campaigns.
When I think of an idea I drop it down in my evernote moleskin notebook because it’s easier and quicker than opening my iPad, by which time I’ve forgotten the thing I was suppose to remember to write down.
I love my workflowy (quick notes) and smartsheet (project task management) but by the time I’ve opened the blasted applications I’ve forgotten why I was opening it in the first place so guess what I use my tasks in my filofax, yes that ever wonderful paper based filing and index system. Isn’t it fab when you strike through a to do when you’ve completed it you just don’t get the same feeling when you do it digitally. Works for me.

Research has shown that reading from a screen is 20-30% slower than reading from paper.

Ink on paper is an enduring technology. The only thing you need is the human eye to read it.

There you have it that is why I love print and why it has such an enduring quality for me.

Tell me what you think? Are you like me or are you a complete convert to digital versions only?

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Tag Archives: Love Print

Ten reasons why I love print.

89% of consumers get their ideas from a print ad, which starts them on a journey toward purchasing. Paper volumes have dropped and print is likely to be a secondary or tertiary medium but used in conjunction with cross media marketing it is extremely effective.

Research has shown that reading from a screen is 20-30% slower than reading from paper.

There you have it that is why I love print and why it has such an enduring quality for me.

How do you deliver the right messages to your audience?

What do you think?

Related posts:

89% of consumers get their ideas from a print ad, which starts them on a journey toward purchasing. Paper volumes have dropped and print is likely to be a secondary or tertiary medium but used in conjunction with cross media marketing it is extremely effective.

Research has shown that reading from a screen is 20-30% slower than reading from paper.

There you have it that is why I love print and why it has such an enduring quality for me.