Has your business growth ground to a screeching halt? It can be difficult to grab your customers’ attention during the first few months of the year as they are still overloaded from seasonal campaigns, but if engagement continues to drop it might not just be a seasonal dip – it could be a sign that your entire strategy needs a refresh. So, it’s time to switch things up with our guide to combining digital and print marketing into a strategy that maximises the impact of both approaches.
1. QR Codes
Think of QR codes as a physical hyperlink that can be used in both printed and digital materials to connect with anyone who has a phone. These visual barcodes provide instant access to your website, product listings, social media profiles, and any other online information that promotes engagement, without requiring the user to copy lengthy URLs from a leaflet or poster.
Moving the information into the digital sphere and linking to it via QR codes bridges the gap between digital marketing and print solutions. It also frees up space in your marketing materials for visuals and taglines by condensing key information into a small QR code, so shape your next strategy around this effective space-saver.
These codes are quite easy to produce, and once you have them, all that is left to do is have the design professionally printed to guarantee its efficiency. A blurry, dense, or overlapping code cannot be scanned properly, and you should also leave plenty of white space around it to make sure users can scan it in one easy movement, so consult with your printing team before signing off on the final design.
2. Multi-Touch Campaigns
When someone subscribes to your newsletter, opts in to your promotional emails, or fills in a contact form, these are all vital opportunities to build customer relationships through repeat interactions. So, make sure that you collect their address as well as their digital contact information so that you can successfully implement a targeted campaign with multiple touch-points.
This can be as simple as mailing out the printed version of your digital materials, either as a printed flyer or as a newsletter, as well as sending them in emails to make it easier for recipients to access or revisit your content. It is also a good idea to follow up any digital promotions or campaigns with a printed mailer to drive awareness across multiple channels and increase the chance of a profitable conversion. After all, sending materials directly to your target audiences often has lower competition and higher open rates compared to emails, and they often remain in a recipient’s home long after the initial email was deleted and forgotten about.
3. Target Demographics
If you send out printed materials without an intended audience in mind, you are effectively wasting these materials. For all you know, you are simply irritating a potential customer by advertising services that they do not need, whilst wasting the opportunity to connect with your ideal audience.
A key appeal of using print marketing materials is that they are quickly and easily personalised to address each recipient by name, so stop distributing your materials without any direction. Before you produce your next print mailer, use data from your digital channels to build a clear profile of your target customer and tailor your content to the different demographics that you have identified. Having a segmented target market that you can tap into is particularly important for businesses that run multiple campaigns, as you can maximise the impact that each campaign has without wasting materials on an unsuitable audience, and this also makes it easier for you to assess the impact of your materials and refine your messaging as the campaign progresses.
4. Repurpose Printed Materials
Bridge the gap between your print and digital marketing by repurposing your online content as printed newsletters, mailers, and other publications. This strategy covers all your audience touchpoints for your next strategy, as it reaches customers who might scroll through your social media or glance at your email newsletter but are not active online every day, as they often respond better to printed content that is delivered straight to their door.
The best part of this strategy is that it requires very little additional effort from your team to make it happen, as the content is already out there in the digital space. Every time you produce content for your brand, whether this is a blog post, a banner announcement, or a piece of referral content that creates backlinks to your website, you have the opportunity to adapt this material for any channel you choose. Mailers, leaflets, local newspapers, or even trade magazines and industry publications; if it is going to widen your reach and drive readers to your website, it’s worth including in your strategy!
Finally, it is not just written content that can be repurposed in this way. If you have recently posted a social media video that gained lots of traction, recorded a Q&A session with your team, or been a guest on an industry-leading podcast, turn excerpts from this content into short-form written pieces that can be sent out across your network.
5. Craft Physical Backlinks
When producing print marketing materials, it is a good idea to view these resources as physical backlinks that direct customers back to your website or other digital platforms. It is here that they will make a purchase, sign up for your services, or interact further with your brand after all, so your top priority should always be to make it easy for customers to access your website.
By combining a clear call to action with either a QR code or a shortened URL, you maximise the likelihood of potential customers clicking through to your website, and you can always combine this approach with special discounts or offers to cover all your bases. You should also include your social media handles, signposted with the relevant icons, to encourage customers to follow your pages and engage with your brand both online and offline. This multi-channel approach gives customers the option to interact with your brand in whichever way works best for them, so invest in these print and digital marketing initiatives and see which one offers the best results for your business.
Print Marketing Services in Birmingham
Don’t let your important messages get lost in the noisy online sphere – cut through the clutter and deliver your targeted content straight to your audience’s door with printed materials that encourage conversions and guarantee long-term brand recall.
Whether you’re adapting your existing strategy or crafting a new one from scratch, you’ll need a printing partner that you can trust, so contact Russell Printers today for high-quality, reliable business printing in the heart of Birmingham.
