Print marketing - why include it in your marketing plan?

Print marketing has been around for hundreds of years. Some of the most early common examples include newspapers, in the seventeenth century, which included line or classified advertising. Now we have so many forms of advertising, but all are not equal in their effectiveness on your target audiences.

There are two main ways for you to effectively implement print marketing:

Press releases / PR
Costs : As little as $80; Can include PR agency time or your time spent writing and distributing an optimized press release
Distribution:

Paid print advertising:
Costs: Much higher than PR; On the cheap end, for a post card mailer (with a very small distribution) you may only have to put out about $300 dollars. On the average it is more likely to run in the thousands of dollars, depending on the form of collateral (can include advertisements in direct mail pieces, catalogs, print ads in magazines, newspapers and fliers, point of purchase materials in stores etc).

How print compares to other forms of marketing tools:
Longer lifespan
Print mail has the potential of a longer lifespan than a TV commercial or radio. For example, people tend to re-read their magazines and even pass them onto other people.

Clear vertical market targeting
With all the market segment specific cable TV channels (SPIKE for men, Lifetime for women) out there, you can get some level of a vertical market focus. When using print marketing, you can find even more specific vertical marketing opportunities, whether it is an industry or hobby specific magazine or direct mail piece to a carefully selected group.

There is every type of magazine, newsletter and newspaper out there you can imagine. Topics can range from: Fly Fishing, Real Estate Investments, Stock Market Investing, Food and Wine, Scrapbooking, Hawaii, Monster Trucks, Science Fiction, etc. All of these print media's have all done a lot of research on their demographics to help them sell ads, and they are all willing to share this info with you for free.

For your direct mail pieces, you can build, purchase or rent vertical specific databases made up of your target audiences. You can even do A /B testing of different pieces offering different discounts, or different layouts and messaging, to see what is most effective.

Must have in your strategic marketing plan:
All in all, it is important to make sure you include some component of print marketing in your strategic marketing plan. At the very least you should build an optimized press release which has the potential of showing up in market specific magazines and newsletters, or even online in forums and blogs. You should also evaluate closely any print advertising opportunities.

And don't forget to think outside the box. I recently saw a print ad for a high end mattress in Food and Wine, and I understand they have received quite a favorable response from that placement.