These days, many people often believe that traditional marketing ideas like print advertisements are outdated. But they are all wrong. Even the biggest brands like Coca-Cola and Tecno are still involved in print advertising campaigns. If you should drive around the highways of Lagos and Abuja and Enugu, you will find giant billboards advertising iconic brands. Why then should you discard print advertising ideas because we are in the age of digital media? The best brands merge both traditional and digital forms of advertising.
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What Is Print Advertising?
According to Insights For Professionals, print advertising is a widely used form of advertising. Print advertising uses physically printed media to reach potential customers. These advertisements are printed in magazines and newspapers and often come in fliers or brochures as well. Essentially, anything published on print media to capture the attention of a specific target audience falls under print advertising. Examples of forms of print advertising include:
- Business cards
- Loyalty cards
- Banners and posters
- Local newspapers
Print advertising is still much alive. As you drive on the highways, you likely come across banners and posters advertising iconic brands. In Nigeria, a large section of the population still reads newspapers and magazines. Studies show that approximately 60% of the world’s population still reads newspapers. Therefore, print advertising is still alive and well. In this article, I discuss 5 engaging marketing print advertising ideas you’ll love, not just love but have the capacity to grow your business.
- Choose Publications That Suit The Profile Of Your Target Demographics
Marketing is made perfect and efficient when you know your target demographics. As a business owner, you need to know the type of people – your readers who are your potential customers – you want to reach out to. Therefore, study and assess what type of publications your potential customers are reading and how likely they are to buy your service or product if they read your ad. For instance, if you are into fashion, it is wise if you run an ad copy on fashion magazines. Likewise, if you run a software company, a good tech magazine or newspaper is ideal.
- Add Value With Coupons
Informing consumers about your product is one of the many different ways you can use print ads. Nonetheless, you can offer more value by including coupons in your ads. Coupons are a way to attract customers to your business. Coupons simply mean you are offering incentives to customers who patronize you. Coupons could be bonanzas, bonuses, discounts and warranty assurances.
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- Convey A Unified Message
There’s a high predisposition to compress too much information into a print ad, especially since the price for an ad space costs a lot in a print publication. Cramming so much information into a print ad is ill-advised. An ideal print ad should have one, specific message that can be conveyed through concise text and a catchy image. Let the purpose of your ad be known to readers. Let your ad pass just some information. It can be a promo offer, a new opening somewhere in the heart of downtown, brand awareness and so on. The most important thing is to make it brief, simple and straight to the point. And most importantly, let it create a lasting impression.
- Use High-quality Images And Minimal Text
Make your print ad’s design straightforward. Here are a few tips: Choose the right colours, use white or bright-coloured space where you can and always stick with a clear, bold font. Most readers will glance at an ad very shortly without paying much attention to every detail. The goal of print ads is to “Show, don’t tell”. Employ visual elements generally attributed to your brands like your trademark colours and logo. You may also apply a focal point, such as a person or the product itself, to catch the reader’s attention. Whatever technique you chose to employ, your message must be bold, loud, and central. The message should sync well with all the elements in your print ad.
- Combine Print With Digital Techniques
There are various indices to assess if a print publication is effective. Although print advertising may not generate analytics reports as fast and convenient as digital ads do, however, you can take advantage of digital techniques for your print ads by building a landing page to track your print campaign via Google Analytics or other metric reporting services.
There are ways to discover the exact figures for users, web sessions and other data of your print ad. You may also employ QR codes linked with a UTM connection that will drive consumers to your website. These techniques should enable you to measure conversions and evaluate the performance of your print ad campaigns.
Featured image source: Printmagic
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