Print Is Dead! or Is it?
“Print is dead.” It's a message we are bombarded with constantly, but is it true?
Nah. In fact, there’s never been a better opportunity in print marketing than right now.
How much physical mail do you get today versus say 10 years ago? I bet it is substantially less. How excited are you when you get something in the mail? I bet it’s exceedinglymore excited than when you get an email.
I'm sure many of you remember the days of direct mail marketing. Every day you went through your mail, sorting junk mail into one stack and bills into another – maybe there was something leftover that wasn’t one of those two, but usuallynot. Later that day, you'd login to America Online (not evenAOL yet) and you’d wait with anticipation to hear those magic words, "You've got mail!"
The smartest marketers of the mid to late '90s jumped on email marketing as an opportunity to get the most out of that excitement factor. And maybe that's how fast you should be jumping on the print bandwagon right now.
How times have changed. Email has become such a huge, almost mundane, part of our lives that there's no thrill ingetting a new email. Most people aren’t even reading entire emails; they’re just skimming.
On the other hand, when you reach into your mailbox and pull out a magazine you’ve subscribed to, or a letter, or even a catalogue from a company you like shopping with, there's an exhilaration that has been missing for a while.
I'm not saying email marketing is dead, far from it. Smart companies are actually investing heavily in email as a channel, and I encourage you to consider the same. Nor am I saying that you should time-warp back to 1990 and revive the same marketing strategies you were using back then. What I am saying is that opportunities exist for the right kind of print marketing, which will get people excited about hearing from you.
Don't believe me? Look at Red Bull, one of the most progressive media companies on the planet (yes, I said media company not energy drink company) who publishes The Red Bulletin, a highly targeted print magazine. This publication distributes 2.3 million copies globally, making it one of the most widely circulated, international, monthly magazines aimed at an audience between the ages of 25 and 35.
Need more proof? The Content Marketing Institute (a business dedicated to serving marketers that deliver original, high-quality content) also supports the value in print marketing. Not only do they preach print marketing to their audience of over 150,000 email subscribers, but they haveCCO (Chief Content Officer) Magazine, a subscription-based print magazine.
And what about Airbnb? They recently launched a print magazine that received heavy criticism. What are they thinking? Who makes print anymore? But they can justify the cost and show the value. Airbnb attracts a younger demographic, but what about between the ages of 40 to 50, or even older demographic? They might see a beautiful design and house magazine in the checkout line at a grocery store and pick it up. They will flip through it and start to realize what Airbnb is and what it can do.
So, what is the right kind of print marketing for you?
The answer is different for everybody and depends on a lot of factors. You go where your desired audience is; you meet them on their level. It’s the message contained in the vehicle. It’s the words on the page. It’s the articles. The writing. The images. It's time to seriously think about making print a primary medium for your marketing or content strategy. Nothing is ever absolute. You’re never going to be all in on one strategy. It has to be a mix. And while I believe everyone has to market in the year we live in, maybe your year still includes print and TV. But you have to prove it. Figure out what is worth it for your business.
This article was originally written for and published in
London Business Magazine