Here’s Why Print (Done Right) Will Never Be Dead

Print advertising’s influence on consumers is tangible and long-lasting – everything marketers want for their brand engagements, yet doubt in its abilities clouds its reputation. Here’s why and how marketers can understand print and its power when done right.

Why walk when you can ride a bike? Why ride a bike when you can drive a car? It all depends on where you are going and how fast you want to get there. The same applies in marketing. Varying delivery methods deliver varying outcomes, one does not replace the other.

Now imagine when the bike was invented, I told you “walking is dead.” You would think I was ridiculous, right?

Yet somewhere, someone once said “We live in a digital world, print is now dead” and marketers started doubting themselves ever since.

It’s that doubt that continues to cause confusion for small business owners who need to reach their communities, steering their advertising choices down the dead end road of weak lead funnels and missed goals, by relying on the latest and greatest advertising option, instead of tried a true method.

How did we get here? Newspapers are to blame.

Print is the poster child for offline marketing, and its reputation began to fade during the changing tides of marketing its headliner, newspapers, experienced.

Newspapers were once the gold standard for getting the word out since the inception of the printing press. Media giants like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used their newspapers to shape the way we stay informed and make decisions, and they made a lot of money doing it.

And then the Internet happened.

Up until this point, audiences paid for content. But, the Internet eliminated every barrier of entry for any person with an opinion to create and publish content to audiences across the world. Add in social media and everyone’s opinions can be heard now, for free. This surge of free content slowly diluted the power and influence of the newspapers bringing their subscription numbers lower and lower every year.

The subscription-only model of readership declined because the value of content declined in the eyes of readers. Why pay for access to news when you can get it for free? Now news is seen as something that should be shared freely, almost a human right.

Newspapers declined because they neglected to shift their business models away from a subscription-only model and adjust the design and frequency of their printed papers for the public’s new media consumption habits. Not because people stopped interacting with printed material.

“Newspapers declined because they neglected to shift their business models away from a subscription-only model and adjust the design and frequency of their printed papers for the public’s new media consumption habits. Not because people stopped interacting with printed material. ”

Print is an immersive, physical and psychological experience for the reader.

An interaction with print is slow, methodical, and long-lasting – all the ideal circumstances marketers are striving to achieve for their brand interactions. Printed material caters to the senses of sight and touch, even scent and sound, with glossy pages, a crisp crinkle of the paper and smell of fresh ink off the presses. All of these elements collide to make a psychological impact in the brain, registering a more memorable impression that is unmatched by its quick digital counterpart.

When compared to the overwhelm of digital, where brands are lost in mindless scrolling, print excels at making an impact. It exists for far longer. You can read it without interruption, tricky algorithms and concern for battery life. For the marketer, print is a tangible billboard that lingers inside of the home of your customer, that you only pay for once.

But none of that matters - if it’s not matched with powerful numbers. And that is the 2nd nail in the print coffin driving print into the ground these days.

Thinking back to newspapers, William Randolph Hearst said - “there is no substitute for circulation.”

Circulation is all that matters. Eventually the advertisers will figure that out too. But circulation is the first place publishers discreetly cut when sales aren’t being met.

“Circulation is all that matters. Eventually the advertisers will figure that out too. But circulation is the first place publisher discreetly cut when sales aren’t being met.”

Most magazine media kits read like this: 50% Male, 50% Female, College Educated, $150,000+ household incomes. A long list of “high traffic” distribution locations around town, with no mention of how many copies are placed at each location. If some are mailed, catch phrases like “majority”, “homes valued $500,000+”, or “affluent” are used, but no mention of exactly how many addresses the publisher is paying the Post Office to deliver to. Some go as far as to say readership is 50,000 an issue, 1 million a year, etc. They’ll also include their social media channels and present them as gospel that their 15,000 followers see every post they make. Reality is maybe only 150 people see a particular post and then the same 2, 3, 4, or 20 people like and comment over and over again.

All of this is designed to do one thing… Make the advertiser think more people are going to see their ad than is actually true. The real number of actual readers is more often than not 90% less than what is depicted.

It’s these types of practices that do permanent damage to an industry. If you do this, print is dead, for you and your advertisers.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Enter Verified Circulation.

If verified means to be proven accurate or truthful based on evidence and circulation is a count of how many copies of a particular publication are distributed then, verified circulation means truthful circulation.

It’s essential in advertising because circulation (i.e. reach or audience size) is what marketers buy online or offline. If that number isn’t true, fluctuates, or is declining, the value of the advertising greatly diminishes.

When publishers sacrifice circulation because of poor sales, the advertiser’s campaigns don’t perform as well, and then the advertiser thinks print doesn’t work. It’s a deadly cycle.

This is why marketers don’t trust print.

Print didn’t die because of the invention of new media platforms. It “died” in the minds of the marketers because publishers started falling down on their responsiblities to their advertisers.

It’s not because it doesn’t work, it’s because it doesn’t work in small quantities and that is the case for every advertising platform. Low traffic blogs, obscure TV channels, billboards on backroads, anywhere there is not a high frequency of reach, the odds of ROI on advertisements are low.

You have to increase circulation to increase performance on ads, no matter the platform.

“Anywhere there is not a high frequency of reach, the odds of ROI on advertisements are low. ”

“Print done right” starts with returning to high circulation that is verified. Combined with clear, powerful numbers, the psychology of touch delivered by print media has the strongest opportunity to make a lasting impression that no marketer can deny.

Gardner Business Media finds that print drives stronger brand recall.

• 95% of people under 25 years old read magazines (Top Media Advertising, n.d.).

• 82% of consumers trust print ads the most when making a purchase decision (Burstein, 2017).

• Print readers usually spend 20 minutes or more with their publication in hand, while a typical visitor to a digital news site sticks around for less than five minutes (Heitman, n.d.).

• Print ads require 21% less cognitive effort to process (R.C. Brayshaw, 2020).

• By combining print and digital ads, it will make online campaigns 400% more effective (Top Media Advertising, n.d.).

• Print and direct mail marketing bring a 9% customer response rate compared to other digital marketing channels, which hover around 1% or less (R.C. Brayshaw, 2020).

That last statistic about print and direct mail brings up even more interesting statistics. According to Forbes.com, direct mail….

• Direct Mail receives a 4.4% response rate compared to 0.12% with email

• Direct mail’s response rates are actually anywhere from 10 to 30 times higher than that of digital.

• The upswing in the use of direct mail and its enduring effectiveness is because, “Giving, receiving and handling tangible objects remain deep and intuitive parts of the human experience.”

• Gallup reported that 36% of people under the age of 30 look forward to checking their mailboxes every day. What’s more, is 95% of 18-to-29-year-olds have a positive response to receiving personal cards and letters.

Print done right is disruptive, but in a good way. Because consumers are so used to seeing digital ads, they tend to tune them out. When you receive something in the mail, you stop and read it. Whether for a second, a minute or longer, the tactile engagement creates a connection with it and it engages more senses than digital. This makes it easier to focus on the content in hand and encourages the recipient to read and recall your product or services. And that is why print, done right, will never be dead.

No amount of TV, billboards, search ads or social media advertising will ever make that science go away. Businesses who want to stand out, increase the ROI of their advertising campaigns and reach more consumers will have to turn off rumors and turn to the science backed data of the platform to win more.