Dear Friend:
IN A COMPLEX WORLD, IT PAYS TO BE SIMPLE.
Eric Sims, our president, has a quote on the home page of our Integral Print Media website that is so simple, it's profound.
It's impossible to make money in print media if you pay too much for print media buying services and advertising.
In a time when the economy is in chaos, you have a job to do. You have to get a message out into a fragmented world and shout that you have something to sell. You labor over every word of copy, find the right graphics, hone a killer offer and then risk blowing the whole campaign by not concentrating on two major factors: using the most effective media and buying media that delivers the ROI needed to sustain the campaign.
Electronic media is the rage of all marketers because it's still relatively new, fast, and, yes, cheap. However, for all its strengths, electronic media has more unknowns and negatives than strengths. In addition to deliverability issues and open rate measurability, trust is the wider issue. E-mail, mobile mail and text messaging may be the hot media but consider the multiple risks.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another hot topic and an important one to include in your marketing mix. It is not a media. It's an enabling tool for consumers who are looking for your product or category to find you. If you put too much focus on SEO, you risk missing a huge potential audience.
Direct Mail is always an option and should be integrated into your campaign when it fits. Given the right demographics to target, you have significant opportunities to segment and target messages and offers. This is especially true when you can separate prospects from current customers. However, postage rates went up again and that can have a dampening effect on the campaign's ROI.
Print media has the greatest upside for every direct response marketing campaign. All the issues highlighted above are minimized with print media. Today, it is the only medium that has high pass-along opportunities and is trusted by readers. That's true for B2C and B2B brands. If done right, it will give you the greatest return on your investment.
Sooner or later, you are going to be held accountable for the campaign and that accountability will fall in two areas:
