3 Reasons Your Print Marketing Collateral Must Match Your Digital Marketing

Decades ago, businesses relied on print marketing.  Without the World Wide Web to disseminate millions of web pages in real time, how did marketing campaigns succeed?!  The question is a bit tongue-in-cheek; obviously, traditional tenets of marketing must be satiated despite actual platforms used to spread awareness.

A brand’s message must be consistent across all channels of marketing.  Therefore, a company’s Twitter handle, though used differently, must resemble impressions made through direct mailers.  A sales flyer should make a reader feel the same way toward a brand that a Facebook page does.

Print marketing must match the pursuits of digital properties, and here are three crucial reasons why it’s so.

Consistency

It takes a number of engagements for consumers to begin making long-term-memory associations to brands.  For example, if one mentions ‘soda,’ Coke, Pepsi and other huge brands likely come to mind.  Major brands invest tons of money in being consistent with consumer-bound messages.  Think of Coke’s fire engine-red label.  It’s now iconic due to consistency.  A potential customer is not likely to recognize a business’ offline content from its online content unless there’s consistency of logo, colors, shapes, tone, etc.  Consistency facilitates better recognition and memory.

Opportunity

Drive down a road replete with billboards, look upon coffeehouse posters, and conduct a number of web searches.  Competition is fierce in all industries, with hundreds to thousands of competitors seeking the same relations with targeted markets.  How can brands better seize opportunity?  The opportunity of recognition improves when on and offline marketing materials are similar.  Imagine searching for a friend in a crowd of hundreds of people; what makes the friend standout?  You recognize them among the adjacent strangers.  Leveraging recognizable marketing material is the same.  Aligned marketing materials create further opportunities for brands to make stronger impressions.

Tenacity

Major brands, like Coke and Pepsi, achieve legacy and tenacity of business through consistent marketing.  Successful owners and marketing directors know, whether using billboards, online ads, or Facebook profiles, the leveraged platforms are just cogs in the main enterprise.  Marketing encompasses all (on and offline) opportunities.  Tenacious brands embrace a number of on and offline platforms, yet there are little variations in messages; differences only exist in regard to how a specific platform’s unique features are leveraged.  Printing can be expensive; ensure your brand is making the most of on and offline initiatives by using them to fuel brand tenacity.

Branding is not a one-time event or campaign but an essential and ongoing need of every business; the need never ends.  Branding helps businesses elude advertising costs by eliminating the ‘middle man,’ marketing and advertising initiatives.  If a pledged consumer consistently uses a service or product, there is less of an overall need to advertise.

Furthermore, the pledged consumer indirectly becomes an advertising vehicle by having a product in their home, using a service for others to observe, and discussing products and services, providing word-of-mouth advertising without realizing it.  Your nose is running; you need a Kleenex, more specifically a tissue.   Kleenex is a brand of tissue product, but the brand has done so well in creating associations, its name is almost interchangeable with its product.  Matched marketing endeavors helps other brands do the same.