If I had a nickel for every time a client asked me ‘do you recommend print or online?’ I would be a rich man.
Well, not quite rich, but I’d have a boatload of nickels.
This question comes up almost daily from corporate marketers, association marketers, hospital marketers, and even from colleagues at other media companies.
Unfortunately, the answer is not always cut and dry, especially in the custom media industry (see that word “custom” in there?). In fact, the answer comes in the form of a question. Several of them.
And the answer is based entirely on the asker’s fundamental marketing strategy.
So, before taking sides on the “print versus online” debate, I ask:
- What are your overall marketing objectives? (You would be surprised how many Fortune 500 marketers cannot answer this question without a struggle.)
- What are the goals behind your custom media program? (Customer acquisition? Lead generation? Customer or member retention? Customer engagement? Revenue generation? Cross-selling or up-selling? Driving traffic to your website? Enhancing your social media strategy? Employee communications?)
- Who is your customer and where is your customer? (Reaching a mom buying groceries for her two children is very different from reaching a CIO purchasing 20,000 new workstations for a Fortune 100 company.)
- How will this custom media program be measured? (What will change as a result of your customer receiving your magazine? Increased sales? Increased market-share? Increased retention rates?)
- What else are you doing to communicate with customers in print, online, through in person events, etc.? (How will your custom media program be integrated with these other forms of communication?)
- Are we delivering to an existing customer or member list and what information do you currently have related to physical addresses versus email addresses, or will we need to create or acquire a new list?
- What is your competition doing to communicate with customers in print, online, through in person events, etc.? (Just as you’re competing with your competitor’s business, you are also competing with your competitor’s communications.)
I will not make a recommendation towards print or online until I understand the answers to the above. Nobody (who is actually interested in helping a client) can.
The good news is that once this discussion occurs, the mystery of print versus online is typically solved and you can move forward confident that you have chosen a path for reaching your audience in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
And you won’t have to resort to flipping a coin.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Yet too many people want to make it as simple as a coin flip. I enjoyed the post Josh.
if you want to make money now, do print. if you want to make money in 5 years do online.
Thanks for the comments. Unfortunately Bill I think most ask the question based on budget rather than a lack of knowing how to best communicate with their audience. They are simply looking for someone to convince them they need to invest in print.
And Angela, I would tend to disagree. There is definitely a place for online. In certain scenarios I beleive that online can drive a more rapid ROI than print and other scenarios print is more effective. Honestly, the ideal scenario (and I actually should have included this in my original post) is to do a combination of print and online. The sum has always proven far greater than the individual channels used independently of each other.
These days, I don’t see much of a choice. As a designer who hesitated before going into web design I, like many, actually thought the web would always be a supplemental means of marketing. For a long time, it seemed a good idea to back up a print campaign with some sort of web presence. It was also once a smart idea to put an ad in the Yellow Pages.
Today, I think the inverse is true, perhaps moreso due to social networking. Like it or not, print pieces are fast becoming the collateral for more robust online marketing campaigns. The fact is, visibility is your first priority.
Of course your target audience is a crucial consideration (but who’d of thought my mother in law would have a Facebook account?) Tracking your response is more complicated, measuring your ROI is hard. But the web is—for good or for bad—no longer just a smart follow-up, it’s crucial.
I could not agree with you more Jeff…
Nice post, Josh. I know people hate when a question is answered with another question, but you’re right: doing the soul-searching and internal analysis that helps iron out your strategy will also help to inform what your approach should be when selecting which content delivery mechanism is right for your brand.
In the realm of magazine publishing, print won’t die. I still like love the visceral quality of turning the pages and ingesting the splendor that resides within its pages. I have no problem dedicating an hour or two to reading a magazine. However, I can’t spend more than 30 minutes on one website. My browser is usually filled with endless tabs of information from various online sources, so it’s nearly impossible for me stick to just one. Because my attention is constantly divided, I need content that is brief, focused and relevant to my needs.
What makes online companions to print magazines important to me is having access to content that I can’t find in the magazine. Having access to interactive content, connecting with other fans, and joining the conversation that a post began. Reading a magazine is an escape for me. Another casual way to unplug and replenish my knowledge. I can learn online too, but it’s more about what I need to know now than for leisure.
So, in order for companies to really know which medium to focus on, they must first discover how their customers use either medium and for what reasons. But, that’s kind of a user experience question, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame.