Printed Ads vs Online Ones

Some people claim printed ads can be as effective, or even more effective than online ones. Has anyone tried magazines and newspapers as a way to advertise their website? What strategy did you use?

 

Both are useful for the marketing .Online ads will help you in reaching the group of educated people or we can say that the people who uses internet for his work or timepass.But printed media will take you to both internet users as well as non users .So results will be different for the different group of people .

 

Normally it depends on your reach.

Advertising is an important action for the business.For a startup, it is expensive to
build itself as a brand. Traditional advertising (Television,Newspaper) will always have a place in the market.
The Function of traditional advertising is usually longer than digital advertising.
Online marketing refers to a set of a dominant technique used for advertising products and services through the Internet.
The main limitation of online marketing is the lack of tangibility means that consumers are unable to try out.

 

I have a lot of experience in the printing industry and a degree in marketing. The trend seems to be a move towards online marketing. We used to print many flyers for clients a few years ago, but it's been declining steadily. This was mostly for normal brick and mortar businesses that were already established in the marketplace and built an online presence later on. From my own experience, for any online business you will need some degree of offline brand awareness, but high volume flyers is not the way to go. Rather rent billboards or brand your vehicle. Flyers are literally just thrown away and the cost of getting them distributed far exceeds the cost of an online campaign if you measure the nett desired result per dollar. I'm not really convinced by facebook's paid-for ads. The demography, interests and geographical location of the audience can be really exact, but anything that seems "marketed" in my opinion is scrolled by if there is no immediate need for your product/service or there is no call to action in your post that will convince the reader. Google Adwords has a much higher relevance since the person that sees your ad is already looking for that specific item/service.

I guess it kind of depends on the nature of your product. If it's something that can be digitally delivered or consumed such as a music service or a subscription such as insurance brokerage - you'll be better off running an online campaign imo.
If your product is a physical good, people tend not to trust the quality or legitimacy of the product or site, in this case a physical presence at relevant places (markets/trade shows etc) will greatly benefit your campaign. Consumers have the need to attach a face to an "online brand" or at the very least see a sample of the product before being willing to buy. We all know that the "testimonials" on sites are made up, so i feel that testimonials are a waste of time. Have you ever read testimonials on a site and believed that a happy customer really took time out of their day to praise you? That hardly ever happens except - i guess - if your product really is awesome.

In either case, if you want to monetize your site i would make use of a referral system that rewards people for sharing their experience. This allows the growth of your customer base to propagate naturally and to all the right people. People with similar needs and preferences tend to hang out with other people with those similar needs. If the referrer gets rewarded for their referral, they would do it with a smile. You don' necessarily need to reward them financially, but rather by giving them higher "status" or something similar on your platform.

Magazine ads might be a good call if the niche that you are marketing towards has a specific publication aimed at that niche market, but if you go for a general magazine that doesn't appeal to that market your hit rate will be very very low. The same counts for newspapers. The other thing is that it is very hard to measure the success of your print ad campaign. You might think that your traffic doubled due to a printed ad, but there could be many other reasons why traffic has doubled in the same period (like organic search results), but you wouldn't know if it cannot be measured. if you run an online campaign with analytics, you can really see where your traffic comes from and focus your marketing budget on the things that you know works.

That's my 2 cents, hope it helps.

 

The best way is to combine printed ads together with online ads. The main issue with printed ads is that they cost much, and would also be dependent on the circulation of the magazine or paper you choose to have the ads in. Online ads can be free if they're placed in social media, and they can be (technically anyway) viewed by more people. In such social media like Facebook or Twitter, it could even be more targeted as most of the contacts there are those who are connected to you.

 

I still do quite a bit of print advertising for clients (newspaper, magazine, direct mail) and I can assure you, yes it is effective. But compared to online marketing, it's also quite expensive.

For example: I can send out 10,000 emails, or get 10,000 online ad impressions, for pennies each. Where 10,000 pieces of print media costs quite a bit more.

On the plus side, I've noticed a far better response rate (percentage wise) with physical media. I believe it's due to online ads being far easier to ignore, and /or delete. Whereas a physical piece of paper is right there in your hands, which makes it a bit more personal, and worthy of attention?

Of course, a website address is always included in every offline advertisement, for anyone who wants to visit a website to learn more about the company / offer.

As far as ROI goes... it all depends. For big ticket items I will almost always recommend physical print media. But for small ticket items, and especially digital products, I have to agree with Fred_ZAR...