The Importance of Print Media and How It Can Benefit Your Brand

The act of physically interacting with the paper of a book stimulates the memory section of your brain more than a screen can. This can give you an edge over the competition, even if they have a digital advertising budget much larger than yours. With the right mix of print and digital marketing, you will have the advantage over your competitors.

Even just having business cards to hand out to people increases the chances of them engaging with your brand or services. 

In addition to the sensory aspects, print media is widely considered more credible than digital media. People who subscribe to magazines and newspapers do so for a reason — they believe the information contained in the publication is accurate, credible and provides them with some benefit. Advertising in these mediums increases your brand's public perception, because they associate your brand's name with the publication's name. There's a reason businesspeople want to be on Forbes magazine so much: It's an incredibly prestigious magazine.

With the oversaturation of the digital branding and advertising space, there's less competition for printed material.

Digital advertising is simply easier and less costly to do. With the advent of Google and Facebook tracking billions of people's habits and providing tools to create, target and run ads within minutes, advertisers have an enormous amount of data to have extreme flexibility and control over who they target their advertisements.

Magazines are an amazing option for print advertising. Even with the advent of digital media, magazines have barely seen any decrease in readership over the past eight years. In fact, 2019 had the highest recorded magazine readership since 2012. Magazines are often read by a very niche, predictable audience, so you get a higher return on investment from magazine ads than digital ads (assuming you choose the right magazine for the right target audience).

Online, everyone does all they can to avoid ads. There are countless ad blocker plugins for every web browser that exists. There's a high chance that you have one installed right now! In 2020, an estimated 42.7% of all internet users had an ad block plugin installed. However, in magazines, advertisements are part of the culture, they are expected, and they are part of the magazine experience. 

Digital ads are avoided at all costs, most digital ads are never even looked at, and when given the option, users close or skip the ad as fast as possible. Ad view times are incredibly low online. However, in print media, advertisements stick around for years. Have you ever taken a look at the dates on some of the magazines found in waiting rooms? You can often find magazines over five years old in the piles of magazines and newspapers.

To further determine the value of print advertising, let's examine the pros and cons:

Pros:

• Sensory experience
• Builds credibility
• High exposure
• Less competitive
• Longevity

Cons:

• High buy-in prices
• Can take weeks to appear in publications
• Can't make changes after print
• No fine-tuned audience targeting

While print media is an amazing tool, it works best when it's mixed in several advertising and marketing mediums.