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After the primary discussion event was finished, Allistair opened the floor to a Q&A session hosted by members of the DS Group. This part of the masterclass was especially fun, because it let us engage with our clients themselves, but then also listen to their concerns and individual questions.

At the DS Group, we like to pride ourselves on our reputation for customer service, so we loved getting to help our clients in a slightly different way than we usually would. Plus, we love connecting with our customers, and the masterclass event let us do that in a way that’s outside of our usual business settings.

Some people pointed out how the masterclass also worked as a great networking event for local business owners, and we like to think we’ve had a hand in forging some brand new business connections amongst some of our most valued customers! Listening to some of the feedback we had after the event, our customers seemed to have a really good time (especially considering the fact we also had pastries on offer for the attendees), and we’d like to consider the event as a fantastic success! We had a lot of fun hosting our masterclass seminar, and hopefully one day in the future we’d like to host another one!

USING PRINT AND DIGITAL MARKETING TOGETHER

There are many reasons you’d want to use either print or digital marketing in your campaigns, but we’re here to discuss how you can use them both together to achieve the best results.

The world of marketing has undeniably undergone a shakeup in the past few decades. Once upon a time, marketing teams had to work with print media like flyers, direct mail, newsletters and posters to capture their audience’s attention. However, things have gotten much more complicated now considering the rise in digital marketing. Some wellestablished businesses struggle to understand how to effectively use digital marketing, which they view as too complicated and unpredictable. On the other hand, many newer businesses that have relied solely on digital marketing are unaware of print marketing’s benefits, and view print as oldfashioned and ineffective.

In reality, both views are wrong: print and digital marketing each have their own advantages and shortcomings. In the areas where print marketing is lacking, digital marketing solves its problems, and in areas where digital marketing could work better, print marketing already has the problem covered. What businesses need to understand isn’t which form of marketing is better over the other, but how to effectively use them both in tandem for best results.

The first thing to understand is that both print and digital marketing have different audiences, processes, and in some cases, goals. There are times where businesses should invest more resources into one than another considering the nature of their business. For example, older generations are typically less active on most social media channels than younger ones, so some digital marketing methods (like Instagram live) won’t work as well with that demographic. Another example is how print marketing strategies like direct mail marketing might not always be effective, such as in cases where people have no one single address, or live in places such as apartment buildings where they may not check their mail as much as others.

PRINT AND DIGITAL: THE PROS AND CONS

Traditionally, print marketing is seen as having a longer “shelf life” compared to its digital counterpart. This is because people have a tendency to keep it within the home until they choose to dispose of it. Most digital marketing methods, on the other hand, are forgotten by your audience the second they stop paying attention to them. Paradoxically, it’s becoming harder and harder for some forms of digital marketing to be as effective the more that they’re getting used, as consumers’ attention is becoming diluted given how many marketing messages they’re seeing in a single day.

However, well-crafted digital advertising campaigns are easily much more immersive than print marketing. Marketing teams can include dynamic elements such as videos or rolling banners via email marketing, as well as the functionality to link easily to websites and products. The use of marketing via social media channels is also one of the most valuable engagement tools of the 21st century, as it allows consumers to engage with your business regularly in an organic way, and even share your content with others. Social media marketing is also totally free to use, and many businesses prefer this over print due to the cost-effective benefits alone.

Because of the differences in market and objective, using both print and digital marketing strategies affords you more chances to catch your audience’s attention in general. It definitely doesn’t hurt your chances to send out similar marketing messages through both print and digital channels. This way, you’ll capture different audiences through the different mediums, and for any customers that receive marketing through both channels, it simply increases their awareness of you and your products.

COMBINING THE TWO FOR BEST EFFECT

CASE STUDIES OF DIGITAL AND PRINT MARKETING WORKING TOGETHER WELL

Considering that each method has benefits and drawbacks, it’s clear that businesses can achieve the best results by using both print and digital marketing methods together. One example of a great way to do that is through the use of QR codes. By including a QR code on your packaging or leaflets, you can have all the eye-catching benefits of print marketing, combined with the ease of access that comes with marketing through digital means. Your customers simply have to scan the code to be directed immediately to your website.

QR codes can also be used in print marketing campaigns to track how many engagements your marketing materials receive, allowing the analogue form of marketing to reap similar benefits of the digital form.

At the DS Group, we also offer a unique form of print marketing that lends itself especially well to digital marketing: our contract publishing service (which you can read more about on page 22. As part of our service, the articles produced for our clients’ contract magazines make fantastic content to be included within social media posts, newsletters and blog posts. This means that the print content can be recycled for digital marketing purposes, and reach different customers each time. The physical copies can drive engagements and marketing, and once you’ve got your customer’s attention, you can use it to promote your business’s social media channels so they’ll receive marketing messages in the future. Though companies working in the physical space often utilise digital marketing methods, some companies that only operate in the digital space have also been known to use print marketing effectively. In a particularly famous instance, the short-term lettings company Airbnb used to offer their own print magazine that was distributed to their customers. It was a fantastic way to join the two kinds of marketing together, as Airbnb’s customers are primarily travellers, so their marketing team produced a regular magazine to serve as a travel guide, which featured some of their most interesting properties.

Arguably the most famous example of combining the two forms of marketing was Coca-Cola’s nowlegendary campaign to print personalised names on bottles of their drink. The campaign was an instant viral hit online, primarily through social media, as consumers were hunting down bottles which had their own names on the labels, and then sharing them online. It was a fantastic way to drive sales, as people were eagerly hunting down bottles with their own names on to share with their friends and family. Coca-cola took this further later into the campaign, as they let customers personalise their own labels and order drinks to be delivered. It was a fantastic online marketing campaign, but driven entirely through physical print marketing.