Benefits of Print Advertising

3 Reasons to use Print Advertisements in Marketing Campaigns

While many of today's advertisers are moving to the web to reach their markets, print advertising still holds many benefits and can play an important role in marketing.

Targeted Marketing

Magazines and newspapers offer the ability to target a specific demographic through a product the audience connects with. Companies can target readers based on common interests, profession, region, or a variety of other factors. In addition, many publications provide readership demographics that include average household income, age, location, and spending habits.

Knowing the target audience of the periodical allows companies to position their advertisements accordingly. For example, a company that has stores in multiple cities could advertise different locations in the corresponding newspapers. Likewise, a clothing company with lines for men and women would advertise each line in a publication serving the respective audience.

Print Ads Have High Retention Rates

Magazine and newspaper ads can be viewed in a single glance and don't require scrolling or clicking through. When people read offline, they tend to have longer attention spans. Web reading is useful for gathering quick blurbs of information, but people pay more attention to what they are reading in print. For this reason, consumers tend to remember more of what they read (and see) in print.

Print readers are also very loyal readers. People who read magazines or newspapers do so regularly. This loyalty, combined with the high retention rates, make print a very important medium for branding.

Brand Marketing with Print

Because print ads are inherently visual, graphics and text can be used to convey an emotional response or create brand recognition. One example of this is a company logo. An illustration can be tied very closely to a company and its products through print advertising. Combine the logo with the appropriate aesthetic and a certain emotion or feeling is triggered by the ad. The power of creating an emotion and associating it with the company's logo is branding at its best.A good example of this is the McDonald's golden arch. Almost any American flipping through the pages of a magazine would recognize that logo and immediately know it was an ad for McDonald's without seeing anything else. That is branding at its finest.

The Future of Print

Although magazines and newspapers are now competing with more advertising mediums than ever, print advertising is still an important component of marketing. A good advertising campaign uses different forms of media while recognizing the benefits of each. Publications may have more competition nowadays but the core benefits of print advertising will be relevant for as long as consumers and business buyers read printed words on paper.