In terms of newspaper readers versus online readers, it is no longer a question of why online marketing has become a staple and print media is losing ground. The real question is why online marketing is working so well. Consider the advantages it has over print media in terms of time, costs, and effect. Let’s go into more detail of why online marketing is gaining popularity.

Buyers Look Online
Buyers are changing. While direct mail marketing isn’t one for the history books yet, the new aspects of marketing are web usage. Buyers are smarter with their money; they don’t just immediately spend it on the first ad they see. They research products, competitors and prices, often online, making direct marketing far more difficult. This is not to say you can no longer use direct marketing, but online marketing may have more of an immediate impact.

Media Usage Down, Web Usage Up
In the book “Get Content, Get Customers,” it’s noted that while newspaper sales are going down, PC usage is going up. Look at the huge growth in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn users, compare it to how major newspapers are losing ground and cutting budgets, and you’ll see why online marketing is superior. Again, this is not to say traditional media marketing and coverage has no place, but in the last 40 years, newspapers readers have almost been halved in certain age groups, while internet usage has gone from nothing to billions.

Immediate Impact of Online Marketing
Online marketing can be easier to track, easier to implement, and easier to see the results. This is because of advancing digital technologies for tracking search engine rates, site traffic, and click throughs. For example, with Google Analytics, you can get a free reporting tool showing visitor trends, traffic sources, page visits and even what keywords people are using to find your site. Try getting the same kind of information and reporting from your print marketing.

Easier to Build Prospect and Customer Base
With email marketing, blog RSS feeds, social media accounts, and other useful content technologies, building up a base of leads, prospects, and customers has become much more streamlined.

For example, you can use search engine marketing, either SEO or Pay-Per-Click, to capture leads and send them to your website. From there, say they fill out a form requesting more information. You provide said information, but they continue to shop around. You however, captured their email address and they agreed to opt-in to your monthly newsletter. Next month you send out your email, they never found a better solution and return to your website to make a purchase.

Of course, there are many different ways online marketing works; this is just one example to demonstrate how simple online marketing can be when it comes to building a base of clients and reaching new customers.

Online Is Cheaper and Easier
While print media is likely going to stay for some time, it is simply easier and faster to publish online. You can run a blog, website, social page, and newsletter for incredibly low amounts and publish all the content yourself. With print, you’re restricted to publication deadlines and sometimes have to pay exorbitant amounts for ad space. This, however, is not to say effective online marketing is cheap, only that it can cut down marketing costs.

As you can see, online marketing is nothing new; we’ve been doing it for years. However, why we use it is changing. Buyers are adapting to being sold, having likely experienced thousands of commercials, received hundreds of direct mail letters, listened to radio ads, and looked over newspaper editorials. Now they are experiencing blogs, sites, email, and social pages. Why is simple: it is an easier way to get information.

Part 3:  Print Industry Internet Services

There’s an old saying: “If you can’t beat them, join them.”  This is especially true for those in the printing industry.  The question is:  Are there Internet marketing services I can offer that would compliment my print business and increase my revenue?  The unequivocal answer:  YES!

Let’s examine some examples and delineate the print media and the Internet counterpart:

• Print Catalog/Directory => Internet “flip book”
• Print Brochure => Internet PDF file, “flip book”, mini-Website, video on a CD/DVD/memory-stick
• High-end direct mail => HTML Email
• Newsletters => HTML Email or electronic newsletter

The above is a short list, but the possibilities really are enormous.  There is also great synergy and competitive benefit in offering Internet marketing services that compliment your print offerings.  Some of them include:

• You already have the clients
• They have expressed a need
• You can not only fulfill that expressed need, but give them options to further fulfill the need
• You can “bundle” it with your current service offerings and provide an attractive package price
• You can become a one-stop provider giving you a leg-up on the competition

That leaves only one question:  How?

As I see it, you have two choices:

1. Develop the capability in-house
2. Outsource the project

For most printers, option 2 makes the most sense, at least as a starting point.  This means finding an Internet marketing agency willing to partner with you.  The hard part is going to be finding an Internet marketing agency that has the full spectrum of capabilities to compliment your print offerings.

Let’s wrap things up in a simple summary:

• Business in the print industry is likely to be down in 2009 due to the economy & loss of business to other media, primarily the Internet
• The Internet is here to stay and instead of fighting it use it to get new print business and offer it to clients to compliment your print services.

Part 2:  Print Industry Internet Marketing

By now most companies know they need and already have a Website.  Many of our clients come to us with a Website already in place and ask one simple question:  Why isn’t it working?  By that they typically mean they’re getting little to no business from it.  Surprisingly, some of the client sites are only a year or two old.  Of course, some also date back to the late 1990’s.  Age of the site can play a role, but it isn’t a dominant factor.  So, what are the dominant factors?  The answer is deceptively simple.  Only two elements will determine who gets business from the Internet:

1. Your Website must be at least equal to, but preferably better than your competitors
2. Your Website must be easily found in the search engines

Now that I’ve told you the answer, one would think I could end my post here, but the truth is that both items are easier said than done!  Let’s discuss them in detail.

What does it mean that a Website is equal to or better than your competitors’?
Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean.  It doesn’t mean the design is simply breath taking.  Websites that use Flash to capture the eye of the visitor and colors that dazzle don’t necessary “sell” or accomplish the business objectives the company had in mind.  There’s nothing wrong with the proper use of design technology, but it is not what makes a Website a heavy weight contender in the market place.  The real answer is that the marketing must dictate the design.  In effect, the marketing must be built into the Website from the beginning.  Here’s a simple “short list” of the marketing elements:

• Branding, especially related to competitive positioning
• Compelling offers related to what you’re selling
• A “call to action”, including at least a form and phone number
• Trust builders, such as trade organization logos and highly recognized logos like the BBB
• Simple and intuitive navigation, where the visitor is never more than two clicks from the information they seek
• Lastly, and most importantly, it must be search engine optimized

Every item on the above list is important, but I am going to single out two as critical, the compelling offers and search engine optimization.

What is a compelling offer?
It is an offer that addresses a potential client’s “pain point” (i.e. need).  The more pain points that the site addresses, the more likely the visitor is to respond to the call to action.  It’s that simple.  Or is it?  Coming up with compelling offers that make visitors want to respond to the call to action isn’t simple.   They need not only to address the potential client’s pain points, but they must also differentiate you from your competitors.  Remember, on the Web your competitors are only a click away.

Here is a good exercise.
Write down what you believe your target market’s five most critical pain points are.   Then develop a compelling offer to address each one.  Review your Website to see if it addresses the critically pain points with compelling offers.  Then visit the sites of your top competitors and see what they’re doing.

Search Engine Optimization – Getting Found in the Search Engines
Having the world’s best Website is of no value if it isn’t easily found in the search engines, especially Google which controls over 60% of the search market.  Here are five simple statistics regarding the importance of being easily found in the search engines.

1. 87 percent of visitors arrive at a site as the result of a search
2. 90 percent of “found” sites show up in the first two pages of results.  65 percent of searchers stop after looking at the first page of search returns and only 35 percent go to page two.
3. 55 percent of all online purchases are the result of a search
4. Having the first position in paid search has been show to provide 27 percent unaided brand lift
5. 75 percent of searchers prefer the “organic results” over sponsored (i.e. paid) listings

Therefore, it is crucial that your Website rank highly in search engines like Google and Yahoo for keywords that people actually use to find the products and services your company offers.

How can you achieve top rankings in the key search engines? Here are two key factors that determine your search engine rankings:

1. The keyword phrases must be properly built into the page coding tags and copy
2. External links with elements of the keyword phases must point to the page

Teaching search engine optimization goes beyond the scope of this post, but there are some excellent books on the subject.  I suggest you visit Amazon’s book section and do a search for “search engine optimization”.  You will find some excellent books and be able to see how other people have rated them.  It is entirely possible to do your own search engine optimization, if you are willing to invest the time.  Alternatively, you can have it done professionally by a firm like ours.  The typical return on investment is enormous.

How about paid listings? Paid listings, also know as pay per click advertising, are a critical part of search engine marketing.  It is simply impossible to get your Website to rank in the organic results for all the keyword phrases your target market is likely to use.  Pay per click can fill in the gaps and can be used to dominate a search engine page, by having more than one or two listing on the page.  The benefits boil down to the following:

• Request based advertising (“search return”) is capable of reaching the entire online search segment you are targeting
• ROI based – bid on keywords & only pay when searchers click on the listing
• Degree of control when it comes position, budget, timing, region, country and results tracking
• Rapid indexing

Search engine optimization plus pay per click advertising together represents the most cost effective, thorough search engine marketing approach.

Again, it is entirely possible to develop your own pay per click advertising campaign.  Simply go to Google and click on “Advertising Programs” and they will walk you through the steps of setting up a pay per click advertising campaign.  However, building an effective landing page and optimizing/maintaining the campaign is generally time consuming and requires significant knowledge.   It comes down to how much time and money do you want to invest.  Often, having the campaign set up by a professional agency is the most cost effect in the long term.

Before I wrap up this post I like to address what I believe is the most important question of all:  How do I measure the effectiveness of my Internet marketing?  Here is what I suggest:

1. Add a Web analytics program to your site such as Google Analytics
2. Use trackable phone numbers
3. Calculate the return on investment (ROI)

That’s it for now.  In “Part 3:  Print Industry Internet Services”, we’ll discuss Internet services you can offer that will compliment your print offerings, differentiate you from your competitors, and likely increase your profitability.

Part I:  The Problem

The Printing Industry and the Internet often appear at odds with each other.  Printing, the third largest industry in the US, has lost a lot of ground to the Internet.  Now with the economy in a deep recession, it is only natural to ask:  What is the outlook for the Printing Industry?

To answer the above question, let’s start with fundamentals.  The future success of the Printing Industry is very closely tied to:
• Total advertising spend
• Shifts in advertising spend to other media, such as the Internet & mobile devices
• Other economic factors, such as the cost of paper & postal rates

Lets take a closer look at the forecasted total advertising spend for 2009.  According to the 2008 Starcom MediaVest Group’s Annual Media Futures Report, advertising expenditures for 2009 are predicted to decrease a record 2.4 percent.  This is the largest decrease ever predicted.  To make matters worse for the Printing Industry, the Internet is expected to be the main beneficiary of main media expenditure, with almost six in ten national advertisers predicting to increase their Internet budgets in 2009.  The one bright spot for the Printing Industry is that point-of-sale activations are expected to increase, which often requires printing.

In addition to the above economic situation, there is a radical poser shift occurring in the control of advertising, namely more interactive agencies are being designated as the agency of record.  This makes total sense, since the Internet has become the “go to” source for information, communication and commerce.  However, this is likely to accelerate the move from print to the Internet.

I don’t want to paint a totally bleak picture for the Printing Industry.  As I mentioned point-of-sale media will like drive additional print business.  In addition, 2009 advertising budgets will migrate from traditional media, like radio and TV, to direct marketing, promotion, and events, which will all use print.  The outlook is not rosy by any forecast, but it is also not a total bust.

What to do?  Since the print industry business is likely to be down due to the economy & business erosion by the Internet, I suggest
1. Use the Internet to get more business
2. Offer Internet related services that compliment your print services

Both items 1 and 2 will be covered in my next posts:

Part 2:  Print Industry Internet Marketing
Part 3:  Print Industry Internet Services

Please feel free to contact me at ldelmonte@tmaemarketing.com or 866.840.3062