Due to the technology we have today, there is more and more businesses “taking all of their advertising online”. There are so many choices available: Facebook ads, Instagram, Google Ads, SEO optimization, blogging, Click Funnels, Yelp, and Word Press just to name a few. The problem is when too many people are doing the same thing, the market becomes incredibly competitive and saturated. You find yourself scrambling to keep up with online advertising trends to compete. You must constantly shift your online marketing strategy to keep up with evolving technology and figure out what you need to do next to stay relevant.
While there is something to be said about the power of online marketing, it will crush margins and eat budgets if not managed properly. It gets tiring juggling costly subscriptions, fees, and paying thousands to stay at the top of google search results. An effective online presence takes some serious technical know-how, budgeting expertise, and a lot of time that most small business owners just don’t have to do right. And sadly, for most small businesses, paying an outside agency just isn’t in the budget. Because the online market is so competitive, costs are on the rise; you need to pay more in order to stick out above the masses of other businesses competing for impressions. If you don’t, you become an invisible business in a sea of thousands of others.
What most people don’t realize is that taking your entire marketing strategy online for a local business can do more harm than good. This is because print advertising is still by far the most trusted form of advertising by a huge margin. A quick online search of “print vs. internet trust” will validate this information. Bottom line is print advertisement will get more response, more impressions, and more conversions. There are many recent studies that show that people prefer to physically handle an advertisement and read it. It’s psychological, people associate print advertising to legitimacy and trustworthiness. There is a reason why the biggest luxury brands dedicate around 75% of their marketing spend on print advertising.
A social media presence is a great way to showcase what you do and generate revenue from the local consumers, if you can develop a following that wants what you offer. It can also get very expensive. Do you have the time to post daily at a minimum, learn algorithms, create content, learn how to use editing tools, and do graphic design? If not, break open the wallet and get ready to pay. By including your social media account information on marketing material such as flyers, direct mail, car magnets, and business cards you can build a relevant following in your target area. This is the best way to generate a genuine following that will make you money, but it takes a lot of time.
Unfortunately, print advertising also comes with a hefty price tag in most cases. Postage, graphic design, material cost, mailing lists, and other fees can quickly add up. Magazines, Yellow Pages, and Coupon books can range from one thousand to hundreds of thousands per year. A small business card sized ad can run $500.00 or more for a one-time release. Dissemination varies and unless you are sending print out on a schedule you will have ebbs and flows in revenue, it cannot be a once a year thing and you must retarget consumers with multiple prints for the best conversions. You need to be careful what media you use as well. If there are a lot of advertisers in your delivery medium the product often shows up in the mail as a messy garbled coupon book that looks like it exploded in the mailbox. Most of those go straight into the trash. You also don’t want to be one of 50 businesses in a coupon book, the price might seem right but your conversions will not be as high.
Our niche is an incredible value in the realm of print advertising. We target the local business professionals with the highest income brackets in the geographic area you want to do business in through the dry cleaners. Your advertisement will be steadily disseminated daily over the course of an entire year, 50,000 guaranteed prints. We place a maximum of 12 businesses on our product for maximum visibility and the consumer has no choice but to look at it. Each print gets multiple impressions for built in re-targeting. Your advertisement will be disseminated through a familial relationship, dry cleaners know most of their customers by first name and vice versa. This automatically builds trust and gives you instant credibility. The best part of our services is that it is affordable for any business. You get an entire year of advertising for a flat one-time fee of just $495.00, an unmatched $0.009 per print. You can’t even get 50,000 business cards for that price. To contextualize the volume you will receive, 50,000 garment covers has to get delivered on a semi-truck to the dry cleaner.
In conclusion, if you really want a way to stand out above the competition don’t ditch print advertising. Building a connection through something tangible that can be picked up and handled in the local areas you do business in an exceptionally powerful form of marketing for your business. Print has been and will remain an incredibly important part of your marketing strategy for the foreseeable future. The demographic of people that have most of the money didn’t grow up buying things through online mediums. There is a long way to go before print advertising is dead, if ever.