With all the excitement over the internet in the marketing world, you’re often left thinking that if your marketing plan doesn’t include a Facebook group, a ‘viral’ YouTube video or a Twitter campaign you might as well not bother. Apparently, people aren’t interested in traditional marketing anymore, and printing off brochures and direct mail is a waste of trees.

So, is traditional marketing a waste of time? Are people so engrossed in looking up old school friends and online shopping that they don’t have time to read anything you print?

Well, you’d certainly think so based on recent Advertising Association research, which found that one in five marketing pounds are now being spent online, whilst traditional budgets appear to be in freefall.

Last year, spend on press advertising fell 11.8% and TV ad budgets fell 4.9%. But spending on the web grew 19.1% to £3.6 billion, which means it’s now snapping at the heels of the wheezing £4.4 billion TV ad market.

Nearly 60% of web budgets are spent on search

According to an eMarketer report, 59.3% of online budgets were spent on search marketing in 2008 – an increase of 4.9% on the previous year. Whilst growth has since stalled to 0.9%, the proportion of web budgets being spent on search shows that driving traffic is top priority.

But is this the smartest approach? Is investing in search the best use of your shrinking budget? Or are there other methods of driving traffic that marketers are missing out on?

60% are most likely to visit a website in response to print

Bastions of the print world, Pitney Bowes recently reported that it’s actually good old traditional direct mail that might be the most likely medium to trigger a visit to your website.

In fact, 60% in the survey said that addressed mail was the most likely to trigger an online purchase, whilst only 24% believed emails and sponsored links would send them to a website they hadn’t visited before.

This follows on from previous Pitney Bowes research in which 73% said they’d prefer to receive special offers and product announcements in the mail rather than in digital form.

Print can be the trigger for digital marketing

It’s easy to get carried away with all the excitement on the web’s potential: people are spending more and more time updating Facebook, looking up product info and shopping for the best services. So it’s easy to see why shifting your budget from print to search marketing seems to be the smart thing to do.

But as the Pitney Bowes research shows, print still has a vital role to play. It can act as the introduction to your digital marketing and trigger people into visiting your website.

Just remember that direct mail can be binned as junk as easily as an irrelevant email. So make sure your printed offers are relevant, personalised and delivered to the right person at the right time.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In follow up to last week’s brochure design tips, we thought we’d discuss why you should consider printing your brochures digitally, rather than rely on good old lithographic.

Digital is being hailed as a revolution for small business’ print marketing: compared to litho, digital is quick, often cheaper and can deliver messages personalised to your customers’ interests.

Why is digital printing different to lithographic?

Traditional litho ‘offset’ printing requires the creation of a plate for every print, which is then used to transfer the image via a rubber blanket onto the paper.

Litho is great for printing 1000s of catalogues, magazines and books at a relative low cost. But its cost is less attractive when you’re only after a few hundred brochures and flyers.

Digital printers, on the other hand, don’t require the creation of a plate. Instead they use software to render digital images directly onto the press, bypassing the need for an expensive plate altogether. This offers numerous benefits…

What are the benefits of digital printing?

Cheaper – without the need to create a plate for every image, small businesses can print small quantities of brochures, flyers and business cards cheaply. There are already a few web-to-print businesses (such as moonpig.com and lulu.com) that have sprung up to capitalise on the low cost of small, customised print runs.

Faster – each litho print run takes a long time to setup. Digital presses, however, can be setup quickly and are capable of enabling next day, or even same day delivery.

Greener – the elimination of a plate, and shorter make-ready, means you also don’t need all the other printing materials and waste that go along with them. So you no longer have chemicals, ink and paper filling up your bin; and because you only print what you need, less chance of obsolescence. Some digital printing machines are even designed with their own recyclability in mind.

Customisable – every print can be customised to include unique content, such as the customer’s name, personalised URL and relevant images. Personalising marketing helps improve the response rate because people are more likely to engage with content that’s relevant to their interests. Litho, on the other hand, only allows a static ‘one size fits all’ message per print run.

High quality – the quality of digital printers is rapidly improving, and is almost indistinguishable from traditional litho. Their reliability is also getting better, and eventually they’ll be just as consistent, and competitive, at long print runs too.

Digital printing puts one-to-one marketing into customers’ hands

Digital print has opened up print marketing to small businesses by making it cost effective to deliver timely, relevant and personalised messages. This is the type of marketing weary consumers are crying out for, so digital print technology has arrived at just the right time.

Here at bda we’ve experienced first hand the benefits digital print offers for one-to-one marketing. In a recent campaign for Siemens, digital printing enabled us to create individual brochures personalised to match the responses customers logged on their website. This enabled Siemens to not only deliver marketing finely tuned to their customers’ interests, but also saved cash because they only needed to print what was requested, rather than end up with a pile of unwanted brochures gathering dust.

Litho still has a role to play in printing mass produced materials. But for fast, cost effective and personalised one-to-one print marketing, you have to go digital.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With all the fuss about the internet, it’s easy to forget about one of marketing’s workhorses that’s helped businesses promote themselves almost since the invention of the printing press. The fact is that a large proportion of people still prefer to receive offers in print, which is why the humble brochure deserves to be respected.

A brochure should reflect your expertise, professionalism and the quality of your products. And it needs to be eye catching and captivating if you want it to effectively promote your company.

But even creating a simple brochure in which all the elements are working together can be a complicated process. So to get you started, here’s bda’s top ten tips for designing brochures you’ll be proud to hand out, and are more likely to be read and responded to:

1. Identify its purpose – what do you want the brochure to accomplish? Do you want it to announce a new product? Raise your company profile? Or generate sales? Deciding on your brochure’s aim early on in the design process is vital because it will influence its tone, appearance and the result you can expect to achieve.

2. Work out the hierarchy of info – write a list of all the points and information you want to include in the brochure. Then put them into a prioritised list ensuring all the most vital info is at the top. This will make it easier to plot out what needs to go on each panel of your brochure.

3. Use high quality images – your brochure should provide a visual feel for who you are and what you do. So you should invest in high quality stock images or professional photography that reflects the expertise of your company. Trying to save money by using free clip art or pictures from a friend’s camera is only going to cost you in the long run in lost sales.

4. Make sure it’s well written – your brochure’s words need to appeal to your target customer, sell your benefits and reflect your personality. So choose your words carefully or hire a copywriter to choose them for you.

5. Select an appropriate font – the style of lettering you use will influence your brochure’s visual appearance and reflect the personality of your company. Try and avoid over used fonts, and don’t necessarily copy whatever’s popular at the moment. Font fashion changes quicker than that on Oxford Street.

6. Proofread – read through it several times, read it out aloud and read sentences backwards before you sign it off. Spelling mistakes can damage your credibility, and lead to your freshly printed brochures only making it as far as the shredder.

7. Paper quality – select paper that’s within budget and reflects the quality of your product. Normal weights for brochures range from 80gsm to 350gsm, whilst there’s a wide range of qualities to choose from. Choose paper that reflects your brand message without bankrupting your marketing budget in the process.

8. Choose a finish that enhances its appeal – there are a huge range to choose from, such as gloss varnishing, embossing, foiling, laminating and special finishes such as flitter etc. So choose the type you think best enhances your brochure’s feel, look and message. As with paper quality, some special finishes can be expensive, so ensure you get different quotes before committing to production.

9. Personalise to improve response – customising your brochures with personalised URLs (PURLs) as part of an integrated campaign can increase the response rate because people love seeing their own name in print. Modern tracking also enables you to capture data you can use to make future campaigns even more personalised and targeted.

10. Be realistic about what your brochure can achieve – after you’ve decided on all the elements above and sent your design off to the printers, you shouldn’t sit back and expect the sales to come rolling in. Ultimately, your brochure is a teaser for building intrigue and interest in your products, services, company or event. Long-term marketing success lies in capitalising on the interest your brochure builds through follow up activity, such as email campaigns and sales calls, and continuing to deliver relevant messages your prospects are happy to receive.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Some marketers have been sounding the death knell of print for years. After all, why waste money printing out 1000s of catalogues and leaflets when people can get all the info they need from your website?

The idea that print is dying is particularly convenient now we’re in the midst of a recession. Many companies are desperately bailing for survival and jettisoning costs wherever they can, with glossy brochures among the first to be shown the plank.

However, what companies need to be aware of, before binning their printed brochures and catalogues altogether, is the ‘flick and click’ effect.

What’s the ‘flick and click’ effect?

The rapid growth of e-commerce, with sales increasing year on year, would suggest that printed catalogues are an archaic waste of trees. But what this view fails to recognise is that print often plays a key role in the process that ends in a customer buying online.

Never shy of praising the value of the printed word, the Royal Mail recently released the findings of their survey of 30 online retailers on the effectiveness of printed catalogues.

From 1800 responses it found a number of interesting conclusions on the influence of printed catalogues on buying behaviour:

• Buy more often – shoppers who received a printed catalogue spent 76% more than those who didn’t
• Spend more – on average they spent £110 more than catalogue-less shoppers
• Driven to websites – over 70% of respondents said it was more likely that they’d visit a website after receiving a catalogue
• On average retailers who included a flyer with their catalogue increased their online sales 30%

These figures conveniently show print’s effectiveness, whether it’s a catalogue, brochure or sales letter, at building loyalty and driving customers to websites.

When you add to the equation the results of a Pitney Bowes survey, which found 73% of consumers prefer to receive offers in the mail, it’s clear that print offers unique marketing advantages.

On its own, digital relies on people finding their way to your website, whether via email or online ads, and then being happy to spend time browsing and building trust before buying.

Printed catalogues and brochures, on the other hand, can be browsed at leisure and they land directly at customers’ feet. The decision to buy is then made offline before reaching for the mouse and taking advantage of the convenience of online shopping.

Integration is no longer just a pipe dream

With print and digital offering unique strengths, an effective marketing strategy lies in being able to use both mediums together, rather than putting one on a drip feed of funding so the other can survive.

Until recently, the idea of integrating print and digital was still a pipe dream and the unattainable Holy Grail of marketing.

However, as we know only too well at bda, marketing is evolving at a rapid pace.

Modern tools, such as personalised URLs, website tracking and digital printing, enable marketers to deliver integrated one-to-one campaigns that are more targeted and personalised than ever. The trick is simply being able to capture data and then knowing how to use it.

So, although times are tough, try and keep your print budget away from the finance director’s guillotine, and don’t get caught in the rush to make all marketing digital. Because as the Royal Mail’s survey shows, there are plenty of online retailers who know how effective print can be at growing your online business.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Boxes full of literature piled high in your office?

Wasting marketing collateral because it’s full of old products and services?

Just think what that has cost you and the size of the footprint you are leaving…

Recycling may ease your green conscience, but why the need to recycle in the first place? – there is an alternative…

Print-on-demand (POD) solutions have been around since the late 90s and enable the production of exactly the right quantity of items, at exactly the right time, with no storage requirements and personalised (if required) to the recipient. Email and web (as we know it) have also been around since the late 90s and have dramatically changed how we communicate; so why oh why when the technology and capabilities are available, do we still do things the old way when it comes to printing documents?

Is it just because its the way we have always done it, are we just too scared to embrace the technology available, or is it still cost which is stopping us?

In the same way we can’t now do without the speed of digital print to hit fast approaching deadlines, I believe in a few years time we will also wonder how we managed our marketing collateral efficiently before POD. As production processes improve, technology speeds up, environmental pressures increase further and costs reduce even more this will become the norm, not the exception.

So go on get recognised as a innovator, POD is the future, get yourself involved in the action now!

bda speak out at an “Understanding Digital Conference” held by Williams Lea the print management giants.

As a result of some of bda’s ground breaking case studies we were asked by the Print Sourcing Director of Williams Lea to present our opinions and experiences in all aspects of digital technology.

The focus of our presentation was the utilisation of digital print to deliver one-to-one DM campaigns, and print-on-demand solutions (hence ‘now, now, now, now, now!’).

All clients want to add value, improve ROI, provide better response rates, better utilise their data and reduce wastage, but many don’t know how; we were there to illustrate how this is being delivering today!

We presented examples of; one-to-one direct mail where response rates hit 37%; an asset portal allowing personalised marketing collateral to be created online; and e-collateral, our print on demand solution delivering targeted, bespoke brochures minimising waste, eradicating bulk print and storage.

The 65 strong audience of account managers and directors posed questions on; the financial model; the effect of increased unit costs and how we are providing real ROI; deployment timescales and pitfalls in delivering such solutions; as well as where we see the print industry in the future.

To accompany our presentation we produced a personalised digital guide, swatch book and PURL allowing all delegates to download their own copy of the presentation and access additional information… So we got and idea of exactly how interested the audience was!

bda, always Strategic, Creative and Measured.

Back in mid-2007, Siemens Enterprise Communications made the decision to get away from mass-produced print; a decision that’s now helped them to engage customers one-to-one but also one that’s helping them to dramatically reduce their environmental impact.

Siemens Enterprise Communications wanted to provide printed collateral that spoke to customer’s needs and prompted dialogue, rather than pump out generalised product brochures in response to enquiries. Stockpiling brochures was also creating storage and logistical issues as well as creating huge waste.

Siemens Enterprise Communications appointed bda, specialists in the development of integrated campaigns for the telecoms/IT industry, to come up with a practical solution. Having seen the success of previous one-to-one campaigns developed by the agency, Siemens Enterprise Communications adopted the idea of personalised solution brochures with variable content as created by bda.

Siemens Enterprise Communications was keen not to “sell at” its decision maker target audience, but rather to identify business concerns faced by decision makers before presenting them with product solutions.

bda invented e-collateral, a method for Siemens Enterprise Communications to generate bespoke solution brochures on demand, available in either PDF or printed form.

Siemens Enterprise Communications drives enquiries to a website ecollateralfromsiemens.co.uk where they can access areas that relate directly to one of four operational issues: Grow Your Business, Reduce Operational Cost, Manage your Assets More Effectively, and Achieve Corporate Excellence. The user simply clicks on their area of interest, to then be guided through a short series of tick box enquiries that relate to more specific interests; this in turn drives the content choice for inclusion in the brochure.

The system, developed by bda and piloted in October 2007 in three languages, UK, US Englisha and German, fulfils the broad objective of providing bespoke content, but also offers a customer-friendly way to gather data which turn feeds Siemens Enterprise Communications’ own CRM. Depending on the areas of interested earmarked by the customer, brochure content can vary between everything from case studies to illustrations, with paragraphs of solution-oriented text tactically inserted to blend with the overall message.

“Both parties had a baptism of fire mostly due to the complexity of the variable solution sets available,” says Sharon Scott Global Marketing Manager at Siemens. “But we needed a way to present our portfolio in way that makes sense to the customer. E-collateral meets that objective perfectly.”

Going a step further to engage Siemens Enterprise Communications’ broad customer base, bda plan to implement programming which allows the tone of language used to vary subtly, according to the level of contact making the enquiry, industry sector or company size.

As for output – Siemens Enterprise Communications own research indicates that despite the demand for instant, downloadable information, many senior C-level contacts make decisions on choice of supplier based on receipt of a printed brochure. Enquirers from the e-collateral site are therefore given a choice of receiving a PDF version of their personalised brochure via email, or ordering a printed version online.

Delivery of the pdf version is instant with a printed copy taking just days to arrive.

As bda is affiliated to a well-equipped communications group which includes a print production arm, it has huge access to fulfillment options. An online request triggers the generation of high quality digitally printed items that are despatched immediately.

The environmental angle? Less waste, the eradication of bulk print, less space needed for storage, less lorries on the road.

“Looking around our industry there’s nothing like e-collateral in B2B areas,” says Sharon. “It’s early days yet, but working with bda, we will certainly increase knowledge of customer needs and product demand. Better still, it helps Siemens meet its commitment to minimise our impact on the environment.”

Take a look yourself