Digital Marketing Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

Are digital marketing materials better than printed marketing materials? You’re probably thinking that’s an easy question and the answer is obviously going to be yes. Digital marketing is what it’s all about these days and all of that old fashioned printed marketing material just doesn’t work anymore. It’s actually not quite that simple though. Companies are spending $20 million a year on marketing materials that are mailed to potential customers. Surely it must work if they’re spending that much on it, right? You’d think so but they still spend a massive amount of money on TV advertising and studies have found that it’s one of the worst forms of marketing in terms of generating new sales.
People often assume that digital marketing works more effectively than printed marketing because you have a wider reach, especially when it comes to things like mobile marketing. It’s also generally thought to be easier to target people directly using digital marketing. With all of these conflicting ideas being thrown around it’s hard to know who’s talking sense. Hopefully, should clear things up a little bit.
The Psychology Behind Printed Marketing
In order to work out whether printed marketing materials are actually effective, you need to be able to understand what’s going on in people’s heads when they’re looking at it. When people are exposed to something that they consider valuable, the reward center in their brains lights up and you can see a lot of activity in there. In studies where people’s brain activity was monitored while they looked at marketing materials, researchers found that even though people process information quicker when they’re looking at digital marketing, they’re likely to spend more time looking at a physical piece of marketing. They also showed a larger emotional response which means that they are more likely to actually make a purchase based on it.
The majority of people don’t make a purchase on first viewing of an advert, they usually do it later on so remembering what they see is a big factor in determining whether you’ll get a sale out of it. Studies show that people retain more memory of a physical ad than they do a digital one so you’re more likely to have a higher conversion rate when you’re using traditional marketing materials. One possible reason that this is the case is that people tend to read slower when they’re reading from paper than they do on a screen so they’ll take more of it in.
It’s not completely clear why you get this better response from physical ads but researchers think that people engage more because more of their senses are stimulated. You can touch, see, and smell the advert in your hands, whereas a digital ad doesn’t offer that. This increased stimulus of the senses encourages a more powerful response that is more likely to turn into a sale.
Utility
 
As well as having those psychological benefits, printed marketing materials have the advantage of being dual-use a lot of the time. For example, if you have CD case calendars, keyrings and mousemats with your logo on, those are things that people are going to have around them at all times and every time they use it, they’ll be reading your ad. Whereas, with digital ads, you’ll usually just scroll past it without giving it a second thought. Having something useful with your brand automatically creates an association in the customer's mind; they’ll come to think of your company as being useful.
Reach An Older Audience
In a generation, everybody will find digital marketing accessible but at the moment there is a massive difference between generations. If you’re just focusing on digital marketing then you might be alienating a whole chunk of potential customers that don’t have access to it. Even if they do have access, they might not respond as well to newer forms of marketing and prefer something more traditional that they are used to.
Junk Email
I get so many junk emails that I never look at most of the stuff that comes through before I delete it. Most people are the same I think, and it’s a huge downfall of digital marketing. If something comes through my door I’ll pick it up and read it before getting rid of it if I’m not interested. But with emails, they’re more likely to get lost in amongst all of the other marketing materials that people are being sent.
Everybody will tell you that it’s all about the digital marketing but in reality, the fact that it’s cheaper is one of the only benefits. Printed marketing comes out on top in every other way.