{"id":18131,"date":"2016-10-25T08:46:33","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T13:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lern.org\/?post_type=article&p=8775"},"modified":"2021-08-02T12:22:07","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T17:22:07","slug":"integrated-marketing-print-vs-digital-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/integrated-marketing-print-vs-digital-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrated Marketing: Print vs. Digital? Yes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Business<\/a>by Sean Carton, Chief Strategist, idfive, Baltimore
\nSean Carton will be a SuperStar presenter at the big LERN annual conference in Baltimore, speaking on Integrated Marketing.\u00a0 He is Chief Strategist for idfive, a company that works with colleges and universities on integrated marketing.\u00a0 The website is <\/em>www.idfive.com<\/em><\/a>
\nOne of the most common questions I get from my education clients is \u201cshould we use print or digital to reach our targets?\u201d My answer is almost always the same.
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\nNow, I\u2019m not trying to be flippant, but the whole \u201cprint vs. digital\u201d thing really doesn\u2019t have much relevance anymore.\u00a0 According to the most recent numbers available from the Pew Research Center (www.pewinternet.org)<\/a>, almost 90% of American adults use the Internet. If you\u2019re talking teens the numbers are \u2013 surprise! \u2013 much higher, with fully 95% reporting regular Internet usage. Who\u2019s not using the Internet on a regular basis? According to Pew, most of them are over 65, have no high school diploma, make less than $30,000 per year, and tend to live in rural locations.
\nIn other words, unless you\u2019re trying to reach low-income older adults living on or near farms, the whole \u201cwell, our audiences don\u2019t use the Internet\u201d argument is long over.
\nSo all this means you should use digital, right? Not so fast! While the raw numbers may tempt you to go all out on a digital strategy, the medium you\u2019re using to communicate is only half of the equation. The other half revolves around what you\u2019re trying to accomplish.
\nOne major lesson that we can learn from the companies that have been successful online over the past couple of decades is that the companies that thrive online are those whose business could only<\/em> exist online. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBbay\u2026there\u2019s no \u201creal world\u201d equivalent to their businesses that could match them in scale, functionality, and reach. Amazon\u2019s much more than a \u201cbookstore.\u201d Google couldn\u2019t be anything other than what it is. Facebook without the Internet? Not possible. Twitter? Wouldn\u2019t make any sense in any other medium. And eBay? There\u2019s a big difference between a local auction barn and a global marketplace hosting over 150 million active users.
\nA key element to the success of these companies is that they leverage what the Internet does best. Global reach. Instantaneous communication. Interactivity. Multimedia. Information processing via always-on servers. They didn\u2019t try to re-create existing \u201creal world\u201d businesses\u2026they used the new capabilities offered by the Internet to create truly new businesses.
\nWhen deciding what medium to use to reach out to your customers and prospects, you\u2019re faced with the same decisions. And when you get to those decision points, you need to ask yourself one simple question: what medium has the characteristics that best fit what I\u2019m trying to accomplish?
\nDigital is good for reaching lots of people quickly and cheaply in order to drive response. It\u2019s good for creating interactive experiences that can immerse a prospect in your brand and engage with them. Digital\u2019s great for connecting with people and engaging them in conversation through technologies such as social media. It\u2019s also wonderful for engaging with them during the buying decision process (that\u2019s the secret of paid search advertising). Digital\u2019s also pretty great when it comes to sending out updates in real-time via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. If you want fast, cheap, flexible, two-way communication, digital\u2019s the way to go.
\nPrint, on the other hand, isn\u2019t fast. Compared to digital it isn\u2019t cheap, either if consider the cost of sending a piece of communication per person. Print\u2019s not all that flexible: once something\u2019s been printed, it\u2019s printed and there\u2019s no changing it. And print isn\u2019t particularly good at facilitating ongoing conversations with customers and prospects.
\nSo what\u2019s print good for? Simply put, it\u2019s good for what digital\u2019s bad at, primarily engaging with your audiences at an emotional level. Emails and tweets and online ads are ephemeral, insubstantial, and, when compared to decent print, fairly lo-fi. Print, on the other hand, is something you can hold in your hand. It\u2019s something that makes your audiences feel<\/em> when they handle it (literally and figuratively). A great print piece evokes an emotional response that the Web just can\u2019t match. After all, when\u2019s the last time a website made your cry?
\nThe secret to integrated marketing in the digital age has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with understanding what you\u2019re trying to accomplish, understanding the characteristics of the media at your disposal, and understanding how to match the message to the medium. There\u2019s no one right answer to the \u201cprint (or broadcast or outdoor) vs. digital\u201d question except \u201cyes.\u201d
\nSean Carton\u2019s session on Integrated Marketing will be on Thursday, Nov. 17, from 11:20 a.m. \u2013 12:10 p.m.<\/em>
\nClick here for more information on the 2016 LERN Annual Conference or to register.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sean Carton, Chief Strategist, idfive, Baltimore Sean Carton will be a SuperStar presenter at the big LERN annual conference in Baltimore, speaking on Integrated Marketing.\u00a0 He is Chief Strategist for idfive, a company that works with colleges and universities on integrated marketing.\u00a0 The website is www.idfive.com One of the most common questions I get<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":8776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18963,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18131\/revisions\/18963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lern.com\/lerntest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}