Is your marketing collateral lacking something.. here are some top tips to help revive those tired flyers

Is your marketing collateral stale and ineffective? Here are some tips to help you freshen up your print marketing and improve your results from it.

With social media, SEO and digital marketing taking up an increasing amount of businesses’ (and marketers’) attention, it’s easy to overlook the more traditional marketing channels. In an era in which we are continually bombarded with emails, social media messages, digital ads and other online communications, it’s becoming harder to cut through the noise and make a real impact.

This is where print marketing comes into its own. There are few more powerful communication opportunities than physically getting your marketing into the hands of your ideal customers. To get them to hold, touch and feel your flyer, brochure, postcard or mailer – rather than being interrupted by annoying pop up ad or email alert pinging in to distract them from your message.
Re-energise your marketing collateral

1) Use specialty card and paper in different shapes and sizes

One way to breathe life into your print collateral is to use specialty paper. It can help you stand out and be remembered by your target audience. For example, textured paper, lamination or thick card can really enhance the tactile nature of your print collateral, and this really helps to make your brand more memorable.

2) Use foil stamping to grab attention
Foil stamping is a printing process that uses foil in combination with dye to create luxury metallic effects on all kinds of print collateral from business cards to brochures. It can enhance print in several ways:
– It adds a strong sense of quality.
– The shiny metallic effect serves as an excellent way to stand out from the crowd.
– It grabs attention and also says quality.
– It provides a different type of texture.

3) Better graphic design
As business owners, sometimes we settle for whatever our graphic designers come up with, or we try to save money and think we can come up with a professional design ourselves. However, this can lead to mediocre results that don’t help us achieve our business goals.

So, take a look at your current print and digital collateral and ask yourself whether this really is the best design for the job. If not, then consider hiring a graphic designer that has a proven track record of producing high quality designs.

4) Use authentic imagery
A major marketing trend now is authenticity. People are tired of cheesy, cliched stock photos that don’t reflect their own lives or reality in general. At worst, it puts people off. At best it just fails to appeal to them. This is why more and more marketers are turning to authentic lifestyle imagery as it helps brands connect with people on a more sincere level. It is really important to book a session with a proven professional brand photographer to have a stock of images about you and your business. This will help to engage with your prospective clients.

5) Tailor communications to different events
If you have a regular calendar of events that your business attends every month, the chances are you use generic print collateral for each one. On the surface this appears more efficient in terms of cost. However, you could be missing out on making a good impact. Different events (such as conferences and tradeshows) have different audiences and therefore needs – so make sure you don’t miss your opportunity and tailor make your communications fit the event.

6) Plan ahead for events
If you know that you’ll be attending an event that requires specific communication, then it’s a good idea to plan for that in advance. Planning gives you enough time to develop creative ideas and allow your designers and copywriters to come up with something that really works.

7) Go multi-sensory
Scientific studies have shown that people are more likely to make a meaningful connection with your brand if their senses have been stimulated in some way. This is why print marketing is so much more powerful than digital marketing. The idea is to stimulate as many senses as possible so as to forge a positive connection with the recipient. So, think about combining your print marketing collateral with textures or even aromas and sounds.

8) Print-based content marketing
Many marketers associate ‘content marketing’ with digital marketing. But this is a very narrow view. Traditionally, content marketing has its roots in the print form.

An example of this is a fashion stylist who publishes a quarterly style printed magazine packed with interesting articles on seasonal colours and fashion ideas. By providing useful, interesting and entertaining content, they earn the respect and trust of the audience.

9) Integrate it with online marketing
Another way to give your print marketing a boost is to make sure it aligns with your digital marketing, so that it becomes a tightly knit system that guides the customer through the marketing funnel.

You can use the memorable and tangible nature of print to grab their attention, and then direct them to your website or social media channels where you can use the power of digital channels to convert them into leads or customers.

I hope that you found this article of some help and if you have any questions at all, please do get in contact via email laurenne@hounddogcreatives.com.

Laurenne Dorgan
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Hound Dog Creatives