The keys to running print marketing campaigns that suceed are making sure you know your audience, know how to reach them and have a way to track the success of your campaigns.
Although digital marketing is our specialism and our passion, we never underestimate the potential of print (or other types of) marketing to get in front of customers to drive sales; and neither should you. We’re all about driving leads and sales, so let’s take a look at a real example of how we can run successful print maketing campaigns.
Using Print Marketing Campaigns To Launch New Services
Recently when at an event in London, we were impressed with a great proposition for an extremely useful service. The eHo Chef service allows users to enjoy a great meal cooked by a talented chef in the comfort of your own home. This could be the start of a revolutionary culinary movement and though bookings are all handled online, they started out using flyers in their print marketing campaigns.
The premise behind eHo Chef is that across London, because many people go out to eat, there is a kitchen that has been ‘left unused and neglected’. Why not stay at home and be treated to a great meal by London’s ‘abundance of talented chefs and cooks – from skilled home cooks to accomplished amateurs and seasoned professionals’?
Print Marketing Design
Print marketing campaigns rely on strong images and overall design to really hit the mark and eHo Chef‘s visuals are very clear and simple. It’s easy to see how the whole process works, from choosing a menu, setting a date a date and enjoying the meal. A great idea, packaged and outlined really well.
A great designer who can make best use of layout and colours is an important step. The media you create must be uncluttered, easy to read and have one, at most two images that bring the brand and message to life. Having an amazing copywriter will sell your service once you’ve caught the eye of your prospect is of equal importance.
Audiences For Print Marketing Campaigns
The internet is a great way to get new customers quickly, but one difficulty many great new ideas like eHo Chef run into is finding new customers to build their business. Many digital means exist to find your customers including Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on search engines or social media. One of the offline options is making a physical connection with potential customers in person.
To build a strong customer base, eHo Chef decided to use London as their start-up city. A great choice, given its large, varied population. There’s a large, high-density population and a lot of events every week. Targeting the events eHo-Chef’s target audience will be at gets their brand in front of the right people.
The marketing team at eHo Chef put a lot of thought into their target audience. Professionals with disposable income who enjoy spending time out at events in London and an evening meal or drinks afterwards.
Finding Your Campaign’s Target Audience
It’s possible to find your target audience even for print marketing campaigns, so let’s think about how eHo Chef did it and the lessons we can learn.
I’m sure you’ve received many leaflets from print marketing campaigns through your letterbox. What do you think the response rate to campaigns like those are? Most of the time, you won’t even be looking for their service at the time they contact you. And how about the ability to track leaflet drop campaigns? The ability to reach the right people at the right time and track results is one reason why PPC is sopopular.
Getting their print marketing campaign in front of the right people for eHo Chef meant distributing high-quality, card leaflets at an early evening theatre event that started at 7:00pm and finished at 9:00pm. The leaflets we received were targeted as opposed to being handed out on the street or posted through letterboxes.
Many of the London audience targeted would have come straight from work. eHo-Chef could be sure that the people consuming their print marketing campaigns were people that fit their target audience. The eHo Chef target audience likes to spend evenings out, possibly in groups and were likely to visit a restaurant soon after.
Key Strategy Points
Every print or digital marketing strategy needs to consider these three points:
- Audience
- Location
- Time
The strategy defines audience, location and time, while the tactics go into detail on those points. This is just like setting filters to advertise to people who had visited theatre websites, looked at recipies and had an income of x amount. This eHo Chef print parketing campaign chose a pysical location. It targeted social event participants who’d likely also be loking for dining experiences. The average prospect’s income could be deduced from the event’s audience.
Integrating Print and Digital
Now eHo Chef have located their potential customers, they need to get them to sign up online. This is where they managed to integrate print and digital really well. Let’s take a look at the front of their leaflet.
The design is great, but the one thing we can’t do, is sign up on the leaflet. In the old days, there might have been a fax back form or a small section to complete our details and post it back.
This flyer lets the reader know that this is an online business. There’s no phone number and no postal address to waste time and space. The reader is presented with a website at the bottom. There is also and an eHo Chef coupon code for 20% off the first eHo Chef booking with the code ‘WHOSCOOKING20’ to be used at checkout.
After stripping away every unnecessary distraction like phone numbers, having the the website address alone would be great, but offering a coupon code is taking it to the next level. When you give your audience a worthwhile incentive to try your service, they will be more likely to do so.
Marketing Actions
Print is not dead. Print marketing campaigns have their place and can assist you with brand awareness, customer acquisition and many other types of marketing campaign. Give serious thought to where and when you plan to execute the campaign and of course how you are going to track results.
Segment for Success
Many people neglect the timing and the distribution location. A company in the Electrical industry who we’ll call ACME Testing Co. sent out leaflets in a specific area offering Portable Appliance Testing (PAT), but without doing any research into that area.
The campaign was a huge success, making a profit of over £8,000. But it turned out that only 10% of the addresses in ACME Testing Co.’s campaign were business addresses. Instead of sending generic leaflets to everyone, better results could have been achieved targeting the right audience with the right message.
If ACME Testing Co. had targeted the industrial area which has 90% business addresses with their PAT campaign, their profit margin would have been a lot greater. If ACME Testing Co. Wanted to make the most of the residential addresses, they should have sent eaflets with a message specifically for domestic consumers.
It can be cost effective to deliver leaflets to everyone in a particular area or even an entire city. But if your campaign is more highly targeted, you would be able to increase your profit margins. You just need to know your audience and target them effectively. In this regard, print is no different to digital.
Segmenting Customers: An Example
Once ACME Testing Co. have identified the type of prospect they have in a given area, they will know what product and message to market in that area.
Why not follow their example? Make sure you understand your customers and how your services will benefit them. Services for installation, maintenance and repair of electrical appliances should be targeted to the most relevant prospects for the biggest wins.
Birmingham has areas with a lot of students, some with mostly private homeowners and the City Centre has a growing number of apartments.
Let’s use Birmingham as a quick, simple example of how you could set up simple segments for:
A) Residential
B) Commercial
C) Industrial
Purple -Residential
Blue – Commercial (and rented appartments)
Grey – Industrial
