Combining Social Media and Print Marketing

Combining social media and print marketing in an integrated campaign strategy is a powerful way to market your products and services. While some would have you believe that social media and print marketing are too different to work together, savvy marketers know that harnessing the power of one can dramatically increase the success rate of the other. There are several ways to boost both your social media and print marketing campaigns in combination, as revealed by the following tips and ideas.

Print marketing to social media

Everyone knows by now that a powerful ]]>Facebook]]> presence can pay off huge dividends, but how do you build your fan base to the point where your campaigns are profitable – that is, when you can essentially advertise on Facebook for free? Many marketers do not stray from web-based marketing, but while web marketing has benefits it is important to remember that just about all of your competitors are taking the same measures. This decreases your ability to stand out from the crowd and naturally drives ad rates. Instead of trying to compete head-to-head (or in addition to doing so), get fans on your Facebook or other social media page with a print marketing campaign. You can do this efficiently and economically with a simple, yet strategic, direct-mail postcard campaign. The benefit here is that you can reach a highly targeted demographic audience with a controlled message one-on-one, and probably with zero interference from competitors.

Postcard-to-web remains proven as one of the most successful ways to market, and with the right incentive (say, free product to the 1,000^th fan?) and list you're bound to increase your fan base. Posters, flyers, large-format vinyl banners and other print marketing strategies can also help you drive fans to your page – either separate from or in conjunction with your direct-mail postcard campaign. Remember that print marketing lends credibility to your brand. After all, anyone can put up a Facebook page for free; but not everyone has the perceived budget to direct mail the market. If you do, you legitimize yourself and begin to earn trust.

Social media to print marketing

For all its benefits, the online environment provides plenty of distractions. Nothing is worse than when your ad is buried between two competitors'. In contrast, print marketing is read one-on-one and can captivate attention far easier. Most people read their mail alone, increasing opportunities for customer engagement. You might, for example, find that it is easy to convince customers to click a link requesting more information; but difficult for them to read your material online.

To combat this, you could use your social media page as a sign-up form to receive a free information kit via post. This strategy has two major benefits. First, you pre-qualify all leads because they have to take action to express interest, therefore you can fine-tune your pitch and earn a better response rate. Second, your overall investment is diminished because you only send your direct-mail kit to pre-qualified leads. Thus, you spend less money and send fewer information kits but receive a better response rate and increased return on investment. You are, in essence, creating an opt-in mailing list – a powerful tool in any marketer's arsenal.

As you can see, combining social media and print marketing can help you earn far better results than just doing one alone. You can even create campaigns or contests where customers enter through social media, then have to receive a postcard with a special code to enter on your site to receive an incentive. Such highly engaging campaigns will help you weed out the non-buyers from the buyers, identify broken links and bridge the gaps to turn those non-buyers into buyers with future campaigns. Be creative, don't be afraid to break the mold, differentiate yourself from the competition and achieve success by combining social media and print marketing.,