The Benefits of Digital Printing

Digital printing, while a relatively new process in the history of printing, has taken the world by storm as an economically viable way to produce small runs. Digital printing levels the playing field between small businesses and large corporations. The following details the benefits of digital printing and how you can use digital printing as part of your marketing strategy.

Cheaper printing

At one time offset printing ruled the world, and only large companies could afford it. That's because offset printing requires plates to be made and associated setup fees – and for small print runs, those setup fees could be cumbersome for small businesses. As the quantity of printed pieces goes up, offset printing becomes cheaper; but if you were a small company with a local marketing base you could find yourself forced between choosing quality offset printing at a big price tag or inferior quality printing. With the advent of digital printing, that has changed. Digital printing requires no setup fees, so you can print as few marketing materials as you need without incurring a large initial fee. As your quantity goes up, you can save money. And the more you print, the closer you get to the threshold where offset printing would be cheaper (and a good online printing company will tell you where that threshold is, taking the guesswork out of making frugal business decisions).

High quality

Offset printing remains the king of quality, but today's advances in digital printing technology make it a close second. In fact, if you print two identical postcards using the two different printing processes, it would take a trained eye to be able to tell which was printed on an offset press and which was printed on a digital press. With this little disparity, there's no reason to not feel good about choosing digital printing as an economical way to put your marketing message in front of potential customers. Always remember how important value is to your marketing decisions. You wouldn't pay next to nothing for low-quality materials or the highest dollar for even the most advanced marketing materials. Instead, you want to find a value balance, and this is precisely what digital printing provides to small enterprises – or even large enterprises with many small target audience segments.

More options

As mentioned, there was a time when digital printing produced poor quality results. Now as those days are over, digital printing provides marketers, graphic designers, and small business owners and managers more options than ever before. A good digital printing company will offer you the same or similar choices of paper stocks, advanced printing techniques — such as foil stamps and die cuts, UV and aqueous finishes, and binding options such as saddle stitch and Wire-O — as they do to their offset printing customers. With so many options available, and such high-quality output from today's state-of-the-art digital printing presses, there's no reason not to choose digital printing for low-quantity, high-quality, economical print marketing.