Internet Marketing With Print: Taking No Prisoners

There comes a time in every internet marketing professional's life, he has to consider the validity of those activities that he has been doing and those he has not yet been doing, as he wrestles with the tactics of selling the brands and products of the clients he works for.

Now I am guessing that practically all IM professionals everywhere realize how important it is to unify their online marketing strategies with their existing traditional electronic media campaigns (i.e. tv, radio, etc).

But I am willing to ante that only a tiny percentage of us understand how and where traditional PRINT factors into all of these promotional shenanigans of marketing.

The Armed Forces Of Marketing

I like to look at Printed promotional materials as the “Army” aspect of our marketing armed forces, where we can agree that the traditional electronic media (TV and radio) will be represented by the Air Force, and of course our dear World Wide Web would have to be the Navy. So please, do try to indulge me as I attempt to use this comical abstraction of mine to explain my theory as to why the internet needs print and why print needs the internet.

Print = Army

World Wide Web = Navy

Tv and Radio = Air Force

In modern wars, we often see air-craft take the lead, in terms of which of the forces is first deployed. But only those of us who really pay attention actually realize that at times those aircraft are in fact naval aircraft. At least, where the US armed forces are concerned.

They are manned by naval pilots who take-off from large naval ships called aircraft carriers, which are used to freight planes, tanks, artillery and troops. In other words, many great marketing wars can actually be fought and won entirely without the use of your usual cable/primetime TV or Radio.  So in this case your naval aircraft could be those powerful weapons that any internet marketer recognizes as Youtube, Dailymotion or Vimeo videos.

But most wars do not end with your enemy surrendering immediately after the air strikes or sorties, be it by navy or air force pilots. These only weaken the enemy’s defenses so that you can have relatively reduced resistance when you deploy the infantry part of your marketing campaign: The troops – the handbills, flyers, and other forms of printed marketing collateral.
It is often these “ground forces” that go on to finish the job. And at this point, it is fitting to introduce to you the most effective corps of marketing commandoes ever trained within the marketing army: Personalized Digitally Printed material.

From personalized greeting cards to transactional documents like bank statements or frequent flyer mile reports, personalized prints have the tendency to get into the endorsement halls of your target audience with such pin-point accuracy, and in such a way that no other kind of marketing can do. They are not as lifeless as paper handbills or flyers, where as much as 80% of them usually end up in the trash, as do the message they were conveying.

Indeed the result is totally different when your pre-disclosed target audience picks up the envelope by himself in the mail, and sees his name boldly displayed in lights, in the scoreboard of the football stadium in the greeting card that is greeting him, sent from your client.

As for Transpromo, well you are already getting bank statements with your name and addresses printed in them if I’m not mistaken, right?

Now imagine a full-colour, multiple page, document now carrying much more than just your bank statement for the past month. The bank have now gone ahead to include cleverly written and interesting information about other products that they think might be particularly beneficial to you (based on the information they already have on you).

In the image above, the words Bill and Mary asnd the date are dynamic text. In each print run, they could come out as Femi and Chioma or a thousand other different variations. 

The bank are also using several portions of your bank statement to carry rich and colourful advertisements of 3rd parties, where these 3rd parties are the reason why neither you nor the bank are not bearing any costs for sending you this new and sprightly bank statement that you are now eager to receive every month.

The new interest that such printed documents, greeting cards and even personalized desktop calendars can spark in the target audience, will easily give you yet another opportunity to further establish your brand, by smartly including things like special promos that can only be entered into by typing in a code within the document into some verification portal within company website.


Yes! The website. Hence you have your Prisoner Of War, whom your Army Commandoes just captured, being held captive in the Naval Command.
Obviously you can see that that becomes another opportunity to repeat the cycle for increased brand exposure. Obviously you can see why it is indeed of much value to you to consider the print army whenever you plan your online marketing campaigns for your clients.