Over the past few years, the digital age has made a great impact on how business is done and how consumers are interacting. However, in the age-old battle of print versus digital, which do you think comes out on top or are they integrated?
Though digital seems to offer a great number of benefits, like being adjustable and able to access immediately, print media is still very much ingrained in consumers’ collective memory. This means that people will always find themselves attracted to, and wanting to read print media, regardless of whether we’re talking about magazines, newspapers, flyers or catalogues.
The print medium offers various content and often many publishers and advertisers use more than one type of printed content to get their brand message across, there is different types of paper, font, embellishments and striking colours which makes reading print much more personal and exciting.
It is tangible
The tangibility that print has also makes readers pay attention to the content than digital does. This is because readers have to actively engage with printed content to read it – they have to pick up the content, hold it and read it. With digital content, they can passively scroll through it, without having to focus too much.
No social media madness
On the Web, advertisers share their brands of advertisement with countless other distractions, including social media images, videos and even other advertisements. Getting even a thousand impressions doesn’t mean that a thousand people actually saw an ad. With print, the situation is far less busy, giving an advertiser the sole attention of readers.
Print also gives an uninterrupted pleasurable reading experience. This means that there are no distractions for a reader that is committed to finishing an article. Once they start reading, there are no other bits of news, auto-playing videos or pop-ups taking the spotlight off the article
What does print offer that digital certainly doesn’t?
Print media is important also because it creates dependability. Investing in printed material shows customers that you are serious about your brand and business offering a worthwhile product or service. Printed materials can also create engagement between the customer and the product.
Print is crafted quality, it creates a feeling of appreciation, and this is one of the reasons why luxury brands are drawn to print. The rich, lush feel of high-quality paper and crisp images makes for a good, tactile, and visual experience.
Reach target audience
Reaching wide target audience is much simpler in print media than digital. Newspapers, magazines etc. are still the favourite of marketing, when they want to reach a larger target audience in less time. This is more so true in the scenario of a targeted approach with a printed medium such as a salesman dropping of a physical catalogue at a prospective client as opposed to sending an email which can be easily forgotten.
The internet and social media is very noisy and cluttered with millions of pieces of information being put out by the hour, there is certainly an overload of information. However, some pieces of information are golden whilst the bulk might be basic. A year book or look book would be an ideal method of how to highlight these nuggets lost among the clutter. On the other hand a business card is given out so that a prospect can visit the website of that person to learn more and then send through an email. Thus print can be effectively use to elevate the internet and become an accentuation of the valuable pieces of information. Hence we can safely say that print is certainly strongly integrated with the online world.
