With so many marketing platforms available today, it can be hard to keep the marketing strategy for each platform consistent with one another. Businesses that fail to see the value of this brand consistency across marketing platforms have allowed communication and sharing between the teams to dwindle and fade. Unfortunately, these businesses have no idea what they’re missing.

The marketing campaigns that are the most powerful and the most capable of generating leads and sales are those that combine the different parts of their marketing plan into one, interlinked and coordinated strategy. While this communication will certainly require time and effort, the results are can be very rewarding.

One of the ways marketing managers can really increase the quantity of leads they generate from their marketing efforts is by combining their print and social media marketing. By aligning these two seemingly diverse marketing platforms, businesses are able to enhance the reach or their marketing efforts, and the quality of leads that they are able to acquire — something we’re very interested in here at Hometown Values.

Here are 5 important ways this combination can have powerful effects.

1. Determine a Target Audience

By analyzing the type, size, and personality of the following that your brand has over social media, your marketing team can see what kinds of people tend to gravitate toward your product or services. This enables you to create ever more accurate pictures of your buyer persona (or target audience). From here, you will be able to modify your print marketing to reach out to that same buyer persona.

Using your social media platform, you can also identify how those same clients are responding to the marketing efforts of your competing brands. Those marketing tactics that are seen as effective or ineffective can be taken into account when developing your own print media. Remember — work to tailor your marketing to what you audience values and desires.

Using the social media platform to help understand your clientele will help you to tailor your print marketing to be more attractive to your target audience, and ultimately, more successful.

2. Consistent Identity

Developing a marketing identity for your brand that is consistent between your print and social media can be very rewarding. As time goes on, the brands that have a consistent look and message across all marketing platforms are shown to leave a far more powerful and memorable impression on their viewers.

As users interact with all manner of marketing platforms throughout the day, having a consistent message and appearance for your brand will reinforce your marketing message and help your media to stand out. People will become more comfortable and familiar with your brand, and better able to recognize you. This increase in familiarity and brand recognition leaves users with a reliable and trustworthy impression of your business, and they are therefore more likely to consider your services with each impression — whether that is a Facebook ad or a notice in a newspaper.

3. Bridge Generation Gaps

Typically, the younger generation utilizes social media far more often and with more familiarity than the older generation. Many people within the older generation struggle to understand and work comfortably on social media.

This weakness in social media is an area where print media can shine. It’s capability of reaching out to the older generation in a way that is familiar to them can cause print media to make a strong and unique impression. Offer this group of buyers an easy way to get plugged into social media and online by exposing them to print media, and working them into a more modern experience.

By identifying how your clientele most commonly finds your content and services, you can know how to better place your content in different arenas. How are older clients normally coming in contact with your business? Discovering if it is through a local coupon book or a social media platform (Facebook is most common) can help you know how best to approach your print and social media strategy to reach this audience.

4. Social Media with CTA

While print media is capable of attracting your target audience outside of social media, it can also help direct more traffic toward your various social media platforms. Printed CTAs are often very effective at directing people toward various landing pages and social media sites. Sometimes even having the simple icon for Facebook, Twitter, or other social pages can be just enough to make people find and engage with your brand online.

Before you go crazy with printed CTA’s, however, there are some things you need to keep in mind. The most critical element to a printed CTA is that it must be easy for users to respond to.

Some of the ways marketers have found to encourage users to investigate the social media sites is to offer visitors an incentive to follow through, such as a prize or special offer. Another good tactic marketers have found is to utilize QRCs (quick response codes) on their printed media. By printing a special hyperlink on their printed media, people can use the camera on their smartphone or tablet to go directly to the social media page, making the steps easy, quick, and ensures that the users are immediately directed straight to the information they were looking for.

5. Print Media Worth Sharing

Powerful print media strategies utilize the same ideas and qualities that good social media does — solid, enticing messages, excellent design, and creativity. Unique printed materials also have the added aspect of tangible interaction. When it is well-made and designed to stand out in an appealing way, people will share it — this is true online and offline. By analyzing your social media trends, your print media can be more effective and better targeted. And this media? It’s going to be worth sharing.

If you’ve been interested in getting involved in print media or marketing, it might be time for you to join a print media team. Here at Hometown Values, we offer our business partners training and hands-on learning so that they are able to grow their own business of print media.  To learn more about our business, feel free to give us a call, or fill out our contact form.