How effective is booklet marketing in the UK?
Is print marketing outdated?
Not so much when you take into account the fact that 82% of consumers feel it is the most trusted mode of advertisement.
But how effective is print marketing in 2021? The answer lies in how you direct your marketing campaign. Print marketing is an umbrella term for various advertising mediums-flyers, pamphlets, posters, and booklets.
Booklets are tiny books that detail certain services, products, initiatives, and plans. We usually recognise them as brochures in the marketing context. No matter what you call them, it has all the features of being the most successful marketing tool in your arsenal. Let’s see how.
How effective is booklet marketing in the UK?
Booklet marketing needs a sound strategy and quantifiable goals. Not all marketing techniques are equally effective.
If you want to make booklet marketing work for your brand, you must pay attention to what differentiates it from other forms of advertisement. Once you get the key elements right, nothing can stop your campaign from becoming successful.
Let’s find out how effective booklet marketing is in the UK, and how to use booklets to increase your brand awareness.
1. Easy to distribute
Distributing booklets and brochures is not only easy but also targeted.
Unlike a social media post, it would not pop up in random places at random times. Once you decide on target locations and customers, distributing booklets is nothing more than delivering them to the destinations.
With booklet marketing, identifying your target demographic becomes fast and effective. If your target customer base is the young population, you can simply distribute your brochures in places where youngsters flock.
The same principle applies to any demographic. If women are your target customers, distribute your brochures in places frequented by women. All you need to do is identify which places are most visited by your target customers. The rest of the work will be a breeze.
If you are delivering your brochures straight to mailboxes, you would need your customers’ addresses. Unlike emails, the chances of someone actually reading through your booklet is much higher.
You take away all the complex processes of identifying and targeting prospective customers from a sea of anonymity when you use booklet marketing. It saves you both money and time.
2. Increases brand awareness
Every marketing campaign aims at improving its brand awareness and not just generating sales.
Your brand awareness plays a huge role in how successful your business can be in the long run. If the general perception of your brand is not positive, you will have a hard time gaining credibility.
Booklets are great for increasing brand awareness. Unlike social media posts which disappear after hours or days, a booklet stays with a person for a long time. If there is valuable content in the booklet, the reader would automatically have a good impression of your brand.
It is difficult to accurately assess your brand awareness. With booklet and brochure marketing, you often get real-time feedback from your customers. It is invaluable for further marketing strategies and assessing your present brand awareness.
Brand awareness is not built in a day. That’s precisely why social media marketing either becomes too taxing to manage consistently or too short-lived to have a lasting impact on your brand awareness. If you want more from less, booklet marketing is your best bet.
3. Adds a vintage charm to your marketing strategy
Every generation romanticizes the past. In 2021, we are talking about times when the internet was nothing more than emails.
In the late 1900s, people were talking of times when mass media meant only radio and newspaper. The past always has an appeal. Booklets allow you to marketise this old world charm.
In a world where people see anywhere between 6,000 to 10,000 ads daily, there is something attractive about a small booklet that does not scream at you to like, react, or comment.
Booklet marketing does not aim to convey maximum information in minimum time. It allows your customers to take their sweet time and slowly process the information.
While digital marketing spaces are both saturated and expensive, many large enterprises are slowly moving away from booklet and brochure marketing. If you can make the most of this relatively non-competitive playing field, it will work wonders for you.
Booklet marketing gives you the time to work carefully and plan accurately. Capitalise on these opportunities to make booklet marketing effective for your brand.
4. Establishes credibility
Would you trust a doctor who claims to be a great doctor every day for 30 seconds on your Facebook wall?
Or would you trust a doctor who can show you well-written descriptions of formal education, work experience, and accomplishments? There is no quick way to establish authority in any field. You need to put in the work and, more importantly, give it time.
People spend mere seconds looking at advertisements on social media. Unless you have a huge budget, you cannot use social media marketing campaigns to leverage trust and credibility.
However, booklets work great in this scenario since you have the option of adding well written text to it. If a written piece reflects expertise and research, it would establish authority in the minds of the readers.
Text-based advertisements are ineffective in isolation but elevate all aspects of your campaign when used in tandem with other modes.
Booklet marketing lets you make the most of text-based content and gain credibility through it. Do not waste this easy avenue of becoming an authority in your field.
5. Investing in design pays back
A well-made booklet is a work of art. While there are many components of a booklet that demand skill and expertise, the first thing people will notice is its design. If you do not have a good graphic designer, your booklets won’t reach their full potential.
All successful booklet campaigns have stunning designs and layouts. Consider the notable British High School of Art and Design’s brochure. Every page has something to offer, and going through the booklet is a treat to the eyes. If a booklet appeals to our eyes, we would naturally pick it up and have a look.
There is no fixed formula to a good booklet design. Every designer has their own preferences and quirks. An idea that seems outlandish might be quite potent in reality. Graphic design, like art, has no watertight rules. Sometimes all you need are bouts of creative inspiration to come up with great ideas.
You will find multiple booklet printing UK options, but not all of them deliver what you need. The physical quality of your booklet would add a lot to its aesthetic appeal.
If you use cheap material, the end product would also turn out unsatisfactory. Since booklet marketing is already more cost-effective than digital marketing, investing the right amount in quality and design is worth every penny.
6. Incorporate a CTA in your booklets
One of the biggest advantages of social media advertising is the ability to instantly connect with the advertiser. It is not possible in any form of print marketing, like booklets, pamphlets, and flyers.
That does not mean you do not add a Call to Action (CTA) in your print advertisements. If there’s no action for your audience to take after going through your booklet, it would have a very little long-term positive effect.
A call to action tells your audience what to do once they develop an interest in your offerings.
If you read about an ice-cream and want to have it, you also need to know where to find that specific ice-cream. Without knowing how to get access to the ice cream, you would eventually lose all interest in it.
The most convenient things to add as CTA are your websites, social media handles, contact information, or address. Make sure your potential customers know about the easiest ways of getting in touch with you or your business.
7. Makes detailed advertisement possible
In a social media ad, you have to squeeze all information about your offerings into a restricted space. There is no breathing space for you to go into the finer details. Even if you want to elaborate on some point, there is no possibility of it.
On the contrary, a booklet makes it possible to indulge in subjects that would be a strict no-no from a marketing perspective. While it doesn’t mean you add gibberish in your booklet, it opens up the possibility of close examination. It plays a role in establishing your brand as a legitimate source of knowledge.
Booklets offer a unique opportunity of bringing insights and nuances to marketing. Make the most of it to make your booklet campaigning efforts count.
Conclusion
Booklet and brochure marketing have fallen out of favour for many marketers, but the mode still holds immense value.
There are many aspects to it that have no suitable substitutes in digital mediums. With their unique appeal, booklets can work wonders. If you pay attention to the key factors we talked about, you can use booklet marketing effectively to boost your business.
