No matter what type of marketing campaign you plan, one of the goals is to generate enough return on investment (ROI) to make the campaign worth planning and executing. When it comes to print marketing, most businesses don’t understand how to determine the amount of ROI on their print advertising. If you want to use this particular media platform for your marketing efforts, you will have to understand how it works, what you are trying to accomplish, and how it can best work for your business.
If you are concerned about your B2B print marketing efforts, don’t worry! While measuring print advertising ROI is hard, it is not an impossible task. In fact, you must understand the process in order to best compete economically in your business field.
In order to help you achieve the desired amount of ROI, here are some print tips and best practice marketing insights that will help you increase the ROI of your B2B print marketing campaign.
Find Your Audience
The most important step in minimizing wasted ad spend is developing an in-depth understanding of your target audience (including who they are and what they want). Without this level of understanding, your marketing team will likely allocate an unnecessary portion of their budget to planning and running a campaign that fails to make a positive impact towards their KPIs.
If you are targeting a mass audience, your campaign will likely fail because it will not break through the constant marketing messages that consumers encounter on a daily basis. Even if your product targets a large demographic, it is your job as a marketer to understand how the product appeals to specific segments of the population and how to deliver that message to them. You have to know what makes your target audience unique by discovering their interests.
Personalize Print Marketing Materials for Increased Engagement
Personalized marketing messages through variable data printing (VDP) allows for targeted consumer advertising. Marketers across the country agree that targeted advertising is far more effective than traditional methods which means combining VDP with targeted mailing lists enable your efforts to go further than traditional marketing.
VDP can be considered more of a print marketing tool because potential customers see their name, text, and relevant images on a printed marketing piece. This helps them relate to the marketing materials and they are more engaged and likely to respond. When combined with online marketing methods such as customer surveys and emails, VDP is a powerful marketing asset thanks to the valuable data your business is gathering about your customers.
Optimize Your B2B Messaging
A common mistake that leads to less than successful advertising efforts is waiting until a campaign is finished to evaluate its performance and make any necessary adjustments. An unsuccessful campaign means budgets should be reallocated towards more successful media outlets.
Marketing teams are sometimes unable to optimize campaigns that are in progress due to a lack of metrics visibility (which can lead to targeting bias). In other words, teams assume the advertisement they can measure the most is the one that provided the desired results. This is not always true which means your team needs in-depth marketing analytics to determine what is really driving success and conversions. In turn, they can devote more resources to these campaigns.
Look at it this way…If you can’t see what is helping you succeed on a regular basis, how do you know your marketing budget is being spent wisely across your marketing channels of choice?
See ROI of Print Campaigns by Tracking Results
- Include Coupons and Discount Codes – The inclusion of a coupon or discount code in the print advertisement gets the attention of consumers, increases business, and helps to track ROI. The number of customers that present the coupon when making a purchase in-store, or the amount that use the discount code on your online store, is an easy way to determine how many customers saw the ad and made a purchase.
- “How Did You Hear About Us?” – Market research requires more work than the measurement of pre-collected metrics. The extra work is worth it because asking a customer how they heard about your business gives you insights into which of your non-digital advertising methods are working (or not working). Ask this question in customer forms on your website, while answering sales calls, and in follow-up surveys after a customer made a purchase. Keep track of the number of customers who never heard of your company before they saw a print ad to determine if the ad is increasing foot traffic.
- Use pURLs and QR codes to Measure Engagement – Personalized URLs and QR codes in print marketing materials offer real time measurement of your print ad engagement. QR codes can be linked to personalized landing pages to give consumers a customized experience across your marketing channels.
Ready to increase your B2B marketing ROI? Contact our team today about marketing channels that work for you.
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