Study Reveals That On-Line Advertising Results Are Boosted By Print

Study Reveals That On-Line Advertising Results Are Boosted By Print

A leading media agency, states that businesses can dramatically improve their web traffic using print media advertising. While this may seem surprising to some many industry leaders are not surprised by this at all. Recent studies on the subject point to this undisputed fact.A recent study commissioned by Google has thrown up the following facts about the relevance of print advertising.

About 47% people respond to print ads and then logged on to the internet to browse through the site advertised.

An impressive 72% of people who responded to print ad actually made the purchase. Not surprising since the response rate of print has always been extremely high.

50% of respondents admitted that their confidence in a product advertised on the Internet greatly increased when they also saw it advertised in print.

26% of readers cut out a coupon featured in the ad.

64% of people admitted that they paid more attention to print ads than those that appeared online.

As a marketing agent these findings are not surprising and are easily explained. Print products have a mass reach and are deeply woven into the collective conscious of the readers. There is no action on the part of the consumer because the interest is peaked by the arrival of the print product. People are visual creatures and our DNA dictates why we respond to print advertising better than on-line. Print gives us an emotional response that on-line cannot and we more easily trust what we see in print. It is precisely because of this trust that a product that is advertised in the print media will then influence a consumer to look for the business on-line or connect with them via their on-line ads.

For example a client of ours who we have worked with for several years came to us in 2008 and wanted to shift more of his spend from print to on-line. When we asked him about this he explained that more and more he was hearing "I saw your web site" when speaking to new client's that he felt if he placed more money on the web he would get more calls. This client is a large contractor and is program up to this time was spent mostly on magazine advertising and yellow pages, with a small investment in a web site. We explained to him the importance of maintaining his print programs but he insisted on pulling his print and moving everything on-line. By mid 2009 he came to us and was completely distraught. His business was down by more than 30% and the phone wasn't ringing. Many would attribute this to the economy but we were committed to finding out what had happened. By late 2009 we began adding print back in to his program and cut out most of his pay per click advertising. We then added on call tracking systems to both his print and to his web site so we could study the traffic. Immediately his phone began to ring and his web traffic picked up.

This is just one example of many advertisers we have met with over the past two years who abandoned print for the "enticement" of on-line only to now in 2011 be looking to try and reestablish themselves in print.

Many print publishers are now offering "Web Tracking" programs that are similar to the RCF (remote call forwarding) they use to track calls. This unique web tracking is done by advertising a "Phantom" url in the print product when a consumer goes to a search engine to look for the business and types in this url they are redirected to the real web site. In the split second transfer that is not apparent to the consumer the information is "Tracked". Studies have shown that a almost 45% of a business' on-line traffic is generated from direct lookup navigation generated by print.

Based on the economy in 2009 and even parts of 2010 we encourage our client's to really consider what has worked for them in the past. To many companies have made kneejerk reactions and cancelled or cut back on publications thinking that all of a sudden they just stopped working, when the cold hard facts were that there was just a lot less spending activity going on. Now that most of our client's are seeing spending return they are also seeing their advertising results return as well.

Advertising works best when you have all your media working together. It is not a print vs. internet world but about using both to generate more business.

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