9 Tips for Re-energising Your Print Marketing Collateral

Is your print marketing collateral stale and ineffective? We have put together nine tips to help you freshen up your print.

Tip One: Use speciality card and paper in different shapes and sizes

One way to breathe life into your print collateral is to use speciality paper. It can help you stand out and be remembered by your target audience. For example, textured paper can really enhance the tactile nature of your print collateral, and this, in turn, helps to make your brand more memorable. But don’t stop there. Instead of sticking to the standard shapes and sizes, mix it up a bit and use eye-catching cut-outs in sizes that surprise and delight the audience. Though be sure your choices accurately reflect your brand identity and are suitable for the target audience.

Tip Two: Use foil stamping to grab attention

Foil stamping is a printing process that uses foil in combination with dye to create luxury metallic effects on all kinds of print collateral from business cards to brochures. It can enhance print in several ways:

• adds a strong sense of quality;
• the shiny metallic effect serves as an excellent attention grabber;
• it provides some additional

Tip Three: Better graphic design

As business owners, sometimes we settle for whatever our graphic designers come up with.

However, this can lead to mediocre results that don’t help us achieve our business goals.

So, take a look at your current print collateral and ask yourself: Is this really the best design for the job? If the answer is no, then consider hiring a graphic designer that has a proven track record of working in your industry and producing high-quality designs. But don’t stop there. Be sure to push them i.e. get them to dig deeper. Don’t settle for the first idea they pitch you. Be armed with a clear vision of what you want to achieve and make sure you get it.

Tip Four: Use authentic imagery

A major marketing trend now is authenticity. People are tired of cheesy, cliched stock photos that don’t reflect their own lives or reality in general. At worse, it puts people off. At best it just fails to appeal to them. This is why more and more marketers are turning to authentic lifestyle imagery as it helps brands connect with people on a more sincere level.

Tip Five: Tailor communications to different events

If you have a regular calendar of events that your business attends every year, chances are you use generic print collateral for each one. On the surface, this appears more efficient in terms of cost. However, you could be missing out on making a good impact. Different events (such as conferences and tradeshows) have their own energies, which is to say they have their own buzz and excitement. So, a good way to harness that energy is to tailor your communications for each individual event.

Tip Six: Plan ahead for events

If you know that you’ll be attending an event that requires specific communication, then it’s a good idea to plan your print collateral in advance. There’s nothing more stressful than leaving it to the last minute and rushing something through that ends up shoddy and ineffective. Advanced planning gives you enough time to develop creative ideas and allows your designers and copywriters to come up with something that really works.

Tip Seven: Go multisensory!

Scientific studies have shown that people are more likely to make a meaningful connection with your brand if their senses have been stimulated in some way. This is why print marketing is so much more powerful than digital marketing. One tactic that creative marketers are turning to is the multisensory mailshot. The idea is to stimulate as many senses as possible so as to forge a positive connection with the recipient. So, think about combining your print marketing collateral with aromas, sounds and interesting textures.

Tip Eight: Print-based content marketing

A lot of marketer’s associate ‘content marketing’ with digital marketing. But this is a very narrow view. Traditionally, content marketing has its roots in the print form. One example is the purveyor of fine food that publishes a monthly or quarterly printed magazine packed with interesting recipes and articles. By providing useful, interesting and entertaining content, they earn the respect and trust of the audience. So, in order to give your print strategy a boost, this is something you may want to include in your marketing plan.

Tip Nine: Integrate it with online marketing

Another way to give your print marketing a boost is to make sure it aligns with your digital marketing so that it becomes a tightly knit system that guides the customer through the marketing funnel. You can use the memorable and tangible nature of print to grab their attention, and then direct them to your website or social media channels where you can use the power of digital channels to convert them into leads or customers.

If you have in mind an idea for Direct Mail campaign, we, ar Romax, are happy to help you. Contact us at hello@romax.co.uk or call us at +44 (0) 20 8293 8550 to get a free quote.