When Search Engine Giants Turn to Print – Your Marketing Strategy

Fading printers sign on an old stone wall – is print a thing of the past?

According to a recent infographic focusing on the demographics of online users, over 66% of adults are connected to a social network. According to Internet World Stats, as of Dec 31, 2011 over 78% of the North American Population is connected online. With information like this, it’s clear why there has been a surge in internet marketing, social media marketing strategy and a rush of forward thinking companies looking to find ways to reach the population in these areas.

The challenge for companies working on marketing strategies is balancing the investment into the online world with traditional media. Many are of the mind set that traditional media is dead, or soon will be. However, we need to consider that although everyone may be online, they still live in our offline world which is scattered with opportunity. When building a brand, or reinforcing one, it has never been sufficient in any school of thought to simply use one medium – why would this change now?

Significant investment and funds have to be redirected into new media, like social. The learning curve is steep and organizations with limited resources, or who previously did not have access to large campaigns touching on radio, television, print, etc suddenly see a chance to enter the population with relatively low cost. If a company never invested in marketing because it was beyond their reach, then social is a good foot in the door. Any marketing is better than no marketing!

Online “Advertising” Does Not Replace Marketing Strategy

Those who are truly going to make an impact will continue to support a good marketing strategy with a mufti-faceted approach to enable maximum reach.

Online Businesses Have To Reach The Traditional, Just As The Traditional Need To Get Online!

Many people talk about how print is dying. Yet all we have to do is take a look around us, print is everywhere. Google took an ad out in some national newspapers a few weeks ago. I was surprised to see how many people believed this was a statement by Google to “the offline world” suggesting this was a message that “print is on it’s way out”. I was honored to have the opportunity to guest post on {grow}, and cover my view on this topic:

If you ask me, print is alive and well and still serves it’s purpose, and Google proved it.

In fact, there are a couple of things Google did that were brilliant..

Read more here : “Why Google Turned to Print Advertising“

I look forward to you joining in on the comments to add your thoughts!

;

• Do you think print is dead?

• What did the Google strategy say to you?

Thank you to Mark Schaefer for working with me to post my first guest post on {grow} , I am thrilled and honored to be a part of such a vibrant and interactive community! If you haven’t checked it out, this is the perfect time to join the conversation!