The new year is already here, and it’s hard not to look back on the past year and reflect. Hopefully it was a successful one, but even the best of years can inspire us to look forward to the next one. It’s impossible not to daydream about the upcoming year in hopes that you can make it your best ever.
Challenges Ahead
Of course, technological changes and the continually growing presence of social media in our lives means businesses will face a uniquely challenging marketing landscape to navigate in 2020. For those of us in the print marketing industry, we hold a unique position in understanding the relationships between our customers, our industry and the everchanging marketing landscape as a whole. The most successful marketing campaigns in 2020 will combine the newest available marketing tools with longstanding marketing practice to create efficient, effective marketing campaigns.
In 2020, at the front end of a new decade, technology has redefined our entire lives. Digital marketing is no longer a new trend; it’s the mainstay for marketing in general. But as every trend grows into a larger, more permanent feature of the business world, older and more traditional marketing methods fall by the wayside. Reviving those methods and combining them with the newest in cutting edge digital marketing technology will help you achieve your best year yet.
Turning to Technology
Using technology like AR and VR, along with interactive web pages and videos to create entertaining, informative content is the cutting-edge of marketing in the digital landscape today. With so much of our lives focused on digital content delivery, it’s fitting to make customers’ marketing experience resemble that of their entertainment experience. You’re more likely to capture and keep customer attention if you can model the entertainment delivery systems they already enjoy.
One downfall of this method, however, is that the playing field is crowded. Just as marketers have been learning over the past three to five years, digital content fatigue is real and can hamstring your digital marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter how great your content is if customers ignore it or scroll past it. Using the traditional marketing methods enabled by print is a good way to circumnavigate the crowded digital landscape and ensure your message lands where it needs to.
Making the Connection between Digital and Print
A smart marketing idea for 2020 is to incorporate QR codes or other scannable technology to “deliver” customers to your website or another online location to view the content you’ve put together. In fact, using any print marketing tool to advertise the digital marketing campaigns is a good idea. Essentially, a theme for 2020 should be finding ways to use creativity and lesser-used methods to cut through the digital static and get your content in front of your customers. After all, one of the benefits of print has always been the persona nature of a message received in hand or in your mailbox as opposed to on a cluttered social media feed or in an email inbox. By combining both traditional, personal marketing methods like print with the newest, cutting-edge digital marketing tools, you can present your business as modern and effective while retaining the personal air that fosters real relationships between your business and its customers.
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