Since going solo I’ve picked up work from all sorts of places from Southampton to Tyneside via Canary Wharf, and in all sorts of disciplines; web design & search engine marketing to various print projects.

Much of my work has been on the web side of things, which is great as I LOVE designing websites and I’m not surprised that digital work makes up the bulk of my jobs.

However I ADORE designing things for print. It’s where I started and still hold the most prized place in my design and marketing heart. And I’ve just sent a leaflet, brochure and pull up banner for one of my clients to print, which started me mulling over why the balance is so heavy towards the web and how I can start to weight this a little more towards print.

I’ve spotted a few things I can change in my day to day practices, my blog for example is really digitally heavy so people who visit are looking for the subjects I discuss. I also feel that business owners have lost faith in print, swanning to the digital media such as websites and social marketing to spend their precious pounds.

If that’s you, here are my 3 P’s of Print to encourage you to love print too:

1. Print says ‘Premium’

When you say you’re brand or service is premium, you can charge more for it. And I don’t know about you, but charging more is good. Think about handing a client a high quality brochure at the end of a meeting vs handing them a business card with a web site. That customer now has a record to remind them of your meeting that stands out from multiple business cards on their desk or telephone table (do folks still have telephone tables at home?!). They can turn to your offering really quickly, even faster than an going to your website via an iPad (which as it’s ‘always on’ is possibly the quickest way folks are going online these days).

2. Print says ‘Professional’

Print gives you ‘gravitas’. It’s really quick and not too expensive to get a website up and running, start a twitter account and start a Facebook page. In this way almost anyone from anywhere can start promoting themselves as a business. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to know who’s the real deal and who’s just playing business. If you start promoting a real world brochure on your website via a simple ‘send us a brochure’ form you can stand out from the crowd as a professional, trustworthy outfit.

And of course once you have their address, you can easily follow up on the inquiry, directly to their house, which is loads better than just having an email address. Oh and they’ve got your brand in their hand, which is great!

3. Print is ‘Portable’

Smart phones and tablets are bringing the web to all sorts of never before considered places, but they can never be as portable as a leaflet or flyer. Small affordable leaflets can be popped through all the letterboxes on a road. You can’t do that with a website or iPad! There’s plenty of tools available to identify the best places to market your business in this way and I suspect you own local knowledge will be most valuable, a targeted leaflet drop is still a really great way to sell whatever you sell!

Don’t take my word for it, just look at the mail you receive through your door, big and small businesses are getting results from putting themselves in front of customers through letterboxes.

If you’re going to invest in print you need to get it right for your customer base, you need to put a little thought into getting it right and you don’t can’t edit it once it’s been printed so you need to take care and double check everything is spot on. But it’s worth it, a professional piece of print will add value to your business and enable your company to be unique in it’s sector.

If you want to get some printing sorted, do get in touch, call 01332 416446 or head over here.