Digital and print media aren’t mutually exclusive. If done right, these two strategies build on each other to improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy when reaching hospital IDNs and GPOs. You can combine online and print strategies to target your audience, increase visibility, and improve engagement.

Learn five tips for creating a combined digital and print strategy for healthcare.

Key Takeaways:

• Combining print and digital marketing builds on each other’s strengths to create an effective B2B marketing strategy
• Print ads can help your digital content stand out in the oversaturation of online content 
• Create consistent branding and messaging by combining your digital and print marketing teams for a seamless client experience

How Digital and Print Media Complement Each Other

The total digital advertising spend was $436 billion in 2021. Offline advertising that year was $196 billion. In total, 55% of marketing is digital. However, print marketing is still highly effective, with the largest segment being magazine advertising, reaching a marketing volume of $6.34 billion in 2022.

Here are four benefits of combining your digital and print strategies.

Image from Wordstream

Reach a Targeted Audience

Targeting your advertising ensures you only invest in quality B2B leads with a high intent to buy, which increases your chance of a return on your investment.

Healthcare marketing to IDNs and GPOs is a niche market with a specific audience. You can use digital advertising to reach some of your audience, but you will have difficulty guaranteeing prospective buyers see your marketing content.

Print marketing, on the other hand, is more targeted. For example, you can publish ads in medical journals and healthcare magazines where you know a large portion of your audience will be. You then use your print ads to direct your audience to your online content, where your digital strategies will complete the sales cycle.

Cut Through the Online Noise

Bloggers publish over six million posts a day. The oversaturation of online content drowns each brand’s content out, with only a few breaking through the noise. As a result, many marketers struggle today to appear in front of their target audience online.

Print ads help you stand out to increase your visibility.

Print ads require 21% less effort for your readers to process your message. In addition, 75% of consumers say they remember a brand from a print ad compared to 44% who remember brands from digital ads.

In a world filled with digital ads and marketing content, you can stand out by using print to reach your audience and make an impression. That impression will make your online content more likely to stand out because your audience would already recognize you from your print strategy.

Stay Relevant Longer

When you publish a post online, it will remain relevant as long as you keep updating it. However, newer content will eventually take its place in search results or in your sponsored ad spot after a short time as digital content moves quickly.

Print ads remain for the lifetime of that magazine edition. You can invest in an ad spot once, and you will continue generating a response as long as people look through the magazine and display it in hospital waiting rooms or their offices. Since print has a longer lifespan than digital media, with new editions usually coming out monthly or quarterly, your magazine ad will be relevant for longer than your digital ad.

Increase Your Engagement

Direct mail is more personal than digital ads and has a more significant impact on the reader. Because of this impact, those that read print ads are more likely to purchase from your brand than those that just read digital ads.

However, you can use the increased engagement from print with the ease of purchase from digital marketing to create a seamless experience. This experience moves your engaged print readers to your website, where you can close the sale through digital marketing strategies.

5 Tips to Combine Online and Print Marketing

Use these five tips to master your next print and digital campaign.

1. Use Consistent Messaging and Branding

Brand consistency is what ties all your marketing strategies together. A united message and appearance help your audience recognize you at each touchpoint. Without brand consistency, you can’t build on your efforts, as each strategy will feel like a separate interaction.

In some cases, conflicting branding can even hurt your objective because you might send contradictory messages.

Because of how different print and digital marketing are, keeping a consistent brand is even more important to help connect your online presence with your offline ads.

Some ways to create a consistent brand message include:

• Using consistent voice in your messaging
• Incorporating slogans and logos
• Keeping consistent colors and fonts
• Using similar call-to-actions

2. Connect Your Print to Your Digital Content

Your digital and print campaigns aren’t islands working towards individual goals. They are roads leading to the same destination. Sometimes the most effective route to that destination is by overlapping paths.

For example, you might use QR codes or URLs in your print ad to lead your readers to online marketing content for the next stage of the buyer’s journey.

Leading your readers from print to digital content also helps you track your audience, which allows you to customize your interactions with your healthcare leads.

3. Unify Your Print and Digital Teams

To encourage a connected experience and unified branding, start by collaborating between your print and digital departments.

Working together also allows you to combine your data and eliminate siloes. For example, since your digital team has more data, they can share that information about your target audience to help you create personalized print ads that reach the same audience.

4. Understand Your Customer’s Journey

Combining your data can create a more accurate customer journey map that includes online and offline activities. Your customer journey map represents where your customers interacted with your brand, what actions they took, and when they purchased or lost interest. It helps you identify your strongest marketing strategies and fix weaknesses in your process.

For example, you can identify where most prospective buyers are in their journey when they see your ads in healthcare journals. Then, you use that information to customize your print ads for that point in the buyer’s journey.

5. Use Print to Build Trust

Most buyers trust print ads more than digital ads. Your print efforts hold greater authority because of their permanence and straightforward format.

When you invest in print advertising, your authority overflows to your digital marketing efforts, increasing your reader’s trust in all your content. Brands that use both print and digital ads have a 400% increased effectiveness.

Image from FinancesOnline

Time to Add Print Marketing to Your Strategy

Share Moving Media can help you reach your marketing goals with unique insights into the healthcare marketing industry and opportunities to use targeted magazine advertising to reach Hospital IDNs and GPOs.

Contact us to learn more about our print marketing services.