As the digital world becomes increasingly saturated, more businesses are returning to traditional marketing forms like print advertising.
This type of advertising involves using a range of different printed materials to physically connect with customers. Such printed materials include:
- Leaflets
- Flyers
- Business cards
- Brochures
- Catalogs
- Newsletters
- Invitations
- Programmes
- Menus
- Door hangers
- Vehicle wraps
- Branded pens
- Branded mugs
- Posters
- Billboards
In order for your print advertising efforts to be successful, it’s important to avoid a few common blunders. Below are 10 print advertising mistakes to avoid.
Typos and spelling errors
The most obvious print marketing mistake to avoid is publishing printed materials that have typos or spelling errors. These will make your company appear less professional and could put off many customers.
Some typos may even change the meaning of an entire sentence, and could have hilariously disastrous results.
Always proof-read printed materials before publishing them. Print advertising companies will usually let you check the design before printing any copies off. Make sure to check every detail – including phone numbers, email addresses and small print.
Walls of text
Many of us find walls of text intimidating. It’s therefore important to avoid using too much text in your print adverts – particularly on posters and billboards, which are designed to be taken in at a glance.
Focus on highlighting the most important information (you can direct people to your website for further information). With billboards, you may want to include nothing more than a short slogan that gets across your brand message. With catalogs and brochures, you can include a lot more text, but should still refrain from getting too in depth.
How you format text is very important. Using paragraph breaks and images to break up text can make information easier to read and absorb. You may also be able to highlight certain information through different sizes, fonts, bold lettering, italics, underlining, different colours or bullet points.
Poorly formatted images
An image that is stretched or pixelated could make your advert look unprofessional. It is essential that any images used are high quality and formatted properly.
Always consider the shape and size of your printed advert when selecting images. Larger size images will be required when printing larger adverts. A few other important details to consider with images include:
- Making sure images are unique (avoid using popular stock images)
- Using photos taken in good lighting with no blurring
- Making sure text over images is readable (this post offers a few tips for adding text over photos)
- Asking permission before using other people’s photos or photographs of other people.
Cheap paper
Using poor quality paper is another mistake that some businesses make when investing in a print advertising campaign. While using cheaper paper can save you money, it can make your adverts feel less professional. Flyers and posters made from cheap paper may also get easily damaged – especially if they’re being mailed through letterboxes or displayed outdoors.
Some of the different types of paper used in print advertising include:
- Gloss-coated paper: A shiny type of paper that’s great for bringing attention to colours and images.
- Matte-coated paper: A glare-free type of paper that’s better for text-heavy paper materials.
- Silk-coated paper: A happy medium between gloss-coated paper and matte-coated paper that provides a professional sheen but with minimal glare.
- Semi-rigid paperboard: A thick 350gsm form of paper that’s often used for business cards and invites.
When choosing the right type of paper, it could also be worth considering eco-friendliness. Some paper is made from recycled paper or carbon balanced paper. This is better for the environment and could be more suitable for green-focused businesses, but may have reduced quality.
Printing defects
There are a range of printing defects that can occur when printing your advert. A few of these defects include:
- Misalignment
- Banding
- Stringing
- Smudging
Such defects can occur for a variety of reasons ranging from clogged print heads to using the wrong ink. You can avoid these defects by using a high quality printer and maintaining it properly, as well as researching the best suited ink to use.
Of course, you can also outsource a printing company to reduce the risk of printing defects. There are companies that specialise in services like leaflet printing – they’ll be able to select the right paper and ink for your order and will make sure that the print quality is high.
Inconsistent branding
Another mistake to watch out for when investing in print advertising is inconsistent branding. If the visual branding on your flyers and posters is different to that used on your website or social media channels, it could confuse customers into thinking that you’re a different company.
Make sure that branding matches up across all marketing mediums. Some of the brand elements that need to match up include:
- Your company name
- Your logo
- Brand colours
- Your website address
- Your contact details
If you decide that it’s time for a rebrand, make sure that everything gets rebranded at the same time. Avoid changing your logo or brand name shortly after a print advertising campaign – otherwise there will be flyers and posters out there still displaying your old logo and company name.
Unclear CTAs
A CTA (call to action) is a prompt that encourages consumers to perform an action such as visiting your website, calling your phone number or buying a product.
Some companies will include a call to action in their adverts, but will forget to provide the necessary contact details or address information. For example, if you want people to call you, it’s essential that you include your phone number within the advert. This needs to be clear and not hidden somewhere.
When it comes to directing people towards websites, QR codes have become a popular alternative to printing a website address. Consumers can scan these codes using the camera on their smartphone and then quickly open up the correct webpage. This is quicker and more convenient than having to type out a URL.
Make sure that this QR code is tested before you mass print it – a broken QR code is not going to be any help to anyone.
Printing too much/too little
When it comes to mass-printing flyers or posters, it’s important to think carefully about the quantity you need. The more you print, the costlier it will be. Print off too many flyers or posters, and you may also struggle to distribute them all. At the same time, you don’t want to run out too quickly.
Start by determining your budget. This will help you to decide how much to order. You should then consider how much time you have to distribute them. Do you really have the time to post 1000 flyers through people’s doors? Can you afford to pay someone to do it for you?
If you need programmes or flyers for a conference or seminar, it could be vital that you have enough to distribute to everyone who is attending. Work out exactly how many people are coming so that you can print off enough copies. You don’t want some attendees to be left without a programme.
Targeting the wrong locations
When it comes to mailing leaflets through people’s doors or displaying a billboard, the location that you target is key to your campaign’s success. If you mail leaflets through the wrong people’s doors, you won’t get any leads. Similarly, a billboard in the wrong location might end up being a waste of money.
Think about who your target audience are and where you are likely to find them. If you’re advertising a kids’ gymnastics class and are planning to put flyers through people’s doors, you’ll likely want to focus on residential areas where lots of families live.
If you’re advertising a recruitment service towards jobseekers and you want to use a billboard to do it, it could be important to rent out billboard space in an area that people pass through while commuting such as a train station platform or busy road.
Targeting at the wrong times
It’s also important to consider at what time of year you carry out your print advertising campaign. Are you looking to encourage more out-of-season sales? Or do you want to take advantage of a busy period when people are already interested? Both could be successful strategies, but it depends on the content on your adverts.
One thing you don’t want to do is start advertising for an event too early or too late. When advertising Xmas deals, you could annoy people if you start handing out flyers in August.
At the same time, you don’t want to wait until mid-December when there may not be much time left to go shopping.
Starting advertising at the beginning of November could be ideal for maximizing customers without coming across as too hasty (although you may want to start advertising events earlier than this).
With billboards, it could also be important to consider how long you display your advert. A lot of billboards have a minimum contract time of 4 weeks. Therefore, if you’re advertising an event, you’ll want to rent a billboard at least 4 weeks before the event so that you’re not continuing to display an advert after the event has taken place.
