This has been such a pet peeve of mine and I cannot tell you the number of arguments I have had with company GM’s about the importance of advertising numbers.  I think it basically boils down to two different things: comfort and ignorance.   Ok.  Comfort: you have been advertising for twenty years in the yellow pages and that’s where you will always spend your money.  Ignorance: well do I really need to explain this one?  Either way, advertising in print lowers the accuracy of these numbers.  Frankly, if a company is not marketing on the web right they should be getting a commission from their competitors.

When trying to about the many differences between traditional print advertising verses online “digital” advertising, depending on the individual, there would be several answers.  With a heavy analytical background, for me, the big difference is the ability to completely track your overall ROI.  That is what makes digital campaigns so strong.  It can tell an organization just how effective their advertising is.  This might be the reason why some organizations continue to stay clear from digital advertising.  Understandable.  It can be hard to swallow if you are not reaching your customers.  However, you instantly know these results which would be different from say a door hanger or magazine advertisement.  Now I am not saying that print advertising is bad at all.  I am just saying in this day and age advertising in print is just like purchasing a warranty for a new product.  Chances are you will never need it but many feel uncomfortable without it; just as many companies feel uncomfortable not including print advertising into their marketing campaigns.

Diversifying your advertising efforts is never a bad thing.  It gives you the opportunity to reach a different demographics through different types of media. My argument, getting back to my topic, is having the ability to track your conversion rate through print advertising.  When an account manager trying to sell you space in a magazine, what type of statistics do they try to preach to you?  This magazine has a viewership of ‘x”, distribution rate of “y”, geographic ad demographic statistics of “z”, right?  However, do they ever explain to you what their average conversion rate is?  Have they ever guaranteed a certain amount of inbound calls your organization would receive from advertising in this magazine?  How many sales will be converted through these advertisements?  No, because they don’t really have the accurate statistics.  On the other hand, digital advertising has the ability.

As you may read, analytics are something that truly fascinate me and I often reference them in relation to user experience.  Unlike traditional print advertising, digital advertising gives you the ability to benchmark typical campaigns.  For example, different creative call to actions may drive different user engagement.  One may deliver more site registrations while the other delivers more website sales.  Now this is a topic for later but the point is that with digital advertising your have the ability to measure these specific statistics and or user engagement.  You will always have a good solid benchmark with advertisements like this.  With print, you may have an idea of how conversions may have increased but truly never know.  So why organizations continue to put all their eggs in one basket is beyond me at this point.  The numbers are there for you to see, always,  and they don’t lie.

My small disclaimer at the end, print is by no means dead.  It does well for brand loyalty.  However, if a company truly wants to see how users actually engage wit their brand digital is always the way to go.