Digital Marketing vs. Print Marketing: A Cost Analysis
Online advertising has reached an all-time high, but many still debate the practicality and advantages of print advertising vs. digital marketing.
The answers to these questions will vary depending on who you ask. First Disclaimer: I own a digital marketing company, so my answers might be very different from what you’ll hear if you ask a sales rep at your local newspaper, circular, or trade publication — always consider the source. Second Disclaimer: Throughout my career, I have worked at two print marketing firms, so I know their answers mostly hope to sidestep the issue. But let’s look at some facts (or at least the information I have strung together in a convincing way and labeled as such).
PRINT ADVERTISING
Print Advertising can take several forms.
1. Billboards
2. Newspapers
3. Magazines
4. Fliers / Direct Mail
5. The Phone Book
It can also take the form of tri-folded media kits you printed in your bedroom/home office and hand-delivered to your neighbors, but we simply just can’t cover everything in one blog post, so let’s assume the four listed above are the key players — and let’s also momentarily forget that TV and Radio exist as comparisons.
BILLBOARDS
Gigantic eyesores on the side of the highway. Obnoxious banners across the back of a city bench. Billboards are the largest and most expensive form of print advertising. Pricing will depend on size, location, and duration of the campaign, but New York’s Time Square rings in the highest at a mere $2.5 million to rent a billboard for 4 weeks. An average billboard price for most US cities starts at $1500.
NEWSPAPERS
They may get delivered to your doorstep every morning, but do you really read them? And when’s the last time you tipped the paperboy? Newspapers are one of the oldest forms of print advertising and often the first thing business owners think of when placing an ad. Depending on the size and placement of the ad and whether it’s a local or national publication, the cost will range somewhere between $200 and $1 million (for a page 1 ad in the New York Times). An 1/8 page ad in the Washington Post costs just shy of $20,500.
MAGAZINES
Have you ever been really excited to check your mail because the mailbox looks full, but it turns out it’s just a magazine rolled up and shoved inside? Happens to me all the time, but I once accidentally signed up for 5 subscriptions to various publications. Like newspapers, magazine ad prices depend on circulation, frequency of distribution, ad size/location, and whether or not the publication is full color. On average, you can expect a standard full-page ad in a local circular to cost $900-$1200, and if you’re wondering where that knowledge comes from, re-read my Second Disclaimer in the third paragraph.
FLIERS / DIRECT MAIL
As if the magazines stuffed into my mailbox weren’t bad enough, someone had the nerve to shove fliers in the door handle! Fliers and mailers are appealing to many business owners because they are relatively inexpensive and can target specific neighborhoods. A fancy mailer with 2-sided, full color printing could cost $4 per mailer to print and distribute. The problem is the response rate is only 1–2%, and that’s if you’re really lucky. That means a $400 campaign of 100 fancy mailers might hope to net 2 calls in total.
THE PHONE BOOK
The last time I used a phone book was in 2007 to order pizza from a hotel phone after checking-in at 1am on a roadtrip — my cell phone had died, there was no “concierge” or room service, and I was tired and hungry. The first pizza place was closed, the second didn’t deliver, and the third just had really bad pizza. It was a huge debacle. You know? Come to think of it, I’m kind of hungry now… anyway, the average cost of phone book listings is $800 per year.
Graphic Design and Copywriting
It might come as a surprise, but graphic design is usually not included. On average, a freelance graphic artist will charge you between $500 and $1000 to design your ad. If you need copy written, expect to pay more.
Total Cost of Print
Let’s stay on the conservative side of graphic design and media and see what the rough estimates are:
1. Billboards: $1500 cost + $500 design = $2000
2. Newspapers: $20,500 cost + $500 design = $21,000
3. Magazines: $1000 cost + $500 design = $1500
4. Fliers / Mailers: $400 cost + $500 design = $900
5. Phone Book: $800 cost + $500 design = $1300
Without including the ridiculously high prices of Times Square billboards or page 1 national newspaper ads, this still leaves us with a mean annual cost of $5,340 (don’t worry, I checked my math with the Calculator app on my iPhone) and a median annual cost of $1500 among the discussed print advertising vehicles.
DIGITAL MARKETING
When most people hear “digital marketing”, they think of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. To discuss PPC, we need to talk about CPC and CPM. Man, that’s a lot of acronyms.
CPC, or Cost Per Click, is the amount of money you’re spending every time someone actually clicks on your ad.
CPM, or Cost Per Thousand, is the amount of money you’re spending per 1000 impressions (a single impression is when your ad is displayed on a site, but doesn’t mean it is clicked).
You’ll usually have the option to select between CPC and CPM when you start an ad campaign, and the best option is going to depend on what your goals are. Is it more important for people to see your ad or for people to click it?
Keyword Values in CPC & Social Ads
Not all keywords are created equally. In my city (Boca Raton) “SEO” has high competition as a keyword. Google’s suggested CPC bid for an AdWords campaign with this keyword is around $10, which is fairly high, but that’s the cost of each person that’s actually being sent to our website.
You can estimate the cost of keywords using Google’s free Keyword Planner Tool.
Social Ads are ads that display on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Again, you’ll usually have the option to select between CPC and CPM.
Advantages and Total Costs of Digital Marketing
BUDGETING AND TOTAL COST
One of the beauties of digital marketing is you set your own budget. The minimum buy, if any, is not much. I can start an Adwords campaign or boost my Facebook posts for $25 to start. With digital marketing, you’re paying for the amount of clicks you get. If I pay $500 for 50 clicks at $10/click, but only get 25 clicks, then I’ve only actually spent $250. If I spent that $500 on a magazine ad and only a few people saw it and no one went to my website, then I’m just out $500. There are no limits — set your monthly spend amounts and the campaign will stop automatically when it has reached them. If you like the results, you can spend more.
CUSTOMIZATION, TARGETING, AND REACH
In terms of customization and targeting, there is no contest between digital and print. I can watch my digital impressions as the campaign is running and change them if they are underperforming; whereas, if I had a bunk print ad in a magazine, I’m stuck with it for the year. I can target my digital ads to only display to specific demographics based on things like age, zip code, and gender… and I can even see the estimated reach based on those selections before I start the campaign. Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn will show you the estimated reach for your selected demographic based on real data. Print advertising executives will try to estimate reach to particular demographics based on a wonderful system of guessing.
PERFORMANCE TRACKING
There are two ways to track the performance of print ads. The first is to buy a tracking phone number that you only use for that particular ad campaign and monitor the number of calls you receive through that number. The second is to ask every caller “How did you hear about us?” and hope that they remember the 1/4 page ad they saw for your business in their local real estate publication… but the truth is, prospective customers don’t know where they found you and they don’t care. With digital marketing, I can watch ad performance in real time and make edits.
EXPOSURE
Obviously, the exposure you’ll get with print advertising is limited to the number of people that receive, buy, or read the publication — and even if your ad is on the back cover, you can’t be guaranteed that everyone will actually see it. Digital Marketing essentially has no limit on exposure… if you need more overall impressions, you can increase the scope of a campaign’s duration or area.
FREE Digital Marketing
Since we’re talking about total costs, I’d like to point out that there are many ways to market your business online without spending any money. Major sites like Google, Yahoo, Yelp, and SuperPages have free directories of business listings. All you have to do is claim each listing for your company and maintain them regularly to ensure accuracy (Shameless Plug: NSITE has affordable software that can automatically create and manage these listings for you). You can learn more about these business listings in this blog post — 3 Tips To Increase Local Search Traffic.
WHAT’S THE CATCH?
I know this article leans heavily in favor of digital, and just so it doesn’t sound like I’m being impartial, I’ll mention a few important things about print.
Not everyone who has a mailbox has a Facebook account (and vice versa?)
There are certain demographics, usually ages 55+, that social marketing has a hard time targeting. This is because people who belong to an older generation might not have a Facebook or LinkedIn account and they might not use Google. This specific subsect of humanity grows smaller and smaller every year, but if this is your target market, one of the only ways to reach them is through their physical mailbox with some form of print. On the flip side of that, there also exists another subsect of people who have a Facebook account, but no mailing address — I’m looking at you, fellow millennials.
You might just get a really, really good deal
Occasionally, print marketing firms will offer you some sort of ‘try before you buy’ deal and give you your first month for free. Usually they’re just hoping they get you in a contract that you forget to cancel after the first month, but it could be worth a shot.
Depending on their deadlines, a local publication might have an open page that they have to sell before distribution. If your timing is right, you could negotiate a really good deal.
Brand Recognition
I don’t think I’ve ever called a number off a billboard, but I do know that the Palm Beach Outlets are at Exit 71 on I-95, and I also know which ER’s have the shortest wait times — and that’s because I drive by billboards advertising both of these things almost every day. I’ve also never ordered commercial carpet, but when faced with the task of investigating carpet for our new office, I quickly remembered that the number for Empire Today is “eight hundred five eight eight, two three hundred, empire” (I dare you to try to say that without singing it) because of the jingle on their commercials. Brand recognition is important, and exactly where it falls into your strategy depends on your particular company. Print marketing can give you good brand recognition even if it doesn’t give you good conversions — but don’t make the mistake of thinking that an appropriate digital marketing campaign would give you less brand recognition than print.
AND THE CLOSE…
“Every good marketing strategy…”
That’s right. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to a print advertising agency or a digital marketing firm, they’ll both tell you that every effective marketing strategy includes multiple vehicles and diversification — and they’d both be right, but in a strict cost analysis, it’s hard to see a way print would over digital any day of the week.
This article, in its entirety, was re-posted from NSITE’s blog, which can be found here.
About The Author…
David Thomas is Co-Founder and Director of Marketing at NSITE Search. He has spent the last decade working in the fields of technology and marketing, but quickly runs out of things to say about himself when speaking in third-person. You can follow Dave and NSITE Search @nsitesearch on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
