If you are not in the printing or marketing industry it might seem odd to think that companies still spend billions of dollars a year on printing – I mean come on, it’s 2014 already! Isn’t almost all marketing done on Google or Facebook or one of those other new fangled devices??

Well in order to really understand this idea we must look at why companies spend money on printing in the first place. Commercial printing (more specifically, ink on paper) really falls into one of two categories – active or passive marketing. Active marketing consists of printed pieces that directly result in making you more money. Examples of this active marketing would be direct mail postcards, workbooks that you sell to your customers, training guides that you end up selling, etc. Basically the role of active marketing is to sell the printed piece as an end product or to use that printed piece to drum up business. Passive marketing, on the other hand, doesn’t directly drive business, but still provides a valuable function to your company. Passive marketing pieces might be your business cards, letterhead, envelopes, etc. All of these printed pieces are useful, but don’t directly drive sales to your business. Most commercial printing really falls into either active or passive marketing.

So let’s say you design a workbook that costs you $3 per book to design, print, and market it. If you sell that workbook for $18 per book, the printing cost is a relatively small cost to incur. And since you know you will sell the book and make $15 profit, it really becomes a no brainer to spend the money on printing. Let’s also consider another example; say you spend $3,000 total for a direct mail marketing campaign (this includes your design, printing, and marketing). $3,000 might seem like a lot, but if you expect to receive $10,000 in new business from this marketing plan, you would net $7,000 each time your ran this marketing plan. So you can see that in these examples, you would do this type of marketing all day every day because it drives sales to your bottom line.

If you are interested in learning more about actively marketing your business, and generating a healthy ROI, feel free to contact PLS Print (727) 573-1763.