Print Marketing Trends for 2023

There has been a heavy gravitation toward digital marketing over the past two decades. Many businesses and individuals have relied exclusively on digital marketing to promote. The result has been a flooded market that has become ultra-competitive for face time and left many small businesses unable to compete with large corporations that have multi-million-dollar marketing budgets.

In 2022, the “duopoly” of Google and Meta raked in over $280 billion in ad revenue. The total global digital ad spend reached over $560 billion.

But with inflation continuing to creep up and a recession on the horizon (if not already here), digital ad spend is going to drastically slow in 2023 and businesses are going to focus marketing budgets on initiatives that are proven or more likely to yield higher ROI. This includes print, which has traditionally done very well in marketing, and presents a nostalgic element that many in the younger generations are grasping for.

Here are the print marketing trends we can expect to see in 2023:

More Direct Mail

As email became a popular “free” tool to send marketing materials, traditional marketing mail fell to the wayside and mailboxes have been left mostly barren. But the exodus of direct mail marketers has left a void in an arena that has reported a 5-9% response rate, compared to less than 2% for email.

Much of this can be attributed to the advancements in technology and data used for direct mail campaigns. Marketers can hyper-target individuals and businesses based on many of the same demographic characteristics used in online advertising. And rather than competing with hundreds of advertisements vying for attention on a small screen, direct mail pieces are sometimes the only media the recipient has in front of them.

Expect to see marketers return to mail origins with more direct mail campaigns filling mailboxes in 2023.

Personalized Elements

Commercial printing has come a long way from the days of printing presses that use plates and can only print a single graphic repeatedly. These days, digital printers and more advanced technology allow us to incorporate personalized elements in individual pieces using variable data printing (VDP). So, marketers can target individual people and businesses with unique elements that are specific to them – names, messages, images, or logos, for example.

Research indicates that over 75% of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand that sends them personalized communications and a slightly higher percentage suggests they are more likely to do repeat business.

As marketers have become savvier in the capabilities of print personalization and how to use it, expect to see more targeted marketing materials with personal elements included. The information available in the public domain, purchasing habits, and more are all fair game.

To read about the rest of the print marketing trends for 2023 click the link below:

Written by Omega High-Impact Print Solutions Marketing Director, Jake Coburn.

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