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What's the Best Advertising Strategy - Digital or Print?

What’s the Best Advertising Strategy – Digital or Print?

While the majority of farmers rely on print publications for their agricultural news (as mentioned in our last blog post), a rapidly growing number of agricultural producers are also searching online for industry and product information.

They’re not alone. It’s a trend that has sparked double-digit growth in the use of digital and mobile advertising, with tools such as website ads and social media advertising on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

The Pros and Cons of Digital Ads

Digital advertising offers some strong advantages:

  • It can provide access to a massive audience. Consider that roughly 14 million Canadians check their Facebook newsfeed daily, according to recent statistics released by the social network.
  • Most digital platforms collect user data that allows you to target ads strategically – by age demographics, gender, interests, education and location.
  • Digital platforms like Twitter also make it easy to interact and engage with your audience, allowing you to post messages about your company, products, and special promotions in real time.

The downside of digital media is the challenge of accurately gauging impact.

  • Click-through rates and page impressions tell you how many people may have seen your ad – not how many have acted on it.
  • It can be hard to prove how many of those clicks were generated by real people, and not by bots.
  • Depending on how it’s designed, the impact of your ad when it’s displayed on the tiny screen of a smartphone can be questionable.
  • Getting your email ads past the recipient’s virus scanner and spam filter can be challenging.

Despite those challenges, when it comes to digital the pros definitely outweigh the cons. That’s why we continue to see an increase in online advertising.

With the rapid rise of digital communications, our clients often ask how much of their advertising budget should be dedicated to digital and how much should be spent on more traditional channels such as print and radio.

Building a Solid Advertising Strategy

In order to answer to those questions, it’s important to sit down and develop an advertising strategy that addresses key factors such as:

  • Who am I trying to reach with my ads?
  • What geographic region?
  • What type and size of farming operation or agricultural business am I targeting?
  • How quickly do I need to get my message out there?
  • What’s my budget?

Carefully sorting through each of these questions makes it easier to build a solid plan and choose advertising options that make sense, and deliver results.

A Multi-Channel Approach is Best

As we work with our clients – in agriculture and other industries – to build these strategies, we almost always recommend a multi-channel approach. It’s the most effective way to reach the largest number of potential customers with your message. The reason is simple. Not all farmers, and not all individuals in general, go online to look for industry and product information. Some prefer listening to the radio or reading newspapers, trade magazines and newsletters.

The bottom line is to avoid placing your eggs all in one basket. Targeting multiple advertising channels with your message is the secret to achieving the best results.

Was this blog post helpful? Contact us anytime with your comments or questions, and tell us how we can help with your advertising needs.

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What's the Best Advertising Strategy?