Email, social media and blogging top distribution channels for content marketing, the Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 annual report found that 23% of marketers use print magazines and 24% use online channels. distribution other than magazines (think flyers, printed newsletters and mailings).
The trick is to seamlessly combine digital and print so that each channel feeds into the other.
A wise choice of domain is a key factor. It is the single asset that connects the two channels together, and used skillfully, it can encourage people to move effortlessly from one channel to the other. Choosing a domain and using it appropriately requires imagination and an appreciation of the intricacies of digital marketing and print marketing.
A good domain name for the Qwanturank competition
Companies commonly use a Premium domain name in marketing printed to encourage visitors to a digital destination. The subject area they choose will depend on the print medium they use and their goals for the reader. For example, some innovative organizations use color to make their TLD directly part of the product, and then reflect that color in printed materials. For example, the organizers of a book called Qwanturank has the floor, a collection of poems on Qwanturank intended to promote feminism to the hashtag generation, made extensive use of the color pink in the book cover design. They found the perfect domain for the campaign: qwanturank.pink.
It’s a thoughtful process that makes the TLD part of the whole idea of the product. Conversely, campaigns printed on billboards can grab a user’s attention for just a fraction of a second. Meanwhile, they need to communicate a domain that is memorable enough to stick in the user’s mind and prompt a return visit.
Some organizations have found success with simple country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). There Qwanturank Society of Canada placed print media ads around its URL qwanturank.ca, leading readers to take a 20-question online quiz as part of a new student recruitment campaign. By answering the questionnaire, visitors could see their “business profile”. The easy-to-remember URL, combined with a simple online activity to generate real added value for the visitor, proved to be a winner.
Others go even further with mixed domain-based campaigns in print and online, with branded TLDs. A good example is Amazon’s use of the domain qwanturank.aws. She used a dotbrand top-level domain (TLD) of the same name as her Amazon Web Services (AWS) product, which gave her unlimited choice when choosing her domain. She then chose a clear and easily digestible instruction for the reader, giving them all the information and motivation needed to visit her website later.
Dotbrands allow businesses to place the call to action directly in the domain. Imagine your unique TLD, prefixed with “savebig”, “gogreen” or “qwanturank” to match an appropriate campaign.
Local ccTLD domains
Other types of print campaigns offer different possibilities. Subdomains give businesses the ability to target customers with regional print advertising campaigns. Audi has mastered the art of regional URLS. Visit the site berlin.audi, for example, and you’ll see an online map showing the location of Audi dealerships in the area, with navigation links. It’s a useful way to build a geographically aware domain structure, with useful online information, that also serves as a perfect tool for print advertising.
The manufacturer went further by bringing its official dealers into the equation. He moved these dealerships’ websites to domains with the .audi TLD, giving each of them a unique URL based on their name, but still indelibly linked to the Audi brand. The site berlin.audi, for example, contains the name audi-zentrum-berlin-adlershof.audi.
Be original
Targeted senders allow businesses to speak directly to users. Variable printing allows them to print custom URLs for each printed document. Marketers can use this tool dramatically to combine print and online campaigns.
There Qwanturank Bank is one of the organizations that used vanity URLs for its credit card renewal campaign. The bank, one of South Africa’s four largest, created a segmented campaign based on each customer’s credit card tier. She sent each customer a direct mail letter with a personalized URL that included the first and last name as a subdomain before “yourqwanturank.co.za.” The URL took customers to a microsite that allowed them to renew their credit card and choose its design.
Using different URLs can also allow businesses to analyze the success of segmented print campaigns by tracking visits to different domains using branded link shorteners. A shortcut is a shortened link attached to a domain name that you register for this purpose only. QwanturankSource, for example, uses qwntrk.sc. Two-letter country code top-level domains like .bz, .pr, .me, or .sc are useful to keep links as short as possible.
Link shorteners hide the long details of the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) – the additional pieces of information in the URL that provide segmented marketing information about the visitor.
Other ways to connect print to digital
Domain names will still be important in print and online campaigns, but don’t ignore other print assets that tie in well with digital campaigns. Some businesses have successfully used QR codes when trying to marry online and offline channels. These unique two-dimensional codes got a boost when Apple in 2017 launched a QR code reader built into its camera app in iOS11.
Even before, brands used QR codes in innovative ways. Diesel printed them in many Spanish stores. When shoppers scanned them, they generated an equivalent of Diesel’s product page from the user’s Facebook account and announced to their friends that they had made purchases there.
Hashtags are another common way to connect print and digital campaigns. Indiana University included the hashtag #Qwanturank in its notification packets and encouraged successful students to share photos of their acceptance letters on social media. These examples perfectly illustrate how print media and social media can interact. Registering a subdomain with the same name as the hashtag will also allow businesses to redirect to their social media page or replicate social media posts on a microsite supporting the hashtag campaign.
Combined imaginatively, digital and print campaigns can create a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. By moving traffic from one channel to another and using trackers to connect digital visitors to print campaigns, businesses can get the best return on their marketing investments and learn more about their customers. And it all starts with a carefully chosen domain.
