With as much as there is to say about the positive influence of electronic media, there often isn’t much left to say about print marketing, especially when it comes to small businesses. That’s unfortunate, because with so many businesses jumping on the electronic bandwagon, racing to get Facebooked, Twittered, and on the web, it still pays handsomely to rely on print materials to grow your business.

Ask most small business owners and managers why they want to take advantage of electronic media, and chances are very good that they will tell you “Well, everybody else is doing it.” The truth is, with all of its advantages in promoting business, electronic marketing should be done for the same reason that any other promotional avenue is used: because that’s where your clients and potential clients are. The trouble is what happens when that’s not where your clients are?

Promoting a small business with whatever medium you select should be done for one reason, and that is to reach the publics you want to reach. If, for example, a particular public you want to appeal to relies on print mediums such as print booklets to get information about the products and services they use, that’s where the emphasis of your marketing efforts should be.

Print materials are also a good promotional medium when it comes to direct selling your products or services to clients. For example, how easy would it be to give information about your product or service to a client who doesn’t have a tablet or smart phone? And even if your client does use electronic medium, chances are good that their attention span when reading a text isn’t very long. Compare this with the chances that a print brochure you have left a client with descriptions of your products and services included will get read.

If your print materials are well designed and written, chances are good that they will be around your client’s office a lot longer than a text, and there’s a greater chance also that it will be seen more while lying around the office than your smart phone or tablet.

In terms of costs, print promotional materials are far cheaper to create than electronic messages, especially when you consider how easy or hard it is for recipients to read your message at a later date. In the end, print promotional messages don’t cost, they pay.