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It’s true. Print has had its challenges. But today, print is an important channel that supports and enhances online communication that is so prevalent today. Think about it. Cross-media marketing is essentially the duality and combination of print and digital media working together to promote a commonality.

Nearly 50% of adults today work in dual-screen environments, one or more times per week. That’s noteworthy on more levels than one. Yet print is the tangible, almost corporal essence in the chain of communication that is anything but.

Basically think about the last time you received a coupon with a code that you had to redeem online. Or have you ever been handed a business card with a QR code on it that takes you to the giver’s website? That is cross-media marketing at its best. Something tangible leading to something ethereal. Because so much of today’s communication is digital, print works overtime to become and remain a necessary presence. Cross-media marketing allows this to happen.

That’s not to say you can’t run a cross-media campaign without print. We are saying that print needs to be considered as part of the mix.

Cross-media marketing has the ability to appeal to a multi-generation audience. And this form of marketing goes both ways. We know that websites, video and mobile are getting tremendous play and success, yet is a single story always enough to significantly influence a purchase? As an example, let’s say view a website or video about a perfume. You join a review website and note that you’re partial to a certain perfume’s appeal. Be it the bottle shape, the smell or the model on the perfume’s campaign. If you were to receive a mailer and single sample of that perfume, would you feel more compelled to buy? You may or may not decide to at that point, but your consideration has increased and that’s the point. You’ve been successfully cross-marketed to.

Perhaps you’ve been given free bookmarks at a book convention, and those bookmarks then give you a code to download a free e-Book sample. All the standard mediums are now dependent upon one another for success and cross-media marketing puts them in a symbiotic relationship.

The goal of cross-media marketing is to treat users to exclusives otherwise unobtainable, to get them to interact with you and your brand, and enhance their experience of that brand. The cross-media marketing plan is about reaching your audience on a number of levels through various mediums. It is its own sort of infiltration system.