From Print to Pixels: Weekly Circular Ad Production Reimagined
There’s a better way for retailers to bridge the print and digital gap for their weekly circular ads—without giving up the benefits of print.
In 1995, a regional grocery outlet discontinued their printed circular, but not for the reasons retailers are tempted to use today. (The web was only five years old at the time.) They reasoned that publishing weekly specials only encouraged shoppers to cherry-pick some products and ignore others. However, after total sales faltered significantly, they brought back the circular six months later.
The circular is vital to all retailers, helping consumers plan their shopping while also driving
in-store traffic and building brand loyalty.
Today, the rise of web and mobile apps has tempted retail CMOs and their marketing and advertising directors to drop or curtail their weekly printed circulars. These are easily one of the most expensive forms of retail advertising, as creative service managers and production managers know all too well. However, the circular is still a vital part of the marketers’ toolbox.
The weekly circular ad helps consumers plan their shopping trips and seek out bargains while also serving as a singular vehicle for driving in-store traffic and building brand loyalty. The printed version provides a positive tactile experience, while its digital counterpart provides shopping convenience and connection to the retailer’s loyalty programs.
Manual workflows for circular planning, design, and production are often severely limited.
Circular Reasoning
The big challenge is to keep both print and digital versions consistent, connected, and cost-effective. Smart retailers understand the value of circulars, but their existing workflows for planning, designing, and producing them are often severely limited.
Many rely heavily on tasks that evolved when print was the only medium. Selecting (and searching for) product information and images, placing everything on a page, and conducting multiple proofing and revision cycles, were strictly manual, time-consuming processes. This made it very difficult to adapt to time-sensitive promotions or consumer demands.
This is a painful dilemma for creative services and production managers. Legacy workflows, disjointed data, manual input delays and errors, and fragmented processes for production and approvals limit their ability to explore more creativity and expand their reach to digital media without adding significant production time. Worst of all, slower turnarounds lead to missed opportunities to engage customers.
The Best of Both Worlds?
Ideally, the circular can potentially be a retailer’s most agile marketing tool, combining print and digital media benefits—without creating a huge budget problem. This is a challenge for large retailers, in particular, who must keep the print and digital versions in sync and account for regional store variations, strategic and seasonal promotions, and even individual customer buying behavior.
The first step towards “having your cake and eating it too” is a unified, single source of truth approach to product data. All too often, retailers’ massive store of product information is housed in separate databases—rife with inconsistencies and kept in separate, legacy “silos.”
The first step is a unified approach to a retailer’s massive store of siloed product data.
In contrast, Comosoft’s LAGO system provides a unified approach to Product Information Management (PIM). Digital Asset Management (DAM) and other data sources, making it easily accessible to product campaign planners.
Once the campaign and its special offers are in place, the same, unified data are just as easily accessible to creative service and production managers and their designers—allowing them to automate page building, proofing, approvals, and final output—all at greatly reduced costs. LAGO even provides automatic customization capabilities for multiple regional versions.
Bridging the Digital Divide
If printed circulars were the only goal, LAGO’s unified, multi-version workflow would be more than sufficient. However, in today’s retail environment, consumers expect to have the same information on multiple channels—starting with the tactile experience of print and connected to consistent information on their digital devices. The latter has the advantage of being dynamic, personalized, and data-driven, integrated with the retailer’s e-commerce and loyalty programs.
Thankfully, LAGO’s digital publishing workflow allows the campaign content developed for printed circulars and inserts to be exported automatically to their digital app equivalents, like Lowe’s Home Improvement and other retailers. Not only does the same product and offer data populate both print and digital, but the retailer can specify hotspot overlays, e-commerce, and other digital-only features.
Consumers expect the same information everywhere—starting with the tactile experience of print but also connected to the same data on their digital devices.
LAGO’s robust print-to-digital workflow for circulars also includes support for digital-first campaigns, including managed QR Code assets for the print layout that the user can scan for a targeted mobile experience. And, of course, when a consistent, data-driven approach is at the heart of a print-digital circular campaign, LAGO opens up new possibilities for personalization and AI-based automation and offer planning.
LAGO’s print-to-digital workflow includes support for QR Codes and targeted mobile experiences.
Despite rumors to the contrary, printed circulars are still very much alive and crucial to a retailer’s success. But the rapid increase in the number and complexity of digital channels—not to mention the need for customized versions of nearly everything—threatens to overwhelm already strained marketing and advertising resources.
The answer to this dilemma must involve a remarkable ROI with built-in efficiency gains, resource savings, and the ability to leverage mountains of data with compelling, targeted offers. Comosoft’s LAGO approach can accomplish all this, amplifying the lowly circular by turning it into an effective, multichannel powerhouse—a measurable means of increasing customer engagement, sales, and brand loyalty.
Printed circulars are very much alive, but they can be amplified—turning it into an effective, multichannel powerhouse.
Are you ready to elevate your weekly circular campaigns? Find out more about Comosoft LAGO’s weekly circular ad production software and their unique print publishing and digital publishing solutions. Or book a demo to see for yourself.
