Creating a Tourist Trail Map – Part 4, Printing versus Digital Technology

There are some downsides to printed advertising material:

• it’s almost throw away,
• it can’t be updated without reprinting,
• the quantity to be printed can be an issue (how many is too few, how many is too many?)
• it uses resources,
• your customers/target audience have to be sent or be in the area ‘by chance’ to pick up your materials (hence the need to distribute).

The upsides to printed advertising material include:

• In many circumstances it’s a reliable and practicable method of getting your points across,
• It’s nice for people to hold in their hands,
• It’s portable and readily accessible.

So it’s definitely a very useful tool amongst many others for advertising.

More and more people are likely to be holding mobile phones or tablets in their hands – wherever they happen to be. So can you take advantage of that?

Yes. We took the bold decision to put our map on the web and make it interactive – with pop out information and web site links. http://sciarts.co.uk/Art_Map/Cmap.html

Digital technology counterbalances the disadvantages of the print version. And indeed people can plan their visit before they even come to your area and they don’t have to pick up a map. They may even be encouraged to visit, when they would not have done so before.

You will need someone to host the map on the internet of course, and someone to code it up for you. It really is the way to go and we’ve had great feedback on ours.

And finally we also put a QR code on the printed leaflet, so anyone can access the interactive version too on their mobile or tablet.

Happy planning, happy designing and happy trailing!

www.sciarts.co.uk