The other day I was thumbing through a business magazine and was struck by how many print advertisers were missing a huge opportunity. In today’s digital world, print ads can be an entry point for a sustained online conversation that can convert mild interest into a sale. Instead, many of these B2B ads just sat there.

For more on how to leverage print advertising in a digital world, click on the thumbnail to see our mini-site with tips and examples.

There was no reason to notice them, no compelling reason to read about the problem they solved, and worst yet, no reason to go beyond them to engage in a deeper conversation with the advertiser. For this, companies were paying over $35,000 a page!

Print advertising has actually become even more valuable in today’s cross platform digital environment. Done right, a print campaign can drive people to a wide array of online channels like customized landing pages, videos and social media. These digital channels are free for the most part, and allow for extended engagement with customers and prospects.

Now, when you develop a B2B print ad campaign, you increase your ROI exponentially by integrating it with interactive opportunities that reside in the digital space.

Here’s the catch though. It still has to be a good ad. It has to capture attention because it’s provocative and relevant, addressing an issue that’s meaningful to the audience. Even if it’s just a branding or “image” ad, it has to be interesting. If it’s about a technology, the value proposition needs to be expressed simply and clearly. It’s a brave new digital world, but the techniques for igniting a connection are the same as they have always been.

Turns out a guiding principle of online consumer marketing works for B2B as well. Instead of sending respondents to a general corporate website, send them to an interactive landing page or “mini site” developed specifically for the campaign or vertical market.

Tabbed landing pages (“mini sites”) create engagement and interaction.

Here’s the secret formula we’ve refined over the past 12 months to create engagement:

1. Give information in bite-sized pieces on the interactive mini site, so visitors can control the process of revelation. The interactivity of the tabs (with short copy) makes it fun. People end up reading more, painlessly.
2. Provide multiple calls to action. Give people attractive choices and promotional offers whenever possible. Keep the calls to action always visible as people move through the mini site.
3. Let people escalate their level of interest and commitment without barriers. No registration required for informative material. It’s fine to offer a white paper upon registration, but we’ve found that we increase direct sales inquiries by removing this barrier.
4. Offer a cool personal item as an incentive for registering or signing up for a demo – including the chance to enter a drawing.
5. Offer a downloadable brochure PDF as well as a way to instantly “drill down” after reading each tab.
6. Make the design clean, the headlines clear, the look simple and the navigation easy. Give the mini site a theme that ties in with the rest of the campaign (emails, online and print ads, social media, online press releases).
7. Sales contact information (both phone and email) should be prominent and always visible. And of course, provide a link to the corporate site too.

We developed and tested tabbed landing pages/mini sites for our client SNL over a year ago. They were so effective that now we do a landing page as part of every campaign, for each division and product line. In the example above, when SNL Energy expanded its web-based energy information service we positioned it as the “smartest energy source” and created this landing page as the multi-media campaign “hub”.