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With today’s tough economic environment, marketing dollars are being stretched and applied to smarter and more cost-effective tactics to help brands and companies sustain and grow. While there are various ways to help your clients outwit (not outspend) the competition, going digital is certainly one effective strategy. Digital print, that is.

Digital printing has opened an array of new possibilities for producing marketing collateral. While the cost, time and commitment for print production can be significant and sometimes prohibitive, employing digital as an alternative to offset printing processes can enable a company to maximize its marketing investment.

Here are six considerations to share with your clients to help them incorporate digital printing as part of their marketing mix in 2009.

1. Cost-Effective Short Runs

Digital printing eliminates many of the steps required for conventional offset printing. Digital printing uses electronic patterns instead of physical templates, meaning there is no manual stripping of pieces together or making plates, making the setup costs lower and enabling cost-effective print runs. And, you guessed it, the reduced time for setup can also mean a faster turnaround time for digitally printed projects than those printed on a conventional press.

2. Print Only On Demand

It’s important to consider the other benefit of shorter print runs. We all cringe when a three-month old corporate brochure ends up in the trash because a product gets pulled from the market, or a new CEO takes office. Since the materials will be fresh with smaller, more frequent print runs, the marketing collateral is less likely to be thrown away or never used because it is outdated. Printing on demand is earth-friendly and cost-effective!

3. Minimize Proofing Nightmares

We all know last-minute copy edits or color adjustments frequently haunt the production process. Digital printing helps minimize the budget nightmare these changes can create. Unlike physical proofs used for traditional offset printing, digital print proofs are provided on screen, and are called soft proofs. Some digital printers may provide these soft proofs in the form of a high-resolution PDF. Soft proofing offers greater flexibility to proof more frequently and at a greatly reduced cost.

4. Personalization Sells

Digital printing offers the ability to speak to prospects one-on-one by enabling more precise and personal pieces that have targeted messages, varied offers and quickly generate a far higher return on investment. The way to do this is through variable data printing (VDP).

VDP is a form of customizable digital printing that enables you to change the graphics or text on each piece without stopping or slowing down the press. The most basic level of VDP involves changing the salutation or name on each copy. More complicated VDP uses versioning, where there may be differing amounts of customization for different markets, with text and images changing for groups of addresses based upon which segment of the market is being addressed. Lastly, there is full variability printing; this is where text and images are altered for individual addresses and/or demographics. Each level allows marketers to generate more personalized and, in turn, more effective communications.