Do your prospects print your PDFs?

Posted on November 8, 2007 by Dave J.

So last week I said we need to consider content formats that tell ‘the story’ online in a linear fashion, as websites are often not read linearly and therefor don’t tell stories well. PDFs were one suggestion, and an easy one to implement, as we can just post our existing collateral. Right?

Wrong.

One of my field guys related this story to me this week:

  • After pulling out a brochure for the product being discussed, he asked the prospect if they had received a copy already. He said yes, but as a PDF sent with the initial quotation. The prospect went on to say that he would like the printed copy the rep had. The client explained that the very colorful cover had dissuaded him from printing it out.

And since that conversation, I’ve printed three different PDFs from online where I have purposefully skipped printing the first page. So its not just weird prospect, this must be a common reaction. (Or I’m weird, too.)

Why? Maybe we just hate printing using a lot of color that doesn’t have any useful content. It seems wasteful both in printing cost and our attention.

Another problem with that same brochure is that it has two ‘spreads’ that look don’t work well in PDF. If you keep them as a spread, they really become one page, and become hard to read on screen or when printed. And if the spread is separated into two pages, it is also hard to read. You can’t win this one.

(Oh, yea, and then there is the constant battle with file size for PDFs, but that is better as bandwidth has increased and Acrobat has improved over the years.)

Lesson: We need to think beyond paper when creating brochures these days. And once again, content trumps style.

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  • MedEventPublisher

    Dave -We run into similar PDF -v- print situations, which is why we decided to create a “digital edition” of our brochure. Not only does this make it more acceptable for email distribution to prospects (no attachment needed), we can also update it frequently and easily. We work with NXTbook Media on many projects, so we had them do the conversion. Here’s the link:http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/tristar/unlockingyourpotential/index.php- Steve

  • Anonymous

    Have you looked at the cost of color cartridges! If you want people to print out design the online version with that in mind. However, I generally just save pdf catalogs in a file and refer to it one my computer so I can do a word find and most importantly so I don’t lose it. Once I print something, it ends up getting filed away… for good.Mary

  • Anonymous

    Have you looked at the cost of color cartridges! If you want people to print out design the online version with that in mind. However, I generally just save pdf catalogs in a file and refer to it one my computer so I can do a word find and most importantly so I don’t lose it. Once I print something, it ends up getting filed away… for good.Mary

  • MedEventPublisher

    Dave -< />< />We run into similar PDF -v- print situations, which is why we decided to create a “digital edition” of our brochure. Not only does this make it more acceptable for email distribution to prospects (no attachment needed), we can also update it frequently and easily. We work with NXTbook Media on many projects, so we had them do the conversion. Here's the link:< />http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/tristar/unlockingyourpotential/index.php&lt; />< />- Steve