One of the things you hear over and over again in the printing industry, especially when you specialize in printed marketing materials the way we do, is that our jobs are quickly becoming obsolete. With the focus slowly but surely moving away from printed advertising and driving toward the era of digital advertising, it’s easy to assume that print advertising is going to become obsolete sooner rather than later.
Needless to say, I chortled with glee when I hopped on to scan today’s headlines and found that not only are people sill reading circulars like newspapers and magazines, they’re more likely to trust what they have to say. Is it the loss of the anonymity that printing simply doesn’t afford you? Quite probably. The bottom line is, anybody can go out and print something online. Just ask Brad Paisley-he knows all about it!
With more faith being placed in print advertising over digital advertising it should come as no surprise to learn that people are still reading your ads in print, which means it’s not quite time to hang up the spurs on your printed offline marketing campaign yet.
In related news, this morning’s marketing headlines were also filled with the news that companies are slowly but surely raising their advertising budgets to get their names back out in the public eye. Did everyone see that coming? Bueller? Bueller? It’s easy to turn to marketing when you’re looking for a place to cut your budget, since the actions there can often be perceived as not being mission critical-as opposed to, say, making sure the office network stays up and running. Unfortunately, customers have very short memories, and if your company isn’t out there in the public eye you run the very real risk of slipping into obscurity.
Short term gain, long term loss isn’t the way you want to drive your business.