Print is alive! It’s alive!!
Bottom-line:
It was never dead.
Has it taken a hit? No doubt. A significant one at that. Are there more cost-effective ways to get your brand out there? Digitally, yes. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid printed materials and advertisements – it just means you need to be smarter with your decisions.
We’re a long way from traditional media disappearing on us.
You need to think about your offline customers.
To focus all your attention on digital media, is doing yourself a disservice.
Figure out your marketing budget and target your ideal customers.
Determine the costs to get your brand out there both digitally and traditionally.
Attack on all fronts.
Just as you can easily measure results digitally, you can do the same with printed materials (direct mailers, billboards/outdoor signage, trade publications, handouts/drop-offs) simply by creating unique domain names, emails or phone numbers. It’s old-school but don’t dismiss it. It can still work for you as a segment of your overall strategy.
Your sales force needs ammo.
A creative and dynamic printed piece will deliver an experience that digital advertising cannot replicate.
I started Palmer Marketing at age 34 in January of 1988. I had 2 kids in diapers and a crazy idea about running my own company. I came from an entrepreneurial family and had no good reason to believe it wasn’t possible and as it happens, it was.
I’m definitely a country girl. I didn’t grow up in an actual town, village or hamlet. It was more like the middle of somewhere along Highway 28, surrounded by trees. Many thanks goes to my high school art teacher, Mr. Edwards, for inspiring me to choose this career path. With the realization that I actually could create art for a living, college lured me away from country life to the big city. Kitchener, to be exact, to study Graphic Design & Advertising at Conestoga College. Talk about beginning an adventure and a culture shock! Not staring at people with purple, green or some other wildly coloured hair was a bit of a challenge. City buses (lol thinking back), who knew they only stopped on the same side of the street as the bus stop sign!? Lesson learnt.
I love my work like I love summer. Why not? Summer is when I get to play my favorite sport—golf! Playing artist is a lot like playing golf. You need to be calm and cool under pressure if you ever hope to keep the ball in play; that’s rare for an artist. My best shots happen when I talk less and concentrate more; that’s not so rare for an artist.
I am the 8th of 9 children raised in Essex County outside of Windsor, Ontario. We lived on a gravel road, no sidewalks and our greatest adventures were in our own backyard. I still have friends I made in grade 1 and continue to stay in touch today. After graduating from the University of Windsor with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, I moved to the big city of Toronto and have worked most of my career in the printing industry. I got to know the folks at Palmer Marketing as a key supplier to them for over a decade.
To say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree would be an understatement in my family; at least when it comes to picking a career path. There isn’t a person in my immediate family that hasn’t at some point or another worked in the IT field. I guess there’s something in our DNA that pulls us towards computers.