Print is Not Dead…

The advent of the internet led many to proclaim that print advertising was dead. Yet two and a half decades later, print still reigns as the most valuable form of marketing and advertising you can buy. Bass Pro and Cabelas still print catalogs. So does Orvis. The three most successful rod building component companies all print yearly catalogs.

Each year at the International Custom Rod Building Exposition, we use the door prize tickets to gather additional information on how attendees heard about the event. The numbers have remained mostly the same for the past 10 years. Here is the result from last year’s tabulation:

RodMaker Magazine – 53%
Publication Print Advertising – 21%
Direct Mail Advertising – 13%
RodBuilding.Org – 9%
Facebook/Social Media – 2%
Other – 2%

An article in one of the fishing industry trade publications recently suggested that companies that put the bulk of their advertising dollars into social media, such as FaceBook, are missing as much as 90% of their market. After considering my own data for several years, I would not argue otherwise.

Print is far from dead. In fact, it’s barely been injured.