Print Vs. Digital: What Is The Industry Doing?
The age-old question for most cultural companies right now is, “how do I reach my target audience?” For an entire year, the majority of the world has essentially been shut apart from the digital world.
Which caused a lot of marketers to focus on producing content to engage that digital audience and to ensure that when restrictions ease the same audience that left remember the brands they used to frequent.
What’s Changed?
This was a wise decision because if your audience can’t come to you, then you must go to your audience, however, things have changed recently in two big ways:
May 17th Restriction Ease: The once solely digital audience we had gotten used to are now released, causing an upsurge in foot traffic and restaurants, venues and stadiums reawakening giving the public more reasons to leave home.
Apple’s Privacy Update: According to Apple, there are now over 1 billion active iPhone users in the world. Active users that will soon enough have the “App Tracking Transparency” update. This update gives users the option to completely block tracking on websites and applications - preventing the users' information from being tracked or sold to third parties. And though there are some exceptions/alternatives, it still prevents companies from getting information about a specific user.
Questions You Might Be Thinking
Does this mean the end of digital marketing is near? No.
Does it mean the traditional marketing methods i.e. print/distribution are now the best ways to reach audiences of 2021? Yes, but it’s not that simple.
Can I target the same audiences with distribution that I have been targeting through digital means? Yes and in some cases, you can be even more specific.
How The Pandemic Affected Us?
Like many agencies, we at Pear Communication felt the impacts of the pandemic, however, we saw that it affected us differently. Where we thought we’d have to halt a lot of our services, we instead saw a huge demand for distribution - and that need has been increasing since Q2 of 2020.
As of late, the public has been very receptive to traditional marketing methods. And due to Pear having access to the largest distribution channels in the UK, we have been able to connect our arts and heritage clients with larger audiences than ever before.
With all of that in mind, we can not claim something as bold as print is the new digital, but rather, companies should be investing in both print and digital. Like we stated earlier, “if your audience can’t come to you, then you must go to your audience” - currently your audience is in print, so let us help you connect with them.
Things you may not know:
Pear Communications is the UK’s leading distributor of print and OOH advertising, however, our sister company Pear Marketing is a creative full-service agency. So we are able to cater to both your print and digital.