About advertising and outsourcing
Hey There,
Today we’re going to start with a little history lesson.
Did you know that the first advertisements in recorded history appeared as carvings on stone tablets in Egypt around 2000 B.C.? That’s right, even the ancients had their version of the classifieds. One flyer even features a Theban slave named Shem, who is being sold by his master for the steep price of “one gold piece.” More than 4,000 years later, digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have revolutionized the way businesses communicate with their consumers, and yet, we are still using printed forms of advertising.
Why is this?
The answer is that print and digital media go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. They both satisfy different needs and, when used together in the right proportions, they create the most desirable end result. While the variable cost of digital advertising renders it a more scalable model, it’s most important feature is the potential for interactivity between buyer and seller. In other words, digital media helps you get to know your customers, and it helps them tell you what they want.
Print advertising, on the the other hand, is especially effective for local ventures because it can be used to target a narrow geographic segment. Moreover, printed media sources, such as newspapers and flyers, are available to everyone, including the nearly extinct breed of human being that lacks 24/7 internet access.
Now that we’ve established print advertising is still a lucrative way to generate buzz and drive revenue, what’s next? Vitaliy and I started by designing brochures, signs, business cards, posters, flyers, etc. We’re creating a majority of them ourselves using Photoshop. In the future, when we want add some more unique features, we plan to hire freelancers.
As you are all aware, globalization is making it more and more exciting to be in the world of business! Coming to America from Russia and Ukraine, Vitaliy and I are always thinking globally. Let me give you an example of how easy it is to use the resources of the world to get the best price on printing (or anything else). We had to print a tri-fold brochure and we asked for a quote from about 6-8 stores we could find on google (local and non local), and the average quote for a quantity of 500 was $450, with the lowest being $390. Not so great for a startup. So we reached out to a website called aliexpress.com and our final quote for a print you can see below was $215 for quantity of 620 (they gifted 120 instead of giving a discount when we asked). Including express 3 days shipping by FedEx door-to-door. Average quote was about $260. In case you need any product or service, go to aliexpress.com and type anything in the search bar. Then filter by “Seller Online” and now you will see a small livechat icon below items. Click on it and ask a company representative about your needs. Repeat 5-10 times and pick your best price.
Let us know what you think. We can’t wait to start spreading the word!
