DECEMBER 2022 – GUY LEITCH
ADVERTISING REVENUES ARE THE LIFEBLOOD.
Publications such as this and post-Covid, have been slow to recover. This has accelerated the natural move away from print and into the digital-only space. There have been unexpected benefits – most notably the circulation of SA Flyer has increased almost ten times as people around the world are accessing our unique and original content via our website, through search engine optimisation.
Thanks to a partnership with quality video producer Robin Rabec, we are also able to benefit from the swing to a digital publication platform by including specifically commissioned interviews on the website and to market these via our market-leading Facebook page. Thanks to Google and other search engines, and the reach of our Facebook page, we are driving new readers to SA Flyer and FlightCom.
But we haven’t forgotten our loyal core of long-time followers and subscribers. We are still reaching thousands of our long-standing readership base through ‘pushing’ a downloadable pdf version of the magazine to them by email – for free.
The digital version of the magazine has had other great spin-offs, especially for advertisers. Most notably – we are able to include links to their marketing video material and have live website links to take readers directly to the advertiser’s website. In this way the reach and effectiveness of the clients’ adspend is vastly more efficient.
But no matter how much better we have become at delivering value to our advertisers, the heart of any publication is always its content. Despite the sea change in the publishing industry, we remain true to our foundational value – of making sure we produce a publication people want to read, one that fulfils our key objective of entertaining and informing our readers.
‘entertaining and informing our readers’
Fortunately, we have been blessed to have developed a core of contributors that make SA Flyer unique. I am most grateful to Jim Davis, who 15 years ago approached me as he was unhappy with the aviation magazine he was at. I am thrilled that despite the continuing weakness of the Rand, we continue to have the incomparable Peter Garrison’s regular thought-provoking columns. For the past five years we have been privileged to have Darren Olivier’s expert analysis on African defence.
I am honoured too to have excellent access to the key leaders and decision makers in the aviation industry. I am grateful to all airline CEOs who always take my calls at any time of the day, no matter how busy they are. I find the insights provided by these industry leaders fascinating and wonderfully informative. And I trust our readers do too. Which makes SA Flyer and FlightCom a key source of reliable industry intelligence.
From the low point of Covid, the industry will boom as it makes up for lost ground. I wish all our readers and loyal advertisers a wonderful festive season and a happy and prosperous new year.