As social media, email marketing, and online sales take over as the primary marketing methods, discussions about whether or not traditional marketing is still a legitimate option for businesses or comparisons of digital vs. traditional start to grow. If there’s one thing that running your small business will have taught you it’s that every experience is a learning curve, and can be very useful.
In light of that, what can we learn from traditional marketing, to aid our online marketing efforts?
Quality
Newspapers, magazines, telephone books, radio or TV advertisements more often than not cost money, and where money is involved, there’s usually a heightened requirement for quality. This means that spelling and grammar, imagery and the correct brand representation are checked and double checked.
With social media and email offering a virtually costless, click-of-the-button contact to thousands or millions of people, it can often be all too easy to fire out promotions or content without thoroughly checking that the content is exactly as planned and correct, the images are appropriate and that it is in fitting with your brand guidelines.
Direct365 Top Tip: Imagine you’re paying a large chunk of money to post every PPC advert, social media post, email or blog post – it’ll soon make you spend that extra 5 minutes ensuring the quality is up to scratch.
Quantity
With traditional marketing, quantifying your efforts is very important. Wasting your money on an advert on 3, 4, or 5 pages of the same newspapers or putting up two billboards one after another is seemingly a waste of money. The same goes for online marketing – firing out the same promotions, spamming customers and overpopulating your online outlets for the sake of it is counter-productive.
Think of how many roadside advertisements you’ll pass every morning – do you ever notice them? The chances are that if they’ve been there a while, they just become part of the scenery, and the message of the ad is lost due to how often you see it. The same applies for your online marketing efforts. Keep them fresh, exciting and eye catching.
Direct365 Top Tip: Exciting and ever changing online media content will keep your business fresh in the minds of your potential and current customers and deter them from simply ignoring you.
Target the right audience
With traditional marketing, it’s all about putting your adverts out there at the right time, to the right people, in the right place. Just because everything is upscaled, quicker and offers a wider reach online, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be targeting your online marketing in the same manner – Post it at relevant times, targeting the right audience, on the right platform.
For example, you wouldn’t expect much return from advertising a vegan restaurant in a fishing magazine, so don’t do the online equivalent.
Direct365 Top Tip: Don’t post in places because a lot of people will see what you’re posting, post in places where people will care about what you’re saying, instead.
Craft your marketing
In print, on the radio, and on the TV, it isn’t as easy to direct people to your website or store. Hyperlinks don’t work on paper, and remembering an address on the radio is tough. With online marketing, though, everything is at your fingertips – websites, directions, e-commerce sites etc. This can make some businesses too set on sending their customers somewhere to buy their product or service.
A lot of traditional marketing can’t send you to buy a product at the click of a button – it must rely on the message, and hope you’ll remember it and check it out later. What with the online webspace being so busy, and people telling you to go here, there and everywhere, sometimes it can be good to slow down, craft your marketing efforts so that they make people want to check you out, not just click your links because they’re readily available and unmissable.
Direct365 Top Tip: Take the time to craft adverts and marketing material that makes people remember your brand, or want your product. Stay away from firing out links and gaining sales on the balance of probability through mass marketing.
Traditional marketing is by no means dead – in most cases, it is well thought out, carefully crafted, targeted and meaningful. It’s important to learn from it, to aid our online marketing efforts to ensure that online marketing remains more than a collection of links and ignored emails.
Header image via Edward Webb on Flickr under CC