*In today’s saturated media landscape, it takes a lot for marketing to cut through. As we’ve discussed before, in the internet and all its forms of advertising can be vitally important for growing businesses.
However, the shiny new tools of internet marketing sideline the tried and tested methods of the past all too often. In the following article, we’ve listed a few of the most effective old school marketing methods that you can try.
Coupons & Mailers
Coupons and mailers should not be underestimated. These days, you’re scarcely likely to receive much of anything in the mail, except maybe parcels from Amazon and letters from a technophobic relative. Mailers and coupons can be sent to specific zip codes, neighborhoods, or even plain old addresses, making them an effective way of reaching out to an audience that might be receptive to such a message, especially if it comes from a local business. Despite the onset of Google Maps and remote working, proximity still counts for a lot in this day and age and research has shown that direct messages – such as mailers and coupons – still resonate with potential customers. SEO and PPC are great for finding online customers, but mailers remain an excellent way of raising localized brand awareness.
Go Old School With Leaflets & Flyers
With the flood of event invitations, advertisements, posts, and group notifications on Facebook, it can be seriously hard to catch the attention of your audience. There so much to compete against when trying to promote your band, event, or gig online. Unlike Facebook advertising, you can be sure of a particular audience in a particular location seeing your message. If you hang up a flier in your favorite bar, you’ll know both the clientele of that bar and the likelihood of their interest in what you have to offer. Too often advertising or marketing online is a guessing game; a shot in the dark, that rarely rewards hard effort and too often rewards those that have simply cottoned onto the latest fad or craze. While not always quite as cheap as posting on social media, leaflets are super cheap to produce if you know where to look. Plus, if you’re really want to get your name out there, you should have a physical presence on the street and in local hotspots.
Leaflets and flyers also allow you to communicate more about you and your project than a 120-character limited tweet or rigidly controlled Facebook post. Get creative with it and really grab your audience’s attention. Today, novelty and nostalgia often go hand in hand; that is to say, what was once passé or old school has now become more novel by virtue of our fast moving media landscape. A good flyer or leaflet now has an arresting quality, because it is so unlike the vast majority of messages with which we’re bombarded online, at least in terms of format.
Give Your Future Customers a Gift
If you’re a small business or trying to get the name of your company out there, one really effective way that has largely been forgotten with advent of social media is promotional gifts. Research by the Advertising Specialty Institute backs up the claim; promotional gifts are one of the most cost-effective ways of making a positive impression on a potential customer. With a small investment and the right audience, you can make a big difference. A physical product and the impression it creates is something that can’t be replicated in the digital world, no matter how often you share, or how hard you tweet. Given that most people these days have the attention span of a goldfish, the value of a promotional product is pretty obvious: it’s always there no matter how many tabs you open or times you get distracted.
Social media may have changed the way we advertise, but some methods remain tried, tested, and proven to work. From physical products to leaflets and flyers, certain core approaches to marketing haven’t changed, despite the explosion of social media and online marketing. The approaches listed above with or without an effective online marketing campaign will no doubt get your name out to your audience.
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