Traditional Marketing: Is It Still Effective in the Digital Age?
With social media usage growing every year, some question whether traditional marketing is still relevant. However, for a business to succeed, it must think about more than just appealing to those who spend their days browsing the web.
Offline marketing can still reach demographics that aren’t active on social media or might not want to use the Internet, either because they don’t have access or are simply not interested.
Here are 4 reasons why your business should invest in both traditional and digital marketing, and how they can work together.
1. It Reaches Out to Every Demographic
Effective marketing is about reaching the largest audience and generating the most interest with the least amount of investment. Therefore, investing in multiple strategies ensures that you can tap into each and every demographic and ensure that you are getting the best value for your money.
Over 89% of adults in the UK use the Internet on a regular basis. Pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and search engine optimization are key when reaching the masses. However, only 4 in 10 adults over the age of 75 use the Internet at all. This represents a huge proportion of the population who aren’t on social media and don’t browse Google.
Tapping into this demographic can be difficult, but offline marketing campaigns can prove very effective. Printed brochures and leaflets are still very effective at reaching a broad audience, regardless of their “connectivity” situation. Additionally, with 90% of the competition focusing solely on the web, it can also help your brand stand out in a saturated marketplace. And in today’s digital world, where everyone is trying to rank for the same keywords, it’s never been so important to be the odd one out!
2. It’s Cheap and Affordable
Unlike pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization, the costs of printing brochures, leaflets and postcards get lower-per-item when you order in bulk. In addition, one brochure design can be used over and over again, and even digitalized for use in the online sector.
Because printed media allows you to place a large amount of information on a small amount of real estate, it can be one of the cheapest and most effective offline marketing strategies out there. While it can take more time to manually distribute brochures and leaflets, they boast significantly higher engagement rates than most digital methods.
3. You Can Test Before You Invest
Email and telemarketing allow you to test a strategy before investing in it. Many telemarketing companies offer a money-back guarantee so you can recover any costs if a set target is not achieved. This allows you to tailor your campaigns and test them before investing more time and money.
Additionally, with telemarketing, you can get real-time updates on your strategy, allowing you to refine your campaign as it’s being implemented. Building a personal rapport with your customers also means they are more likely to give you constructive feedback, which is fundamental to building brand loyalty.
4. It Can Fuse with Online Marketing
Ever looked at a billboard and seen one of those barcode scanners on the bottom? They are called QR codes, and they can serve as a bridge between the offline and online world. By placing QR codes on leaflets, billboards and posers, people will be able to easily find your social media channels. This can help you grow your Instagram and Facebook followers without having to constantly upload new content.
Other methods of offline/online integration include: television and radio advertising, both of which boast extremely high return on investment and can be incorporated into video streaming; offline call-to-actions, which can lead straight to your website or social networks (providing you have seamless branding across the board); and telephone numbers that can be tracked, including Skype, WhatsApp and other app-based platforms.
So why not allow your marketing strategy to evolve using these not-so-innovative, tried and tested ways to disseminate your message? How about printing stickers for customers to place on their cars, or putting posters on lampposts? Perhaps you could open a new helpline via a VOIP network? While these techniques may seem outdated in today’s SEO-driven world, there’s a reason why they’ve withstood the test of time. Because they work!
We hope you liked this post in cooperation with Socialnomics!
