Traditional marketing often refers to tactics and strategies businesses used before the internet took over. As websites and online marketing became more and more popular, the louder the cries became that “traditional marketing was dead”. With more and more customers using the internet, it was a channel businesses could not afford to ignore. But, it didn’t mean that everything they used to do suddenly didn’t matter. In fact, many of the traditional marketing strategies stuck around. Many successful businesses integrate them with digital in their overall marketing strategies. Here are some traditional marketing tactics to include in your marketing strategy:
1. Strong Branding
A strong, cohesive brand has always been important to businesses. With customers interacting with your business on multiple channels, including your website, social networks, and more, your brand is even more important. It keeps customers’ experiences with your business consistent across channels and touchpoints. This works to provide a positive customer experience while also increasing brand awareness.
2. Storytelling
Whether in print or online, storytelling should be integral to your content. It’s what helps readers connect to your content on a personal level and can set your content apart from the seemingly endless sea of content on the web. In addition to refining your messaging and making it more effective, storytelling can also improve your videos, which can help you maximize website engagement with video content.
It provides a human element to words on a page or on a screen, elicits emotion, and can impact an actionable response. This is why storytelling is one of the traditional marketing tactics that has made the transition into modern digital marketing.
3. Press Releases
Traditionally, press releases were reserved for when your business did something truly newsworthy – something the masses would care about. This is still how they should be used. You do need to be careful of when and how you announce press releases.
Because they became a popular tactic for SEO, there were a lot of shady people spamming the system. So, if you are going to use a press release, it needs to be about something worth mentioning. And, you cannot submit it to every press release directory or submission site you can find.
There are still some press release websites you can use to get the word out when you have something newsworthy, but you want to be careful. Building relationships with reporters and publications in your industry and submitting newsworthy releases to them is a much safer bet with better results.
Also, if it’s not groundbreaking or big news, stick to a company announcement on your blog and social media. You still get to share the news, just not in a way that annoys valuable influencers or could potentially damage your SEO efforts.
4. Print Advertising
Print is not dead. Yes, a lot of publications are moving online and print may not have sole ownership over advertising like it used to, but it is still a valuable marketing tactic to have around. Plus, you can integrate it with your digital presence for a bigger impact, better tracking, and potentially higher ROI. Now, there are plenty of ways to track and evaluate print marketing.
Print traditionally has a smaller conversion rate than other digital advertising like PPC or social ads. However, it is still a way to reach potential customers and drive them to engage with your brand directly or through other channels. With trackable numbers, landing pages with custom URLs, dynamic QR codes, and more, you can track results from print and seamlessly integrate it with your website or other properties.
Direct Mail
Print advertising is more than ads in magazines, newspapers, or other publications. It’s also direct mail. Direct mail has gotten a reputation over the years for being viewed as “junk mail”. For some pieces or mailings that relentlessly plaster mailboxes, that’s true, but it is not true for all direct mail.
Some segments of your customer base may even respond to direct mail better than email or online ads! The key is figuring out what type of direct mail piece will be most appealing, creating the right CTA or offer, and then tying it to your digital efforts for tracking and conversion.
Newsletters
If your business had a monthly newsletter, you used to have to print it and mail it out. This can still be a way to engage with customers, as long as it’s a segment that prefers print over email. For several businesses, their print newsletters have moved online and are emailed to their customer base.
This gives businesses an opportunity to build an in-house email list of engaged customers, which can be sent eblasts with special promotions or offers, announcements, and more. You can even follow up with personalized emails or direct mail pieces based on the offers certain segments find most appealing.
These are just a few traditional marketing tactics that you can use in your marketing strategy. However you categorize your marketing efforts, it’s important that customers know you exist and know how to find you – that includes your website. For help with your website design, development, and marketing, contact us today for a meeting of the MINDs!