Old and New Marketing Avenues to Take Advantage of
With more brands vying for attention than ever before, it’s never been so important to be on top of your marketing to stay ahead of the competition.
What more and more businesses are finding is that a blend of traditional and modern marketing is often required to be heard above the rest, so just how can you utilise various marketing techniques to reach your audience? In this article, we’ll be sharing some areas of marketing you could explore…
Traditional marketing avenues
Let’s cover some of the more old-school methods first; don’t write them off until you’ve tried them, particularly if you’re targeting customers within a particular area. The main aspects to consider are as follows:
Print advertising
The effectiveness of newspapers, magazines, and billboards are not to be underestimated; they’re a tangible way to lodge yourself into the awareness of your potential customers, particularly if you’re interested in targeting locally. Think about your audience, and whether they’re all likely to find you online; if not, you may want to consider finding them in the big wide world in places they’re often looking.
Brochure printing
A properly printed brochure can be a tactile representation of the quality of your brand; something to peruse at leisure, away from the constant demands of phones and social media. With clear messaging and an eye catching design, brochures can reach far and wide, and last a long time, meaning there’s room for brochure printing in the marketing strategies of many businesses.
Direct mail
Postcards, catalogues, and personalised letters can make for a welcome break in a world of Facebook campaigns and YouTube ads. Personalised direct mail is most effective when used in conjunction with compelling offers.
Digital marketing avenues
Now we move onto the marketing techniques that we’ve seen explode over the past 10 years. You can hardly scroll or click without being presented with an opportunity to buy; here are some of the most effective digital marketing methods:
Social media marketing
Major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn hold a captive audience, and if your target customers are using them on a regular basis, you’d be a fool not to consider using social media to get in front of them. Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, make it particularly easy to run ad campaigns, allowing you to target demographics to maximise success. The performance of your ads is trackable too, so you know exactly what ROI you’re looking at.
Don’t get sidetracked with ads only though - engaging organic content creation is also key, to ensure the human element of your brand shines through.
Email marketing
In the same way direct mail has an impact, think of email marketing like the doormat of the future; landing in the inboxes of your customers is a great way to market your products or services. Building a quality email list through incentives and existing customer databases (in line with GDPR), as well as creating engaging content and A/B testing to discover what works, are all keys to email marketing success. Tools such as Mailchimp make this marketing channel so much easier.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It’s every business’ dream to be found by people who are actively searching for what they do; search engine optimisation is the only way to make that dream a reality.
There are several pillars to master when it comes to coming top of the Google search results for keywords that apply to your brand, including on-page optimisation (such as improving page loading speeds), keyword research, creating helpful content for your users, and generating quality links back to that content from other reputable websites. Nail it, though, and you’re looking at Google’s top spots for the taking!
Integrating old and new marketing strategies
If your audience is broad, you may be particularly interested in combining both print and digital marketing strategies; think of it as covering all your bases. One way to do this is to ‘cross-promote’ your business both with quality printed materials, perhaps mailed directly to customers’, and driving online engagement through top quality content, and sponsored ads.
The key to success in this area is a cohesive brand image across channels, which includes your visual assets like logos and colour schemes, as well as messaging, and the tone of voice you use in all your written material, both online and in print.
Emerging marketing trends
Of course, everything we’ve mentioned above isn’t all there is, and the marketing trends of the future are emerging and thriving right now. Going forward, expect the following to form a huge part of major brand’s marketing strategies; you’d do well to take some notes…
Influencer marketing
People will buy from those they know, trust, and admire, wanting to emulate their lifestyles for themselves. With social media, brands are harnessing this, working with popular individuals who are followed by thousands in order to reach their target audience.
Content marketing
Demonstrating value is a huge part of getting people to part with their hard-earned money, so showing and explaining via blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics is a way to create valuable content that earns the trust of the user. This has been a ‘thing’ for a while, but in a world where TikTok is taking over, it’s only going to grow.
Personalisation and AI
Don’t get us wrong - we’re not talking about taking the human element out of your marketing, but with AI here to stay, there are ways you can use it as a tool. AI-driven strategies can help you truly target your advertising, as well as improving your customer experience to a point where word of mouth will help your business market itself. Clever huh!
