Traditional marketing involves many different forms of advertising and marketing. The strategies fall into four categories: direct mail, telephone, broadcast, and print. The broad variety of strategies that traditional marketing covers mean that nearly every company that sells a product or a service will use one or more of these types of marketing, whether they are aware of it or not.
Even in the digital age, there are still many good reasons for employing old-school marketing strategies. They have tangibility because many offer hard copy material and you are actually handing something to the consumer. It also has an advantage because many people like to do business with people they’re in person contact with.
Here is a step by step plan to employ traditional marketing methods to your business in order to create advertising campaigns successfully.
Step 1: Decide on your method
The first step in developing a marketing plan is to decide on the method you are going to use. Your choice will depend on your budget and the marketing message you want to convey. Direct mail is great if you want to send your message to a specific target market as you send it directly to the people you want it too.
Creating awareness through direct mail can be in the form of postcards, brochures, letters and fliers, but just because it is a traditional method, you don’t have to stick to traditional conventions. Spruce it up a little and consider photo etching your business cards to smarten them up or embossing brochures to give them a little edge.
Print marketing is a great mass-marketing strategy as well as a niche-marketing strategy. You have the option to reach different classes of people, who may or may not have an interest in the product, through newspapers or choosing a magazine medium that only reaches out to a niche market. Another way of this is if you make your own poster and find locations, such as shop window, willing to allow you to pin them up for customers to see.
Broadcast marketing is great if you are looking to bring authenticity and realism to a product as people can see how it works. It can also reach a large audience of people, however, it is costlier compared to other forms of traditional marketing.
Telephone marketing can help you to build a loyal client base and costs close to nothing for a business. Many telemarketing methods have often been abused in the past with aggressive sales tactics being used, so it is a method you should be careful with.
Step 2: Create relevant content
The next step is to develop relevant content for the method you have chosen. It may be many people’s first experience with your company, so be sure to include the best information you can that will give a positive image of your company.
Understand your target market and give them the information they will be looking for within your marketing method. Present it in the best possible way, if something is designed messy people will be much less likely to use it no matter how relevant the information is. Consider hiring a designer to create any hard copy items you send out, they are able to present them in an aesthetic way to appeal to your audience.
Step 3: Measure and review
Whatever marketing approach you employ, be sure to review and measure the outcome. You need to know what works for your business and what doesn’t so that you can only employ the best methods. You could consider asking new clients how they heard about you or what directed them to your company.
Take into account the outgoing costs in comparison to the conversion rate of inquiries and if something is not working, stop using it. The last thing you need is an unnecessary cost!
Author Bio – This is a guest post written by Aaron. He is working for Doppler Graphics, an online hub for your marketing and advertising design needs.
