Old school marketing is here to stay, here’s why
It might seem counterintuitive for a brand named Modern Sense to talk about the advantages of traditional marketing, but it’s true. Old marketing will never die.. in fact, the integration of new marketing serves as a perfect blend for a completely new approach toward amplifying businesses and brands.
For more than two years now, I’ve worked with our local chamber of commerce to brand myself and my profession. During this period, I’ve attended and hosted countless networking events and business mixers, and have had the opportunity to build relationships with locals. Though there are a variety of involved industries, one recurring theme remains constant throughout their respective consumer base — many of them desire the ‘forgotten’ personal connection to their provider.
While this idea has remained a constant throughout our economic history, the exponential growth of digital sales has made this urge much more obvious.
Popular traditional marketing tactics such as direct mail, printed ads, and even word of mouth make for a personalized touch when prospecting new business, which is largely lost with current mass marketing efforts. Billboards, commercials, and cold calling have been staples for decades. The addition of new-age strategies like targeted social ads and spam emailing easily saturates the communications sector. We like to reiterate here that being trusted is just as important as being identifiable. Of course, delivering a great service/product helps accomplish this equilibrium, but oftentimes, we find that it is simply not enough.
For example, someone who runs a barbershop might think to strategically plan their online ad campaign to start right before a local event they’ve become sponsors of, and to end in the week succeeding the event.
Doing this helps amplify your brand’s identity and legitimize trust.
To further exploit the success of the barbershop scenario, let’s break down the three stages of this campaign and where the shop might find success.
1. Initial Launch
As we all know, presenting our best selves when hundreds or even thousands are expected to be in attendance is a must. This works perfectly for a barbershop promoting its many practical services pre-event week. The shop could also incentivize new prospects with a promotion, although the ultimate goal is to drive traffic and in this case, familiarize the business prior to a formal introduction.
2. Peak of the Campaign
The peak in this scenario can be anywhere from a short amount of days leading up to the event, until a day or two post-event. It is important to specify your timeline because this is where you’re expected to garner the most attention. In the shop’s case, they’ll want to blast their ads the most during this period and allow organic engagement to supplement their event presence. By socializing or simply representing their brand in front of locals, the shop is now marketing itself to create awareness and alter attitude, which are two of the three strategic objectives commonly used in formulating a successful PR/Marketing campaign. One consumer base is being introduced to the brand for the first time, while another is subconsciously validating a brand they’ve recently become aware of.
3. End of the Campaign
This stage is just as important as the first two, so don’t think about wrapping up so soon. Here is where the shop will essentially recap and centralize all of their efforts. As they continue to dump out ads passively, they can now further promote themselves by sharing photos and stories of the event they attended and just like in step one, offer a shop promotion to incentivize new prospects. This campaign has now helped connect the dots with prospects who didn’t know much about their business and solidified those who were on the fence regarding investing in the product or service.
After utilizing a combined traditional marketing tactic in event sponsorship/networking, and a modern approach in online ad campaigns, the barbershop was able to reach a wide audience, while still illuminating that personal connection consumers crave.
There are even more aspects of this campaign that could have been tweaked to ensure the combined efforts made the expected impact intended, although the possibility of getting there without the staple of primary marketing would have been difficult at best.
As we notice more and more brands and consumer activity shifting toward digital, local and smaller markets can exploit negated aspects of brand engagement and customer service, catered to their customer base. This is just one of the many ways local businesses can continue to compete and even outshine global commerce.
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