Are you a traditional (old school) marketing type of person or is online marketing more your kind of thing?
Quick rant: I wish the media would stop referring to digital marketing as “new”! It’s been in common use for a decade now and some of us were using it back in the mid 1990’s! OK, rant over ;)
I spoke with a small business owner last week, who told me he had been suffering from a lack of business recently. He went on to say;
What really frustrated me Jim, was that I had to go back to some old school marketing techniques in order to generate the sales inquiries I needed.
I asked him why this frustrated him. He told me;
It frustrated me because it worked really well and I’m a new school marketing kind of guy. I’m into online marketing and social networking, not writing marketing letters and calling people. I’d rather stick with Internet marketing.
If you are going to divide marketing up into 2 different sections, it should be effective marketing and ineffective marketing, not old school marketing and new. Some of the newer forms of marketing are often ineffective, whilst some of the old school marketing tools are more effective than ever.
For example, one of the best kept secrets in marketing right now, is the incredible power of a traditional marketing letter, with a hand written signature. With so many businesses using social networks, email and other forms of Internet marketing to reach their prospective clients, fewer and fewer people are sending personalised marketing letters. As a direct result, a small personalized mailing, with a targeted message to a small, hand-picked group of people, can be extremely effective.
The bottom line: Before you rule anything in or out of your marketing mix, make sure it’s on merit. If it works, use it.
PS – Here are my top 10 marketing tips, to get you started!