Demystifying the 21st Century marketing plan you need to drive your business forward.
In this first part of a five-part series of blog posts, you will learn the relationship between traditional marketing activities including direct mail, brochures and print advertising, and their digital counterparts of websites, social media, and email.
Marketing your business is a necessity no matter how large or small your target market is. For many years the more traditional (and still effective) marketing activities of brochures, direct mail, and business cards were more than enough to attract and grow your client base. With the start of the new millennium and speed-of-sound growth of web-based and mobile technologies, a shift away from the traditional picked up steam.
However, as has happened in almost any endeavor, the road of progress had many bumps, potholes, and detours. When that happened, the traditional marketing activities were seen to still be valuable. Yet, digital marketing went through its growing pains and is now showing its amazing effectiveness with the explosive adoption of smart-phone use. As expected, many business owners have been laboring to strike the proper balance between traditional and digital marketing. The first step to striking this balance is to understand the mutually beneficial relationship between the two.
For example, a website is really just a collection of digital versions of the brochures and flyers you use to promote your business. As such there needs to be a cohesive uniformity between the two as you are trying to tell a simple story, that being why you are the best company for your potential clients to work with. So, if you have brochures and flyers but have not developed a website yet (or your website does not seem to be helping your efforts), you already have the information necessary to build or improve your website. Also, with the amazing strides in graphic design, making your website look like your brochures and vice versa is simple.
Probably the simplest partnership between traditional and digital marketing involves e-mail marketing and its more mature older sibling, direct mail. Both are the most aggressive form of marketing as both involve sending communications to current and potential customers, keeping them informed about your business and any offers you may have. Of course, you will get people who will say ‘why send direct mail when you can email at a much lower cost?’ The answer is that direct mail still works very well. In a recent article at Forbes.com, the point is made that with so much information flowing into email inboxes it can become daunting to keep up with all the offers. A direct mail piece is something tangible that the receiver can hang onto easily. Paired with an email campaign where you can offer coupons or gift certificates via mail, you can begin to create targeted mailing databases that will help you maximize the success of your marketing campaigns while getting the best bang for your buck.
As for social media and business cards, they are more extensions of the website/brochure and email/direct mail relationships and serve important roles in getting your business name out in the public eye while also creating connections that can bear fruit down the line. The best part of social media and business cards are their relatively low cost while offering a sizeable potential ROI.
We hope that this first glimpse into what we are calling ‘Trad-digital marketing’ has made you think about how to supercharge the marketing engine of your business. In the following four blog posts each aspect of what has been touched on above will be put in the spotlight for your consideration.
Since 2001, DriveProfit is the chauffeur-driven industry’s premier provider of digital marketing management. Working with Create A Card, Inc., we develop complete marketing solutions for those members of the chauffeur-driven community who are looking to take their marketing to the next level.
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