Traditional Marketing in the Modern Age

As a digital marketing company, we place a lot of emphasis on digital design and marketing. Recent blog posts have focused on the digital aspects of marketing with topics including “The Future of Digital Marketing” and “7 Essential Digital Tools for Your 2019 Marketing Plan.” However, our driving vision is to be “your source for impactful digital AND print marketing solutions.” Your unique branding and design are important and relevant in both the digital and print realm. We believe that traditional marketing has a very real place today even in the digital age.

While traditional marketing includes broadcasting, billboards, and videos, this blog will focus primarily on the role of print. There is strong neuroscience evidence to show that despite the enormous migration to electronic media, paper-based content and ads offer special advantages in connecting with our brains. (Just think about how you loved getting those holiday cards and letters in the mail this year even though the Facebook messages were great too!)

Here are a few reasons to continue to allocate a portion of your marketing budget to print.

1. Print appeals to the senses. Digital medium involves sight, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. After all, people might think you were a little odd if you started sniffing or licking your phone or iPad! The involvement of multiple senses with print marketing may increase its effectiveness.
2. Print media requires better engagement with the material. It’s much more difficult to multi-task while reading a newspaper article or brochure than while Googling something on your phone.
3. Reading print requires a longer attention span. As a corollary to the above, reading print allows for fewer distractions and thus better processing of information.
4. Consumers trust print more than social media and other online platforms. A MarketingSherpa study found that about 80% of consumers trust print advertising; the top five trusted ad formats were all traditional media.
5. Print ads have more impact. Note to B2C business owners: direct mail more often gets read while emails simply get deleted.
6. Traditional forms of marketing reach every demographic – even those which are not active on social media or use the Internet.
7. Print material is still extremely cost effective.

(For more ideas on using direct mail marketing, see our blog post Direct Mail Marketing 2.0.)

So how do you find the right balance of strategies within the constraints of your budget? Remember:

• The same principles of marketing that applied before the digital age still apply today. The same goal of connecting customers to your company, organization, or business is still relevant.
• Effective marketing strategies employ as many different techniques as possible, within budget. The actual mix should be reviewed regularly and tweaked when needed.
• Successful marketing always ensures that the right products or services are delivered at the right time and place for the right price.

According to management consultant Peter Drucker, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Therefore, the importance of identifying and understanding your target audience and customers cannot be understated. Small businesses and organizations should continually strive to find the balance and mix of traditional and digital marketing methods that reach their customers. Rather than thinking strictly about digital marketing, reframe that idea to “how to market in a digital world effectively.”

Evolve Impact Group strives to build a partnership with our clients that provides unparalleled value and makes a real impact for your business. Contact us today for more information about any of our core services: brand consulting, design, digital marketing, and print production.