Staff Reporter
IT’S been a rollercoaster four months, but now the new normal has come around and the world is finally coming out of its shell again, how are you going to reach all those potential clients?
The business is open again, the staff are (mostly) back in, and now you just need to start getting in some turnover.
Marketing is obviously a key element in this equation and you are most likely aware there are two broad approaches – traditional and digital.
Digital marketing includes social media, Google, SEO, newsletters, while traditional includes print, PR, broadcasting, direct mail, flyers and even billboards alongside the motorway.
With so much choice, it’s hard to work out how you should be doing things, and to get an answer, you need to study marketing in more detail.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing is definitely still an effective form of marketing, but nowadays it comes with certain drawbacks.
Firstly, it involves little or no interaction with your target audience unless you fuse digital and traditional marketing with the use of QR codes.
This is a shame as when the audience interacts with your brand, you get the opportunity to continue interacting with them, converting them into customers. And traditional marketing certainly creates longer lasting memories.
But it does come at a price…traditional marketing has a higher cost and potentially lower returns. You can take out an advert in a local newspaper, but this will only get you returns if your target audience is exposed to this advert… and that is unlikely in many of the cheap freesheets around Europe, many that offer just 25 to 30% editorial and poor editorial at that.
If that’s the case, you could well have thrown away your money.
Inflexible targeting – you can target people in a certain location or those who read a specific newspaper, but with traditional marketing you don’t get the laser-focused targeting that you can get with digital marketing.
Traditional marketing is more expensive, often inflexible, and offers poor interactivity with customers in many publications. Some however have created a strong niche and are strong and popular in their areas and target zones. Finding them is always key, but not always easy.
How to Budget your Campaigns
Marketing in a combined form of traditional and digital usually leads to a more effective campaign, but you still need to think of the finances.
Digital marketing is almost always much cheaper, so many specialists recommend you devote a larger chunk of your budget to digital marketing, as you’ll get a higher return on investment – it will be money better spent. And at least you will be able to measure it.
Digital Marketing
When it comes to digital though, you must have a systematic strategy; these theories shouldn’t inform your intuitive marketing approach, they should be used at various points throughout your campaign process to improve performance.
Let’s take a look at the marketing and communications process used by The Gist People. They allow clients to combine the highly effective digital marketing techniques of SEO, web strategy (i.e. the channels used) and other creative advertising.
They insist that they ‘work with everything’ out there… and they are not stuck or fixated with one set idea of media.
Indeed, the team’s philosophy shows that a good, effective marketing strategy doesn’t pick between digital and traditional – it chooses elements of each aspect of marketing and combines them to create a holistic approach, working in parallel with everything at its fingertips:
This is how it should work:
1. Idea – what does the client need from this campaign? They conduct a SWOT analysis to find out.
2. Concept – at what stage is the idea relevant? Consult the consumer decision-making process to look at what you are developing
3. Design – at the design stage, you might need to consult a design agency, as many plans are not focused enough on creativity and fall down due to it.
4. Develop – how are you going to communicate your design, let the marketing communications ‘mix theory’ help out
5. Launch – after you launch, it is vital that you should monitor your campaign. This might be informed by comparing it to a scorecard, which may demonstrate how your strategy can be amended to impact your business more holistically.
