In today's world of tracking it's so easy to forget to advertise to people not numbers. We have Google and Meta providing data showing us number of impressions, clicks, even conversions, and targeting the people who convert to get us more of what we want. Unfortunately advertising is a big blue ocean with so many ways to reach people and it's important to think about how you want to reach your target audience. In this article we'll discuss:
Traditional Marketing
Digital Marketing
How this Affects Your Marketing Strategy
Traditional Marketing
Believe it or not in our ever evolving digital age, traditional marketing still has a lot of credence. People are shying away from traditional marketing because it's such a "black box" of approximations. X amount of people in theory saw your ad because so many people per day pass the billboard or you send out 10,000 mailers etc. What does that get you? In reality, it gets you a starting off point. No one is going to see your mailer and think "I should call Donald's Roofing". But if they see the mailer and the billboard and a truck they're going to remember the name. That's your Key Performance Indicator and its immeasurable. You want people to remember you when they are in need like if a hail storm comes though and then need a company to inspect their roof.
Digital Marketing
The reality is digital marketing is essentially your closer. It's the perfectly timed Google Ad for someone searching "Roofers Charlotte". The difference is how they chose who to use. If they've seen your traditional marketing and now remember your name, the likely hood they call you has gone up exponentially. Certainly Facebook has done a great job of blending the digital with traditional.
On Facebook you know how many people your reached, heck it's even called Reached as a metric. So it applies to the traditional sense of simply getting your name out there into the public. Though many people spend an hour or more on Facebook we can't deny people are out in the world. People are driving to work or taking their kids to soccer games and that's where traditional marketing still has it's place.
A new form of digital to consider is OTT or Over-the-Top marketing. The rise of watching apps such as Netflix or Hulu has grown significantly over the past few years. Most people pay the bare minimum for these services, in exchange for advertising. This is where OTT comes in again showing ads to people for exposure to be remembered at a later date.
How Does This Affect Your Marketing Strategy?
We'll go right back to the title of this blog: advertise to people not numbers. Let's say for sell strollers we'll use this as our example. How do you want to advertise? We'll we know people interested in strollers are probably moms to be so we'll work with that. Here are some things that you could do:
Send 10% off coupons in the mail to a soon to be mom
Utilize digital billboards near open air malls, especially near the playground if possible
Sponsor a local soccer field near the area of moms you wish to target
Advertise YouTube videos on how easy it is to load your stroller and how much less space it takes up in a moms vehicle
Branding campaigns simply introducing your stroller on Meta Ads
Google Ads targeting keywords centered around strollers
Use TikTok for cute videos of moms talking about how great your product is
Say you do all this how do you even measure success? Over half these are immeasurable. Well first off please don't measure in 30 day increments. Remember we said traditional marketing is about being remembered for when the choice is made. You want to have a wider scope of view. We'd look at 3 or even 6 months increments. Then look at your market efficiency ratio as a whole.
For instance all over the above let's say cost $10,000/month to run and at 3 months that's $30,000 of advertising. So if we don't make $30,000 this test was a fail but let's say we did $60,000, is it still a failure? You only doubled your money when guru's are out there telling you that you can make 10:1 on your money so $300,000. We'd argue that the $60,000 is actually good.
You made your money back and then some
Your product is in the hands of more people who will "spread the gospel" to others and that same $10,000 each month in a year may yield $120,000 or even $150,000 in just 1 month
You have to be patient there is no such thing as an overnight success. If you can keep the lights on and keep pounding, you'll eventually get your just rewards for all your effort.