Struggle Between New and Old Style Marketing
From the small business perspective, ‘marketing’ can mean many different things. Disciplines such as Online/Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Digital Branding didn’t exist just a few short years ago. Does that mean the old way all of a sudden doesn’t work?
The reality of business is that things are in a constant state of flux causing you to adapt if we want to stay relevant to your clientele and prospective customers alike. Due to this fact, you need to utilize the methods that work until they don’t make sense to from a business, cost-return perspective. So ‘old school’ has its place.
I have a customer who is very much stuck in the old way of doing things. They spend a ton on Yellow Pages and marketplace directory print. When things get slow on them, they ramp up the number of pages they insert weekly. They spend approximately $2500+/week on print when they are really trying to pump up their sales. First off, the Yellow Pages do not work. Should you have an ad in there? Of course, but do you need a large, very expensive ad? Definitely not.
Ask yourself when the last time you referenced the Yellow Pages. No doubt you simply ‘Google it’. Hmmm…. That’s fairly ‘new skool’ thinking!
Print advertising. Yes it has proven to be effective in the past in driving business but the way today’s consumer shops/researches, print is definitely more of a branding play versus a true sales avenue. If this is the case, why add additional print to bump sales?
The new way of thinking takes into account the way today’s consumer approaches buying almost all purchases he/she makes. Today most people either buy or at least research any sort of purchase larger than a groceries. I was buying my wife a birthday present not long ago. I was at a store, wasn’t sure if the price on the item was a deal or not so I did a quick search on my phone (yet another good reason to have a mobile website) and checked out prices at the competition. As 75% of us do, I visited the top ranked site on my Google search (Search Engine Optimization certainly does work!), checked out their pricing and review section. Right from my phone I spent 3 minutes researching and found out that this wasn’t as good of a deal as I originally thought and proceeded to purchase the small appliance at another retailer that provided me with not only better pricing and more in depth information, but delivered it directly to me. So picture it. I purchased this product from the store of their competition!
Yes, it was a flyer that originally got me into their store (for another product that I had been keeping an eye on) but when it came time to make that additional purchase (which is what ticketed sale items are supposed to do), I bought elsewhere because I had the power in the palm of my hand through the power of the internet. You can’t tell me that internet marketing & search engine optimization don’t work.
This is just a brief example of how the consumers today are different. The internet gives the consumer more power than they’ve ever had previously and more and more they are using it to simplify their lives and generate revenue for those who harness its power. That isn’t to say that marketing methods that you’ve been doing for years don’t work any more What I’m trying to say is that the way consumers shop and research their purchases is definitely changing and in order to be effective AND competitive, it may be time to start embracing the new before your competition gets so far out front of you that you can’t keep up.
