Marketing has changed significantly over the last decade. In today’s sophisticated digital marketplace, people are ditching the outdated marketing tactics of the past, especially since they have more options and more opportunities to test and compare products and services before they make a decision.
When you develop a marketing strategy, you need to take into account that your target market has more choices than ever. You have to adapt to a new style of marketing that is more authentic and more people-oriented.
Just three years ago, people spent on average three and a half hours on their mobile phones each day. In 2021, people were spending close to five and a half hours in front of a screen daily! As people continue to spend even more time online, businesses will need to adapt to remain relevant and competitive.
It’s time to stop using outdated marketing tools in your modern-day business because they have long stopped bringing any results and could be potentially damaging to your brand. Here are some outdated marketing practices that you should drop, if you haven’t already.
Telemarketing
Avoid telemarketing as if it were a plague. You probably won’t even get one bite. Chances are your call will initially be screened thanks to caller ID and many times will go unanswered. Nobody wants to be read from a script about a new and exciting exclusive offer available only through you.
Direct Mailing
Our world is becoming increasingly paperless, so if the mere concept of spending precious marketing dollars on printing up thousands of pieces of paper to stuff into mailboxes across a large swath of people seems pretty crazy – it’s not a baseless feeling.
Direct mail is ineffective unless you know everyone on your mailing list and their buying habits, which is highly unlikely. If you do send snail mail, make sure it’s in the form of a letter, not a postcard, and be sure to offer something of value. Giving a free sample and a coupon still works, but not for every type of customer or business.
Buying Email Lists
The objective of email marketing is to build your email list with people who want to be contacted, aka leads. Your marketing strategy should not include renting or purchasing a list of email recipients to simply obtain more names faster. That action will backfire.
The result of buying email lists will be recipients putting your emails into their spam folder. Contrary to popular sentiment, email marketing is not dead and, if used correctly, can be a great way to source quality leads. Building an email database in-house is a very effective marketing strategy. When you do it right you’ll reap the rewards in the form of high-quality leads for your business.
Billboards
When you’re driving down the road and see a billboard displaying the contact details of a business, would you really call that business? Or would you even try to find out about it? Most people won’t. This simply means that even if you created an attractive billboard, it still may not attract the best leads.
A billboard is an inflexible medium; one that is well replaced with targeted social media posts. The leads billboard advertising generates no longer justify the cost and it isn’t able to digest the quick changes that current-day marketing requires. As soon as the eye-catching message is hung proudly over the highway, it’s irrelevant — there’s inevitably something new that needs saying.
Social media marketing allows for targeting, which ultimately translates to getting quality leads.
And unlike billboards, you can gather data that you can then use to improve your marketing campaigns and product delivery.
The Yellow Pages
Can you remember the last time you searched for a business in the yellow pages of a phone book? Do you even have a phone book in your home anymore?
Nowadays, people use search engines like Google or Bing to find what they are searching for, whether it’s a business, a product, or a service. This is why, if you haven’t already, you should shift those marketing dollars into social media ads which lets you send the ads to a target audience.
TV Commercials
Television advertising is another example of an inflexible, and costly, medium. Cable television has been steadily losing its audience as many users have switched to streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.
Despite almost two years (thanks to the pandemic) with more people at home than ever, time spent with broadcast, cable, and non-live viewing is down. Broadcast and cable networks have seen a significant decline in time spent. From 2011 to 2020, MoffettNathanson reports a -31.5% decrease in time spent with broadcast networks and a -29.3% decrease in time spent with cable networks. Moving into the future this trend will only continue.
With the massive amount of information online that people are exposed to, attention spans have dropped. Today many people (including us!) are spending a considerable amount of their time each day watching short clips on various social media platforms. As a result, it only takes a few seconds for someone to change to different content online.
Video is a great way to grab people’s attention and relay marketing information within a short time. With today’s technology, you have better options than television advertising. And, these options tend to be a lot less expensive than commercial airtime.
Print Marketing
There was a time when print marketing worked great. Businesses would produce and distribute brochures and other promotional materials. However, in the world of today, this method of marketing is no longer effective.
Think about it. What becomes of the brochures and other printed promotional material that comes to your place? Would you really make a serious buying decision based on that? The chances are that you might not even read them.
If you use it as an additional measure to support your other marketing efforts, it might be fine. Why not play your part in saving the environment – something today’s consumers care about – by not encouraging the cutting down of trees and switching over to digital marketing instead?
A Final Word
Marketing is still as important as ever and you may argue that some of the old marketing tactics we’ve mentioned above are still relevant in some industries. All we are saying is that in the digital era, there are plenty more effective marketing strategies that you can utilize and have a greater ROI.
If you’re ready – and why wouldn’t you be? – we’re here to help you move away from outdated marketing practices and toward those that will put you front and center with your prospects. Let’s connect and get your business moving on a sustainable growth path that’s attuned to the world we live in today.
