10 Highly Effective ‘Old-school’ Ways to Market Your Business in 2019

In the business world where digital marketing is so dominant, it’s fairly easy to lose some of the more traditional methods from the mind. You see, some old-school methods and offline promotion techniques can blend in quite seamlessly even into some of the most innovative business models. Other than this, there are some of these methods that can provide a significant boost to your online presence. In order to provide your business with a proper competitive edge, you need to ensure that it gets the best of both worlds. Here are 10 tips on how to utilize old-school marketing in order to do so.

• Locating your audience

Regardless of what method of business promotion you decide to engage in, you need to find a way to position your brand. This means locating your audience (actually locating them on the grid of your neighborhood). In other words, you need to figure out where they live, what are their commute routes, where they eat, where they go to have a good time and where they work. This way, you’ll be able to metaphorically ambush them with your offer at the moment when they expect it the least. This way, you’ll also have the highest chance of success, seeing as how their defense mechanisms won’t be up and running.

• Figure out which offline mediums they use

When it comes to offline advertising, you first need to figure out which other mediums your audience is utilizing (when they’re not online). For instance, they could be listening to a radio while commuting to work, they could be reading the same newspaper every day or they might have their favorite local TV channel. Either way, by figuring out which of these mediums are used by the majority of your audience, you’ll stand the best odds at promoting your business more effectively. TV and radio commercials and newspaper ads are still quite effective.

• Direct mail

A direct mail is one of the methods that feels like it belongs in a different era, yet, it is something that some of the most successful enterprises all over the globe still use. Why? Well, because it gives consistent results day in and day out. With a couple of tips to enhance its efficiency, you can easily get a much better ROI from this method, as well as play strongly on the nostalgia card of your target audience. Due to the fact that not enough competitors are using this method, staying ahead of the curve suddenly becomes a lot easier.

• Attending a trade show

Getting yourself into scenarios where you can interact with your audience face-to-face is something completely unique. This is why you need to start attending trade shows. For this to work, you need to properly plan your trade show presence. First of all, you need a trade show stand. Here, you can go minimal with a simple oval or triangular stand with a single representative behind it (provided that you’re a micro-enterprise). You also need some promotional products, as well as printed materials like brochures and leaflets for all interested parties.

• Be creative with the use of signs

The simplest way to mark your territory is to signs everywhere around the place. In order to be effective, these signs need to be A) eye-catching and B) relevant to your target audience. A sign is nothing more than the act of sending a visual message to your audience. Keep in mind that you have the option of branding any asset that you own, not just your headquarters. For instance, if you own a corporate vehicle you can find an agency like Octane Signage to decorate it with your logo and your latest brand offers. This way, you can turn it into a vessel for bringing your brand recognition up. In a way, this means turning every single one of your corporate vehicles into a mobile billboard.

• Creative use of banners

Other than signs, you can also use banners to achieve a, more or less, the same thing. You want to mark your territory, so you use a method that various organizations and groups have used since the dawn of time – you create a banner with your symbol on it and use it to mark your territory. In some fields (like the construction industry), you could opt for methods like mesh banners, in order to directly link your enterprise to the results of your work. This kind of showcasing entrepreneurial proses usually resound quite strongly with your target audience. This is also why so many companies are actively using them.

• Utilize guerilla marketing

The concept of guerilla marketing is quite interesting for several reasons. First of all, it’s incredibly creative, which is why your audience might find them to be quite compelling. After all, not a lot of your competitors are using them, which automatically sets you apart. Aside from this, your guerilla marketing efforts tend to be quite social-media-friendly. This means that people are likely to take a photo of them and upload them online. If you’re extra crafty and manage to brand yourself into a piece of street art, you might even earn a tag.

• Telemarketing

Even in 2019, a lot of companies use the concept of telemarketing and for a very good reason. First of all, this gives you an outstanding way to craft an individual marketing message. Second, telemarketing is an incredibly scalable marketing method, which means that, as your enterprise grows, you gain the privilege of just upgrading the option instead of replacing it. Finally, your telemarketing efforts aren’t visible to your competition. This means that they have no way of measuring your investments or results. This alone gives you a substantial competitive edge over them.

• Join a local chamber of commerce

Previously, we’ve talked about face-to-face networking, yet, potential customers are not the only ones that you should target this way. Others within your industry or just other entrepreneurs in the area are valuable contacts as well. This is why you need to make the idea of becoming a part of this community into one of your top priorities. The simplest way to achieve this is to join a local chamber of commerce. You would be surprised at just how many opportunities and options you might get access to, this way.

• Personalize your approach

Finally, provided that you have a relatively small customer pool, which happens in a small number of clients with a large average value of offer (for instance, a boat-building industry), you need to give it your best to personalize your approach. Do your research on the client, ask around about them and then devise an approach that will appeal to their personality, temperament and interests. Dale Carnegie’s iconic self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People has some amazing examples of how numerous entrepreneurs used this art to achieve their networking goals. This is definitely something worth considering.

In conclusion

As you can see, with the help of old-school networking, you can definitely make a much better impression on your audience. Moreover, there are some who try to compare old-school marketing with its contemporary (digital) counterpart. However, why try to compare two approaches that are supposed to work best in unison. The truth is that you don’t have to pick between the two but rather find a way to make them work better together. Since every business and context is different, what you should do is adapt this concept to the needs of your own enterprise.