Traditional marketing has a place
With social networks and mobilisation taking the marketing world by storm many businesses ask whether the more traditional marketing channels are still worth the time, the short answer? Yes.
“The human body has five main senses of engagement, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The more of these senses that are stimulated the more memorable and meaningful the experience becomes, and all businesses want to become memorable.” – Chris Reeves
In today’s market businesses strive to stimulate as many of these senses as they can to gain maximum mind share and become memorable, yet the latest ‘buzz’ technology (social media, mobile) only engages a few of our core senses (sight and sound) meaning the experiences are less memorable than some more traditional experiences.
The photograph…
A great example is a photograph, have you ever ran through a friends holiday snaps? You can see from the photo’s and the way in which they enthusiastically explain each one that they’ve had a great time, but it won’t be long until you mind starts to wonder, why? Stimulus.
Through sight alone it’s impossible to recreate those exact feelings and sensations they’ve enjoyed in those photo’s, so you’re not going to be very stimulated which means this will become a less memorable experience. Yet for them, each photo is a trigger to a memory of wonderful sounds that they’ve heard, the textures they’ve touched, the aromatic smells they’ve smelt, everything that helped to make that memory more memorable to them.
Similarly, have you ever had a smell or taste that took you back to a past memory or place? Perhaps the scent of a familiar ladies perfume or man’s aftershave, freshly cut grass from a past summers day in your child hood or the freshly cooked smell of your grandmothers kitchen baking…
Where am I going with all this? People need stimulus and not just sight and sound, they need interaction and personal engagement to support a meaningful and memorable experience; everything that you and your business should be striving for.
Traditional marketing typically engages 2 or more senses and often provides an opportunity for the next level of engagement, responsive conversation in a good timeframe.
Traditional marketing has a place in today’s market for three main reasons:
- Modern marketing typically engages only a few of our core senses.
While mobile and social marketing typically engage sight and sound traditional marketing engages more senses and can drive immediate engagement such as face to face meetings, network conferences and sample products. - We’re in a multi-channel environment.
Today’s technology means we can interact with prospects quicker and easier than ever before and in order to acquire mind share we need to engage prospects through multiple channels to increase their buyer confidence with your brand which means using all the channels available to us. - Modern marketing is saturated.
Businesses are fighting to be heard through saturated marketing channels. Traditional marketing has a lot less ‘competition noise’ and can often prove to be more effective.
Check back next week for part 2 – Effective Traditional Marketing
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