Old school… it still rocks harder.

Following on from last weeks post about continuous marketing (which received some very nice feedback and comments, thank you) I started thinking about the fact that it is some of the simple things that work best to market your business.
In fact some of the things that work best are not even new and technology based, they are truly old school, but some are old school with new technology… let me explain.

As promised, I sent out an email to my database last week. The response was amazing and immediate. I got 5 enquiries straight away (within 1 hour) and about 3 more over the next few days… Doesn’t sound like much? Well I only have about 400 people in my database. Add to that the fact that I also sold some books, and I thought, for the 10 minutes it took, it was a very good campaign.

However database marketing is not new. It is very old school. Emailing a database is just a newer way to do it than direct mail and telemarketing.

And then there are some things like the humble promo product. One of the most effective things I ever did was have sticky notepads printed and little notepad holders and pens. I still see those on peoples desks now (6 years later), and they ask me can they get refills.

But strangely, after we did the first lot, we did not do it again.

This highlights a point that a lot of small businesses suffer from, they do not test and measure their marketing so they just approach marketing with a “let’s give this a try” attitude. Brad Sugars has a great way of testing and measuring using his five ways of business, and any business that has had an action coach should be doing that, but sadly, most of us find it too time consuming and we are too busy to do all that monitoring, we have work to do after all… the irony is, we could hire someone to do the work if we followed through with the marketing…

But I want to stay on point here, this article is not about testing and measuring marketing results (or the lack of) it is about things I have seen work to promote an online solution. Just because your business is online (or if you are trying to promote your website) don’t underestimate the power of real world old school techniques. Here are my top five things we have done to promote a business/website using cheap (or free) techniques.

5) Email your database: Telling people is half the challenge, or put better asking them to buy. The people in your database are usually people that you have met or done business with and it is easier to sell them something else than try and convert a new prospect. (if you do not have a call to action to join your mailing list on your website…. Why not?

4) Promotional Products: They say the pen is mightier than the sword (I have been stabbed with a pen too and it hurts…) and as a promotional product it is the old favourite. But find something better, find something that will keep you on someone’s desk or on their fridge. One of the best promo products we have for Trust Tradesman is a magnet with a clip on it for holding papers on the fridge. People ring us just to ask if they can get some more magnets. SO find what your customers would want and get some done.

You can see the magnet here and if you need any promo products, you cannot go past Promo Depot. My mate Pete will look after you.

3) Trade shows or Markets: When we launched Trusty Tradesman, we aligned ourselves to industry based tradeshows, which allowed us to get exposure to the people we wanted to sell to. Sure there was some cost to that, but it was nothing compared to what we were spending on ‘traditional media’ like radio. If however you have products you want to sell and get your brand out there, don’t underestimate the power of the markets. Everyone knows that is where my good friend Justin started Attitude, and when we launched a candle business in 2002, we did it through the Fox Studios markets. It got the brand out there and got to our target market quickly and cheaply.

2) Ambush marketing: Have you got the balls to do it? I mean really get t]out there and do something? We went to Channel 7 one morning to promote a campaign we were doing around the election called Trusty Pollie. It was a fun little site that ranked John Howard and Kevin Rudd on key areas. To drive traffic to it, we got big cardboard signs of their heads and stood behind Kochie and Mel when they came outside. We got taken away by security, (but negotiated our way back out there) and guess what … 2000+ unique visitors to the site that morning! And then a few hundred a day there after…

1) Free Media Exposure: Kind of like the above example, but with permission this time. We have a had a total of two mentions on TV for Trusty Tradesman, the first was 19 seconds which resulted in 6000 Unique visitors on that night then a daily average for three weeks of about 1800, and then again the other day for about 4 seconds a few weeks ago, which resulted in 1200 unique visitors within the hour after the show. This works. We have spent over 200,000 on radio ads for this business, which did not get anywhere near these results… and the media was free.

So what can you do to launch your business or reinvigorate it? Find a free way of doing it, and if it works… keep doing it. As you can see, all these ideas are not new, they are seriously old school, and have worked for many more people than just me. So add some old school to your marketing mix, it still rocks harder

Have an awesome week.
Rich

P.S. we are finalising details for a two day business website masterclass workshop in Sydney during October. If you are interested, please email me direct on rich@redd.com.au

Tagged as: communications, marketing