Traditional marketing is the term that refers to the type of marketing around before the online age. Before there was an internet there were only traditional forms of media that marketers could use to reach audiences. Today, in the 21st Century, traditional media includes some forms electronic media, such as radio and television, but they’ve only been around for a relatively short amount of time compared to the oldest media marketers have used. We use traditional marketing together with internet marketing when it makes sense. We use traditional marketing when we know it will work.
We still use traditional marketing and advertising tactics because they get results. Our background is steeped in integrated marketing communications, so we understand that there is no silver bullet to marketing success. Successful marketing programs are marketing initiatives that are strategic, well planned and leverage all aspects of marketing that provide the greatest opportunity for exposure and response. Integrated marketing always made sense, but in today’s cluttered marketing and advertising environment it’s a necessity. To get in front of your audience you can’t JUST do P.R., or just having a website, or just doing print advertising won’t work.
In the digital age, radio and TV are traditional marketing. If a picture tells a thousand stories then a video will tell a million. Television remains an effective means to reach audiences. If done right it isn’t difficult or expensive. We’ve got experience in the cable TV industry. We know how to get your ad seen by local audiences by leveraging the power of local cable television advertising.
Written language and marketing media were born together. Some of the oldest examples of language are symbols and signs meant to promote businesses and ideas, marketing. Coins that included portraits promoted kings and emperors by made their images synonymous with value. Today we have amazing tools for creating and distributing print media. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop let us create fantastic looking print pieces. Direct mail lets us reach out to specific neighbourhoods. Magazines let us reach out to specific interest groups. Local periodicals let us focus on audiences in both ways! Depending on who your audience is, print media is still an enormously powerful way to get in front of them.
Photography for Marketing employs both the skills of a good marketer and good photographer to create imagery that speaks for your brand’s value. Modern audiences expect high quality art, photography and imagery in the media they frequent. Efforts to reach these audiences need high quality images to get their attention. When you’ve only got milliseconds to make an impression on a viewer, the impact good imagery leaves with that viewer is critical.
We put enormous emphasis on the visual impact of the creative we deliver at Massive Impressions. We’ve worked with the best photographers in every corner of the USA, with a wide range styles, portfolio examples, and price ranges to choose from. What’s important is matching the imagery with the value of your message and brand at a price point that fits your budget.
Audiences haven’t always had media to consume. The oldest and most traditional form of marketing is person-to-person. The tactic of direct one-on-one information exchange still drives sales. Sellers hear about a need and educate their audiences directly. Even without media, there’s still a message. There’s still a need for a marketing strategy. There’s still a need to watch audiences, study the market, see the need and understand the best way to communicate your solution to that need. Mouth to mouth marketing is still alive and well today. A good jingle, a good joke, a good tagline and sometimes even just a single word like “Whats-ahhhhhhppppp!” is all that’s needed for word of mouth marketing to happen.
Need a meme? Need a jingle? Need a slick catch phrase? We’ll get it going.
Our billboard campaigns have been epic. We’ve driven response in targeted, smart ways to audiences effectively through billboards in a major US city, working directly with the brand, artists and negotiating exposure with the billboard owners for smart, cost-effective placement.
We design signs and posters that help you reach audiences outside your business and increase awareness of specials and promotions. Signs and posters are one of the oldest forms of traditional marketing, and although audiences vary and have changed over millenia, the tactics for making effective signs and posters still bring the customers in. We include links to the digital world with vanity web addresses and QR codes. These let people connect directly to a website or promo page from memory or their mobile phone easily.
For a few years, during digital media’s rise, it looked like print media were on their way out. Audiences were abandoning the magazine racks and book shops because they could get better, more specific, more expansive multimedia content for free. Marketers like us were learning to prefer digital media because of the feedback we’d get from it that was never possible with traditional media. Print publishers that didn’t seize the day and transform their business models to online saw their lunch walk away. Classified ads, the bread and butter of local newspapers, slowed to a trickle. But that didn’t mean that audiences stopped touching print altogether. Marketers needed to learn the new role of print.
We still use print tactics because they get results. They’re great ways to get audience attention, get exposure for your brand, and even ask audiences to respond. Phone numbers allow people to get in touch directly and engage in person-to-person sales. Physical addresses help people recognize how easy it will be to visit a business. Images and messages get across quite effectively in print, particularly because of the tangibility. A print ad is not just a digital thing, but a real thing that an audience can hold with them and put in a pocket. A coupon in a magazine doesn’t need to be printed to be clipped.
Short web addresses, vanity URLs, were the only tactic that businesses had at at first in the digital marketing age. Putting a short web address in a printed piece allowed print audiences to continue their brand experience over into the web, and then they became countable.
Then mobile phones became smart, got cameras, and are now always reliably connected to the internet, taking that connection with the audience wherever they go. Was this another nail in print’s coffin?
No! It actually meant great things for print. QR Codes are those little black and white grid diagrams that look like robot graffiti, but they’re extremely people friendly. They let print publishers put direct links to webpages in ads. Mobile phone users only need to point their phone cameras at the codes to visit a website.