For years, traditional marketing encompassed the entire industry. Every aspect and medium of communication fell under one flag. Today, our technology enables marketers to create more success on the web through growth marketing. But what defines these two types of marketing? How can we utilize either, or both, to optimize marketing for our businesses?
Growth Marketing
Traditional marketing covers many bases in the world of marketing. The four categories of traditional marketing are broadcasting, print, telemarketing, and direct mail marketing. The mediums define the ideal in this case. Ideally, traditional marketing should incorporate tactics of growth marketing. The funnel of acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue is a tactic used by growth marketers that can change the way we see traditional marketing for the better.
Acquisition refers to converting potential consumers to your customers. Using the right channels is key to gaining clients which is why it’s at the top of the marketing funnel. Next, we have activation. Activation is how we as businesses get our clients to interact with us. After we acquire customers, we want them to buy into our product both physically and emotionally. This is where we get the clients we acquired to actually “buy in” to our brand. After activating them, keeping them as recurring customers is the next step.
After they buy our product/service, we need to keep communicating so that there will be a desire to buy from us again. Keeping track of what consumers respond to most often will optimize your retention, keeping customers coming back for more. Having these repeat customers that love the brand makes the referral stage of the funnel much easier.
Although using ads and getting help from other businesses is beneficial, there is no louder or more effective voice than that of the consumer. Customers raving to their friends or reviewing your company online is the most trustworthy referral machine we can engage. Consumers will trust a testimonial from someone they know (or a brand they have already invested in) over the company’s own words. Establish that medium based on the quality of your product and you won’t fail. All of these pieces lead to the bottom of the growth marketing funnel: revenue. The rule of thumb for the bottom of the funnel is to make sure we earn more than we spend on acquisition.
Optimizing your tactics is a key element of growth marketing. Each piece is essential in marketing success and should be treated as such. Sure, acquiring clients and achieving revenue are two things a successful business needs. Likewise, recurring customers that market your brand for you establish brand identity and generates more revenue long term. So, how can traditional marketing benefit from growth marketing tactics? Can traditional marketing withstand the trials of today?
Traditional Marketing Needs Growth Marketing
Traditional marketing focuses largely on the top of the funnel, even though it has all the qualities to capitalize on the entire marketing funnel. Broadcast includes television advertisements as well as radio ads. Broadcasting can be a great avenue to take when advertising your business no matter the size. What does matter is the product you sell and the audience you’re trying to reach.
Physical printing is viewed as a dying acquisition tactic with technology advancing so quickly. The printing outlet includes newspapers, brochures, and newsletters. While some of these things can be incorporated into a marketing process, they can not carry the weight of the whole campaign. While once it was the only way to spread information to the masses, printing has become more of a tool than a medium. Newspapers today rely heavily on the internet traffic they receive, newsletters are spread largely by email, and brochures don’t contain as much info as the company site.
Telemarketing has become more of a nuisance than a medium in today’s world. More often than not, consumers simply let their calls go to voicemail if they don’t recognize the number. The amount of scams that have taken over the medium has spoiled any opportunity that was available for real, honest businesses. Telemarketing can be great for non-profits to gain money from supporters who are familiar with the charity but it often falls on deaf ears.
The best way to market through the phone is customer service. While this won’t gain any new clients, having a helping hand ready for anyone who can’t figure out how to use the latest product your company dispenses builds customer loyalty. Providing real people to solve customer issues with products improves your brand image and gives the company a chance to hear from buyers so that they can improve on any shortcomings.
The problem with traditional marketing is that it focuses only on the top of the marketing funnel. It defines telemarketing as an acquisition channel instead of expanding on where the technology can help as your clients go through the funnel. There is more to marketing than acquiring customers. In the case of telemarketing, it is best used as retention for customers. Customer service is a great way to market your brand.
Direct mail marketing today is usually associated with businesses mailing catalogs and coupons to subscribers and customers who have visited their store. What traditional marketing as a concept lacks is that this concept is the strongest of the four today; but not through the United States Postal Service. Direct mail marketing thrives through email. Countless businesses use email to send discount deals, special offers, newsletters, and much more to their customers or even those interested in the brand. Whether you sign up in-store or plug your email into the homepage, email marketing is a great tool for advertising and building a relationship with your customer base.
Traditional marketing has become outdated. By applying growth marketing tactics to the pillars of traditional marketing, businesses can use each tool to grow their businesses through marketing. Optimizing each traditional marketing tactic through the growth marketing funnel will transform and modernize this outdated marketing strategy.
