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Coral Drake | July 22, 2023 |
There is no shortage of advice when it comes to your advertising campaign. You've got to have a website, a blog, and it seems, a new social media platform every couple of months.
It's easy to get overwhelmed by all of the changes. Do you still have to worry about TV and radio ads? Which of the old tactics are still worth exploring in this digital age?
Some timeless advertising ideas offer superb return on investment (ROI), while others are an outdated waste of time. Here's what you need to know about which fundamentals of advertising to focus on and which to leave alone.
In a fast-moving world, it's understandable that some forget to look back at the advertising campaigns of the past. However, there are some very good reasons to review what worked in advertising 50 or even 100 years ago to inform how to advertise today, regardless of all the technology available to you.
The more current your ads are, the more trending, cool, and applicable they'll seem to young and connected audiences. However, at the same time, these ads are likely to alienate audiences who are less connected because of age, access to technology, or interest. Sticking with timeless ads enables you to reach a wider audience.
You probably want some of your advertising to make your brand seem forward-thinking and ahead of trends. However, balancing these advertising campaigns with more timeless ads shows that your brand is evolving while still sticking to the principles that made you successful so far. This tactic offers the best of both cutting-edge advertising techniques and the old-fashioned favorites that keep working.
There are so many places to go with advertising today that it is easy for businesses to become overwhelmed. Focusing on timeless principles in your advertising campaigns enables you to tap into the emotions behind trends instead of chasing them.
If you feel like your advertising campaigns are always playing catch-up and tend to be a bit spastic, revisiting timeless advertising techniques is a good idea.
The best advertising campaigns have continued to draw in customers without losing their base as the years go by, largely by remaining true to a core story. People respond better to stories than facts.
Startup stories and tales of an unlikely hero overcoming adversity are particularly appealing to consumers. The importance of being authentic and telling a true story with timeless principles about your company throughout your advertising campaigns is as relevant today as it ever was.
As tempting as it can be to give in to gimmicks, the truth is that connecting honestly with your audience is what matters. Make sure that the story of how your company began is core to your advertising efforts.
As you create ads and marketing material, think about how you can infuse company stories into the content. These stories should also help to convey your company values. You don't want to be too political or socially motivated in your advertising campaign, but being honest about what your company stands for will build goodwill with consumers, and help to create timeless ads.
One of the fundamentals of advertising is that successful brands have always built a deep connection with their consumers. If a brand only sells to the consumers it convinces to buy its products, it's unlikely to succeed.
Instead, brands depend on people sharing products or services with one another, resulting in snowballing sales. Today, there are more ways than ever to focus on community in your advertising, but it's no less important to make community a core focus of your advertising campaign.
Create advertising campaigns that bring people together by offering platforms for forums or chats, contests that consumers can compete with each other in, or games they can play together. Make sure that advertising these sorts of games, platforms, and interactive opportunities is a core part of your campaign.
Experiential marketing campaigns—including parties or events—are still a popular choice, with 77% of marketers using experiential marketing. Throwing a party is one of the timeless principles of getting new consumers in the door, and that hasn't changed much in the digital age.
This is especially important for businesses that benefit from bringing consumers physically into their location, such as restaurants and retail stores. Having a party, live band, or other fun event at your location encourages people to physically go there, which makes it more likely that they'll come back.
Use a mobile POS system and you can even make sales at events your restaurant or retail brand attends.
Creating interaction opportunities has always been a part of advertising campaigns of the past. Free giveaways, community-generated content, surveys, and other ways to encourage consumers to reach out to the brand are, if anything, more important today than they have been historically.
There are so many ways for consumers to interact with a brand these days that brands need to offer a lot of interaction to compete. Shareable content like memes and polls are free advertisements when done right.
Giveaways and prizes for events like trivia or guessing games are very affordable, but they can be effective and generate a sense of fun and goodwill in consumers. Whether online or in person, make sure your consumers have plenty of ways to interact with your brand.
Brands that go out of their way to market to a wide range of demographics (age groups, gender identities, etc.) have always been able to expand their consumer base and tolerate market fluctuations better.
Inclusive advertising has only become more important. Making a particular group feel excluded from your brand is likely to result in missed sales opportunities and creating ill will throughout your entire consumer base. Therefore, make sure your advertisements focus on inclusivity with timeless ads that tell a story.
Word-of-mouth advertising is crucial in the digital age; it just looks a bit different than it used to look.
Influencers are a powerful way to get the word out to people likely to care about your brand. Half of millennials trust product recommendations from influencers, and 72% of Gen Z and Millennials follow influencers.
Marketing campaigns that encourage people to share, such as those that reward referrals, are another good way to take advantage of word of mouth in the modern age.
It's not just the advertising ideas of the past that are still applicable in the digital age, but also the advertisements themselves. Many trends in art and advertising repeat over time.
By looking back at the ads that were popular in the past, you may be able to pull some timeless advertising techniques that will also work well in advertising your brand today. Infusing a sense of nostalgia into the physical look of your advertisements is a great way to inspire trust and brand recognition in consumers.
Building relationships has always mattered in business. Now, you're more likely to send a personalized email than shake many of your customers' hands.
However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be shaking any hands. Phone calls, in-person meetings, and conversations with your customers whenever you can are invaluable not only for forming relationships but also for gaining awareness of your consumers’ preferences. A loyalty program is a great way to initiate and maintain relationships like this.
You can also build relationships through personalizing your advertising campaigns. Targeted text messages, emails, and phone calls with tailored offers specifically for individual consumers can make them feel seen and valued, something advertising campaigns of the past struggled to achieve.
Giveaways are one of the fundamentals of advertising. People love freebies.
Giving consumers free things makes them feel positive towards your brand and like they have gained something good from the experience of interacting with your company.
More importantly, carefully branding the items you give away is one of the timeless advertising ideas that really work. Bumper stickers, koozies, coffee mugs, and other miscellaneous objects that people tend to take to the office are all great ways to generate brand recognition for a local company or restaurant.
If you produce digital products, a free website theme, social media banner, or some other giveaway branded (subtly) with your logo is an awesome, affordable way to get advertising out there without paying for anything other than the initial investment of creating the digital product.
One of the timeless principles of advertising is to be known as a local presence in your community. Advertise at local sports games, farmers markets, live music festivals, and anything else happening in your town.
Contact local news outlets and encourage them, or pay them, to advertise an event you're hosting, a grand opening, or even a menu change or new retail offering. If you have a larger geographical audience, it's still worth attending in-person trade shows where you can reach out to new consumers looking for the best new thing.
Just because there are dozens of new ways to advertise doesn't mean that these are the best ways. Some of the old techniques still work great, so don't abandon them just because they're not trendy. Focusing on the fundamentals of advertising is a superb way to build a solid foundation for your advertising campaigns.
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