Resurgence in traditional marketing methods

The growth of online and web 2.0 has had an interesting side effect in marketing terms; that traditional forms of marketing are now resurgent.

Take direct mail for example. So much of this has now moved to email marketing, that clever, creative direct mail has become a rarity. Which has greatly increased its impact. Creative direct mail has always stood out, but even more so now as a welcome distraction from the choked inbox. Also, as the effectiveness of spam filtering increases, many emails never see the light of day. Most busy decision makers work quite hard at ensuring that unsolicited email doesn’t get through, and if it does, it rarely merits attention.

The challenge with direct mail is to create something which lands in the right hands with the right message, but if this is cracked effectively and intelligently then you’re on to a winner. Combined with good data to provide an effective list which targets the right people, the tactile element of a piece of printed direct mail has the potential to be truly memorable; which is a good starting block for ROI.

Attendance at many exhibitions is also up. Exhibitors have proved nervous which has caused a couple of shows to founder, but for those who have held firm, attendees have flocked, proving there is no online substitute for face to face networking and nothing quite like a show to give opportunities to glean industry insight and the feel for confidence of an industry.

Of course, this is not to ignore the valuable role that online can play. Management level personnel are online by their very nature, and so exclude this channel at your peril. But in today’s networked world where everything is available at the click of a mouse, marketing through different channels can add an implicit value.