Back to the Future

I was meeting with a CEO the other day who was struggling with the effectiveness of his marketing tactics. The things that he had done to support his business in the past, were no longer working as well. His emails are not getting opened as much as they used to. His Google ads are more competitive, so they cost more per click. What’s going on here is going on for all of us, and that is marketing is a constant search for the most effective way to engage with our prospects. And when something works, everybody flocks to it. So there’s a constant cycle of boom and bust, and you need to refresh what you’re doing on a regular basis to remain productive with your marketing investment. Today, I want to talk about three ways to do that, by going back to things that used to work and have since been set on the shelf and so are now open and available for you to use to make your business stand out. 

Direct Mail
One way is direct mail. Get off the email, go back to putting something inside their mailbox, either at their business or at their home, because as we all know, that big pile of junk mail has gotten smaller and smaller, and particularly if you invest in it with quality, so it stands out as an authentic piece of communication or value for them, you have a much higher opportunity to reach them that way than you used to in the past. It can also be very affordable if done the right way. 

Face-to-face
Another back to the future tactic is getting to meet people face-to-face with the changes from COVID, we all know there was a big reset on events and face-to-face meetings. And we also can see that those are starting to come back and you have an opportunity to look for ways to meet your prospects, either in person or even face-to-face on Zoom calls versus just emails. Another example of a higher engagement activity is things like podcasts, right? Where, while it’s not face-to-face, it has a live authentic feel to it because of the content. The other reason face-to-face is really important for you, is for what’s coming with AI, because of AI’s ability to make content production so much more efficient, I believe what we’re gonna see in the next year is a huge flood of decent content, maybe good quality content. And we all know you can only read so much content. So blogs and articles, things like that are gonna run into the same issue that email did with spamming and people just kind of ignoring it. So, that’s another reason to think about how can you create time that’s face-to-face with your client, things that AI can’t do for other people and therefore will remain kind of scarce and an opportunity for you. Yes, this is more expensive and requires more work and doesn’t scale as far, but depending on your business, it might actually get you more prospects.

Gifts
And then finally, gifts. And I don’t mean transactional gifts like sending gift cards or free coffee cards or whatever it might be. Generosity in your marketing, it means find ways to, it could be a gift meaning, something not related to your product, but it could also be a free trial or, one-on-one assessments, things that are generous to them in a way that brings them closer to working with you. This, again, is hard to do and it’s not cheap, and therefore fewer people are doing it. And you will stand out if you choose this path. 

You can mix and match these three as well. So, for example, one of my favorite tactics is lumpy mail. Sending a box with something, a gift or something valuable to your client that they will surely open if they receive a box of something versus all the flat mail. Free samples, or of a thoughtful product of some kind that, again, ties to what you offer them. So I encourage you to look back to move forward!