Old school marketing, with a twist !

It’s all about transitioning.

So the saying out with the old, in with the new isn’t exactly always the best.   The past two days we have started building a plan for the new year, new resolutions.   Everyone knows how hard it is to do something completely new, in fact it takes 21 days to break a habit. For the next step what I would like to have you focus on are the ways in which you are currently marketing your products or services (even though they may be Outbound Marketing, something you won’t continue long term and stale). Planning step 3  The goal would be to have you continue some of the marketing tactics that are creating some success, while at the same time building new Inbound Marketing ways of doing business (transitioning).   The point is that if you all the sudden start changing the way you do things without continuing on the old path, or at least some of what worked before – it may be a while until some of the new methods take hold and become a new routine for you.   By taking a mixture of what is working and adding some new – the result will be a well balanced marketing effort that will allow you to be making changes but still producing results for you.  It is like re-decorating your office – you may need to modernize it, but if you can take the existing structure and modify it, it would not be as painful as knocking the entire office down and starting over.

Outbound Marketing aka intrusive marketing:

• Direct mail
• Newspaper
• Television
• Radio
• Telemarketing
• Phonebook

The real point of today is to have you drill down into what you are currently doing, what is working, what is not and perhaps make some modifications.   I definitely will tell you that there are some things that just are not worth spending marketing dollars on.  An example of that might be the phone book yellow pages.  (certain types of businesses are okay for yellow pages)   I say that just because the number of households that still have phone books are dwindling.   On the other hand, you may be utilizing direct mail and had some success with it – but you didn’t do it often enough, so maybe you can make some modifications and increase the number of times you are mailing – etc.

It is important that you think about some modernization ideas with outbound marketing.  In my Minute Marketing tip #1, you read that it is important to build a community.  Therefore if you are going to employ an older marketing tactic, make sure you modernize it – ask people to visit your web page, or follow you on Facebook.  Include a call to action.  At this stage of the planning process, maybe you do not have a Facebook account or you haven’t updated your web.  Building a plan takes time and is a step by step process – not to worry.  Just keep in mind that as you change your marketing style, you also need to update it, like adding social sharing buttons – etc. Relax we will get to that Facebook page and updating the web soon !

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