Why Old School Marketing Is Still Essential

Billboard for Facebook Live

If it’s good enough for one of the most data-driven digital companies in the world, it should be good enough for your organization. Even Facebook, which could reach millions of people with one click on its own platform, utilizes old school marketing. As I was driving to work on the 210 Freeway in Los Angeles one morning, I noticed a new billboard. I always enjoy critiquing billboards for their marketing value and messaging, so I pay attention and analyze billboards more than the average Joe Public I would imagine. This one caught my eye though because it was a billboard for Facebook Live. Wait, what?! On the surface you might think that’s the equivalent of Apple CEO Tim Cook opting to pick up his rotary phone in his office to slowly whip his finger around the dial to make a call to the operator instead of using his iPhone. But it makes perfect sense upon further scrutiny. In fact, it was a great reminder that even in a digital world, old school marketing techniques are still essential. A billboard, which is basically just a really large flyer, can’t possibly provide the detailed analytics we all crave these days. We will never know how many impressions, shares, likes, or comments a billboard or flyer will get, but we do know they still work. It’s simple, put your message on a piece of paper, and place it where people will see it.

(T: If you do want some type of analytics from a flyer, billboard, or newsletter, create and use a unique website URL that is only on that specific flyer to track traffic from that source.)

Innovation Comes In Many Forms

I recently started placing my school district’s newsletter above the urinals in the district office. It takes little to no time to tape it up, and people who have never read our newsletter are now asking when the new one will be up. Sometimes we get caught up in our Facebook followers, number of retweets, and forget, we are missing a large audience that isn’t connected on social media like we are. Or, we are missing a great opportunity to repeat our message, and hope it sinks in. Repetition is important when you are marketing and branding. Coke doesn’t run a commercial once and call it a day. Repetition is the reason we can all finish this catchy tag line, “Give me a break, give me a break, break me off... can you finish it??? It’s also the reason we hear the phone number in radio commercials at least three times in one single 30 second ad, or why we all know exactly where to apply Head On…

At Arcadia High School the students are very smart. Not only are many of them matriculating to all those prestigious Ivy league schools, but even as most are on the cutting edge of technology and early and eager adopters, they still create simple 8.5x11 paper flyers to advertise clubs, prom, concerts, soccer tryouts, etc. Why? They could easily send something out on Snapchat or Instagram and have hundreds of their peers see their flyer in minutes. So, why? Because they are smart. They know that hundreds of students are walking through the quad at all hours of the day, almost every day of the week. It works. It can also help provide a great reminder for people, as they see your message online and in person, and they see it multiple times. Repetition is key for marketing. “A piece of that Kit Kat bar,” is the obvious answer you knew thanks to repetition. Unless you're Andy Bernard from my favorite show of all-time, The Office.

Continue all of your digital and social media marketing, but don’t forget to take a few seconds and double up those efforts with some old school flyers. If you’re now creating an electronic newsletter, why not print some out and place them in your lobby, in employee mailboxes, email blasts, on the break room refrigerator, or better yet, above the urinal. Be creative with your marketing, and understand that creative doesn’t always equal new school technology.

Even in our data-driven digital world with analytics just a swipe away, old school marketing is still essential. Even in our data-driven digital world with analytics just a swipe away, old school marketing is still essential.