With all the hype around online ads and digital marketing strategies, you might start to wonder if traditional advertising—meaning, any type of advertising that was around pre-internet—is dead, and if it helps get more traffic to a website. Find out how your advertising DNA will inform the types of advertising, including traditional forms, that work for your business.
Advertising platforms
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that consumers trust traditional advertising more than online ads. Here are the latest findings by Statista on the trust factor consumers have for marketing platforms:
- Newspaper ads: 63 percent
- Magazine ads: 62 percent
- TV ads: 61 percent
- Radio ads: 58 percent
- Billboards: 55 percent
- Search advertising: 44 percent
- Online video ads: 44 percent
- Social media ads: 39 percent
- Mobile ads: 35 percent
- Online banner ads: 33 percent
Notice that the top five performers are traditional advertising venues. Now, these findings shouldn’t give you the green light to abandon digital advertising strategies. What these stats should convey is that the best type of approach to marketing your local business may involve a mix of online and traditional ads, depending on your industry and consumers.
Advertising DNA
Learning where to target a traditional advertising campaign involves uncovering your “advertising DNA.” The answer depends on:
- Whether your business serves other businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C).
- If your business sells to a targeted local or regional area (local), or if you sell nationally or globally (global).
- If your products/services serve a niche audience (targeted exposure), or everyone (mass or broad exposure)?
The last component of your advertising DNA depends on the type of market you need to reach out to:
- A horizontal approach works for any type of business or consumer (like a web design firm or ice cream shop). To advertise to this group, you don’t need as large a territory, because the product will appeal to a larger group of people within a relatively smaller geographic region.
- In a vertical approach, your product only works for a specific group of people or businesses, like an ecommerce site for booksellers. In this case, the “territory” of customers has to be much wider.
After outlining each component of your advertising DNA, you can discover which strategy will work best for your business, and which traditional ads to use:
- A global awareness strategy uses mass exposure within a wide territory: national TV, national radio, mainstream magazines, major newspapers.
- A mass local strategy uses mass exposure within a local territory: radio, newspaper, billboards, local TV, yellow pages.
- A targeted local strategy uses targeted exposure within a local territory: direct mail, referral programs, yellow pages, radio, newspaper.
- A vertical market strategy uses targeted exposure within a wide territory: trade publications and websites, niche magazines and websites, trade shows, direct mail, referral programs.
Discover your business’ unique advertising DNA, and put these traditional advertising methods to work for your business. With an effective online strategy piggy-backing your offline strategy, you’ll create an effective strategy get more traffic to your website.
