There are so many ways to use the internet to get word out that you have a new company that it is easy to forget that there are other approaches to marketing that are becoming largely untapped. One of the best ways to grow both your market and your own personal network within that market is direct marketing, especially in print.
Regardless of what you might hear and all the press being given to online marketing, direct marketing is NOT dead and this is something all startups should understand, even if you are trying to reach a global market.
Networking at Its Very Best.
In literally any industry, there is nothing like good old fashioned networking, face to face that is. Interacting on a personal level is so much more memorable than reaching out via a faceless and often emotionless media like the internet. Attending trade shows, contacting local vendors, and literally pounding the pavement may be time consuming, but meeting people, talking to them, learning a bit about who they are and what they do enables you to grow in ways you can only begin to imagine. There is only so much social media can accomplish and where it leaves off, direct marketing picks up – and vice versa.
Cost vs. Results.
From flyers to business cards and everything in between, many startups don’t like laying out huge sums of money to print thousands of hard copies when they think the internet can do the same thing at much less the cost. However, what they aren’t factoring in is the personal relationships which can be developed and nurtured through that one initial contact and the way in which they can find reduced costs by looking around a bit.
For example, getting 10,000 brochures and an equal number of business cards might seem like a significant expenditure but not if you can couple that with a free shipping code for Vistaprint and perhaps a discount sometimes given on bulk orders. It’s all about investing wisely. You can be assured you will be remembered with the right personal approach but on the internet? Those people searching often view dozens of pages a day. Unless you pay for top notch web development, chances are you will be fighting the big guys who have tens of thousands in their marketing budgets!
The End Justifies the Means.
This is one time in which you can honestly say that the end justifies the means. Yes, you might be paying a tad more than you had hoped to spend on your marketing budget but if the yield is ten times higher than you had anticipated, isn’t it worth every red cent? In business, when it comes to ROI, the end does justify the means. Just looking at the impact on your bottom line will convince you that good old fashioned direct marketing is NOT dead. In fact, the opposite is true. So, the best piece of advice you’ll ever be given as a startup is to remember print media. It pays.
