5 Traditional & Effective Marketing Strategies that Still Matter in 2022

According to a new survey in 2020 and 2021, the transformation of digital business and technologies advanced by several years. So, unsurprisingly, in 2022, many businesses will pull their marketing steering wheel toward digital marketing and target their customers in virtual reality.

As a digital marketing company, we emphasize the importance of digital marketing methods to increase revenue, grow, and succeed. Still, we also understand that no effective marketing plan should exclude traditional and effective marketing strategies that work even in 2022.

When we speak of traditional marketing efforts, we are referring to techniques that don’t involve using the internet or digital technology rather than physically promoting your business and products in the real world — sound time-consuming? Sure, some traditional marketing techniques require more time and energy than setting up a social media ad on your laptop, but they still drive impressive return on investment (ROI) and are worth the effort.

Let’s look at five traditional marketing techniques you can still use in 2022 to increase revenue, along with your digital marketing strategy.

Direct Mail

Email marketing is part of many businesses’ digital marketing plans. As of 2021, 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach their customers. Have you been using it but struggling to see its results? Email marketing is one of the most crucial digital marketing channels, but it is also one of the most competitive ones. Chances are, your prospects’ inboxes are already cluttered with your competitors’ promotional messages, so direct mail is making a real comeback in 2022.

Because more and more businesses now put more effort into digital marketing efforts like email marketing, traditional marketing channels like direct mail usually have much lower competition, making it easier for your business to get noticed.

Does sending letters to your targeted audience sound old-fashioned? It might be, but its response rates are roughly five to nine times greater than email, paid search, or social media, so when done right, can be very effective for your business.

The survey shows more than one-third of consumers (37%) are more excited to receive their mail daily than before the pandemic. Sending emails will no longer impress your audience, although still essential to include in your plan, but a personalized, well-written letter in their mailbox will.

Approximately 30% of consumers now spend more time reading marketing or promotional letters they receive through direct mail marketing.

Direct mail has an estimated 80-90% open rate, while email marketing open rates average between 15-28% depending on the industry. Thus, direct mail is way more powerful to get your message across to your audience.

How to Use Direct Mail Marketing Effectively

Now that you probably want to include direct mail in your 2022 marketing plan, you might begin wondering how to use it effectively to drive more engagement.

Use a Creative Design

First things first, your customers will physically handle mail and look at it before they decide to open and read it (or throw it away), so unsurprisingly, the design plays a crucial role in the open rates of direct mail.

The letters you send should be visually appealing, but more importantly, the design should go well with your brand image, and your messages should be easy-to-read. You should use visual hierarchy by utilizing headings, subheadings, and white space, and don’t forget about high-quality images and choosing the right colors.

Finally, use icons from the digital world in your letters. Even though you deliver messages to your customers’ doors, 97% use cellphones and nearly 90% are internet users. The internet is a whole other world with its language of symbols, icons, or emojis, that sometimes tell more than words. Therefore, including some of the digital world icons in your letters may help increase engagement.

Include a Clear CTA in Your Message

You use direct mail to boost engagement and drive action, and your customers know that. So they will expect you to make the message clear and let them know the next step they should take after reading your message, whether it’s visiting your store, using a discount coupon, attending a local event, or scanning a QR code on the letter.

Including a well-written CTA in your letters is crucial to drive desired results, whether it’s increased sales, engagement, or brand awareness, so make sure to use clear CTAs. Make them visually stand out; use bold text, highlighted boxes, or visual elements to draw their attention.

Send Coupons and Discount Codes

Nearly 90% percent of surveyed shoppers use paper coupons they’ve received through direct mail, so they are excellent to use to boost engagement and sales. Besides, when you include a coupon or discount code in your letter, your customers will be more likely to keep it.

Combine Your Direct Mail Campaign with Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Even though direct mail doesn’t use the internet to promote your products and brand, most of your business probably takes place online. Therefore, linking your traditional marketing efforts with digital marketing campaigns is an excellent way to maximize the benefits of both.

One of the best ways is to include scannable QR codes in your letters. They can link the real world with the virtual one and simplify customers’ interaction by scanning the code using their smartphones. Other options include promoting hashtag campaigns, online contests, and giveaways, online events, prompting users to follow your brand’s social media channels, or directing the audience to your digital world in any other way.

Although direct mail is more expensive than email marketing due to the printing, editing, and postage costs, it is also more cost-effective and yields higher response rates. The key to direct mail marketing is to send direct mail to a targeted audience, people who have shown interest in your company or existing customers. This way, you spend less but still get a surprisingly high ROI than from other marketing channels.

Event Marketing

Meeting your customers in person helps cement your relationship early, making event marketing one of the most effective traditional marketing strategies that will still matter in 2022.

Traditional marketing has been around for much longer than digital. People are accustomed to it, and having online alternatives for in-person meetings doesn’t mean face-to-face interactions are outdated.

Even so, 8,227 surveyed marketers worldwide in 2022 plan to host 40% of their events online, while 35% predict their events to be hybrid, and another 35% plans to have in-person events. Therefore, event marketing has also become a less competitive marketing channel for your business.

With or without the pandemic, people want to connect with other people, and virtual events don’t truly offer the chance for true human connection. Research in 2020 revealed that 80% of virtual event attendees were eager to attend live events in person within the next 12 months.

Event planners said the access to a vaccine is the primary factor 51% that would make them feel most confident in planning live physical events.

Will your attendees come without masks and stand shoulder to shoulder at your events without fearing getting sick? Probably not. However, hosting in-person events under current laws and regulations is achievable and will help you improve sales, increase brand awareness and build relationships with your customers.

Attend Industry Events

Attending industry events is still crucial for B2B companies, who struggle to strengthen their relationships with international prospects and partners due to the long-distance and different time zones, becoming an obstacle even in a digital world. Attending events where prospective customers and strategic partners will be is an excellent opportunity to build relationships and accomplish much more through in-person interactions than in online conferences or emails.

Networking at industry events works well to form strategic partnerships with other successful businesses, find new customers, increase brand awareness, and retain customers. In addition, events like industry conferences and trade shows give your business an excellent opportunity to establish your company as an authority in the industry. Hosting a well-implemented booth, networking at the events, and passing out your business cards will help increase your brand’s reach amongst industry experts and prospective clients.

Tips to help promote your business at industry events and trade shows:

• Bring your business cards – these old-school cards are still in fashion and essential for growing your professional network.

• Ensure your graphics relate to your brand and include all necessary elements, such as your brand logo.

• Do your research before every event to know what to expect and prepare accordingly. It will help you understand the scale of the event, other attendees, potential partners, and influential people who will be at the event.

• Promote your attendance online. Even though you’ll be attending an in-person event, it’s crucial to let your customers know about your attendance and details such as special deals you might have for them at the event.

• Set up an effective booth. Aside from creating eye-catching visuals for your printed material, you’ll need to set up an effective booth to help you stand out and linger in your prospects’ memories even after the doors of the event close. You can do this by setting up your product demos and displays, hosting giveaways, having a photo booth, or even a charging station.

• Include your digital information on your printed material. Once attendees leave the event, they will start scrolling social media. If you don’t share your social media information with them, chances are, they will not start searching for your business online. That’s why it’s crucial to include your social media and website information in your printed materials so your potential customers can easily find you online.

Local Events

Whenever you are searching for ways to attract new customers to your physical store or even reach prospects amongst locals, there’s no better way to do this than attending or hosting a local event.

A successful local event can bring lots of foot traffic to your store, boost your brand awareness, increase online sales, and work wonders for your local SEO strategy. Sounds promising, right?

Here are key benefits of hosting/attending local events in 2022:

• Increasing traffic to your store, whether physical or online
• Reaching a targeted local audience
• Meeting your prospects and customers in person
• Building relationships with your customers
• Acquiring local backlinks crucial to local SEO
• Getting media/social media coverage
• Building trust
• Driving revenue

According to a Momentum Worldwide study, attending an event will cause 65% of attendees to recommend the brand to others, and 59% will enter the sales funnel afterward.

Because events can equally work wonders for brand exposure and sales, many companies allocate 20-50% percent of their budgets for brand experiences, with the primary portion going to events.

Events are powerful for marketing your brand, but they require an investment of time, energy, and way more money than other marketing channels need.

Are events cost-effective?

According to Statista, 79% of US marketers generate sales using event marketing, and 44% of marketers experience a three-to-one ROI from event marketing, so yes, events are worth the effort.

Still, before you send the invitations, it’s crucial to determine your goals and set up your event strategy.

Some of the steps to take when creating your event strategy include:

• Creating a budget
• Setting measurable goals such as growing revenue
• Deciding what type of you’ll host
• Determining your target audience
• Setting up a timeline
• Pick a proper venue
• Setting up an event website
• Creating event-related digital content
• Setting up event ad campaigns
• Reaching out to local influencers in the community
• Getting your event listed on event sites

Sponsoring Local Events

Although hosting local events will be crucial for your brand in 2022, sometimes, it might not be an option for you. However, sponsoring local events is another way to increase brand awareness amongst reach more prospective customers amongst locals.

Sponsoring a local event is one of the most effective ways to boost your local SEO, as it’s a wellspring of local backlinks. Most local events list their sponsors on their websites and link to them. Additionally, local events get a lot of media coverage – an excellent source of company mentions. Besides, being a sponsor of local events will show you care about your community and evoke positive feelings about your brand amongst locals.

Attending Local Events

Finally, attending local events is another way to promote your brand in the community. Festivals, charity events, business expos, local fairs, and similar community events are great opportunities to promote your business locally.

Setting up a booth at local events gives you a perfect chance to engage your community and tell them about your business and products. Make sure to use creative designs and incorporate entertaining activities like giveaways, quizzes, or other engaging content to attract more visitors to your booth. Like at industry events, don’t forget to bring your business cards for potential strategic partners in the community and product demos to showcase what your business has to offer. You could also have a special coupon for visitors they can later use to get a discount on your eCommerce website or at your local store.

Attending local community events takes the hard work of organizing events off your shoulders, so you can still connect with your local community, but without organizing the event yourself. Local events are a great place to build relationships with your prospects and showcase your brand value. Additionally, events make a great place to collect the email addresses of your potential customers so that you can target them in your future email campaigns.

Signage

Even though now most customers use the internet to research and shop for products, they still live and walk in the real world, so signage is always crucial to your business.

If you own a physical store, signage is how you can differentiate your business from others. Signage can let your customers know it’s open by having your sign lighted in the dark, for instance, and help them find and locate your store. Without proper signage, your prospects may not even realize your store is open. Many businesses nowadays use LED or neon signs to attract customers’ attention, and some paint their window displays or entire walls.

Signage is how you can attract more walk-in customers who didn’t intend to visit your store.

Based on a FedEx survey, 76% of consumers (8 in 10) entered a business they had never visited before only because of its signs.

Your signage is what makes people passing by stop and check out your products, so it remains one of the most crucial marketing methods even in today’s digitalized world. However, digital advancements have already impacted signage, giving birth to digital signage in 1990.

Digital signage uses display technologies like video (LED) walls and LCD monitors to display visual images. It is widely used by many businesses worldwide, so digital signage is another option to drive more traffic to your store. It’s a traditional marketing strategy implemented using modern technologies, and the US digital signage market size is estimated to reach $8 billion by 2028.

Flyers and Brochures for Hand-outs

Although many businesses use digital channels to reach broad audiences, such as email, social media, or paid digital ads, handing out your flyers and brochures is still effective and will remain in 2022. More than 55% of customers find print marketing the most trustworthy type of marketing.

Some of the reasons why marketing hand-outs still work:

They allow you to reach targeted audiences.

Local or industry events, meetings, streets, malls, networking events are just a few places where you can hand out brochures and flyers. Its distribution method allows targeting a particular group of people you think is interested in your business.

Flyers and brochures are visually appealing and memorable.

Your audience will handle your printed material, and if they are visually appealing and offer a good incentive like a discount coupon, they will be more likely to keep it. The experience will also be more memorable to your customers than deleting an unopened promotional email from their inboxes.

They are cost-effective

Flyers and brochures are inexpensive to print and hand out, and they are an affordable way to promote your business. In return, they can drive more sales, build brand awareness, and increase traffic to your store.

Even though flyers and brochures are still powerful, many might argue their success is difficult to track compared to digital marketing methods like email marketing or paid ads. Although it’s true, an excellent way to better understand the engagement and success your hand-outs bring is to include uniques coupons or discount codes or QR codes customers can use. They can increase engagement, drive more action, and help you measure your campaign’s success by analyzing how many customers have used your exclusive incentives.

Catalog of Products and Services

It’s not a secret that businesses have long used catalogs as a marketing tool to attract new customers and increase sales. But, regardless of their scale, all companies can benefit from printed product or service catalogs, and they will still be effective for your business in 2022.

Your product catalog will help prospective customers better understand what you offer and if they want to buy your products or use your services. Product catalogs remain effective even in the digital age to drive more sales and reach more offline customers.

The response rates from catalogs have increased by 170% from 2004 to 2018, and evidence shows Millenials are particularly interested in catalogs they receive through direct mail.

Many eCommerce websites fail to realize that printed catalogs might benefit their businesses too. That’s because not all online shoppers spend time researching products online, and those who do, find them amongst a sea of available options – the internet has made all markets more competitive. Consumers see and come across countless online products every day. Even when sometimes they plan on buying some products they’ve seen online, they might completely forget about them after closing a tab on their browser.

On the other hand, traditional marketing channels are becoming less competitive. Because they are tactile, printed catalogs are also more memorable than online ads or virtual catalogs.

A common and easy way to link your printed catalogs to your eCommerce store is by including QR codes in them. Readers will scan them using their smartphones and access products on your store or access certain pages you want them to visit. And how to distribute your printed product catalogs? It brings us back to direct mail marketing, which is a great channel to share your product catalog, while at the same time, the catalog itself is an excellent tool to use for your direct mail marketing campaign.

Summary

Although most of your prospective consumers now own a smartphone and use the internet to research and purchase products online, digital marketing isn’t the only way to promote your business, products, or services. Traditional marketing is crucial to reach local audiences and interact with prospects and customers personally, creating unique and memorable experiences. When used correctly, the five traditional marketing strategies above in conjunction with your digital marketing plan can help your business grow, succeed, increase revenue, and gain more customers amongst your local community.