We spend a lot of time here discussing the latest in digital marketing trends, but is there still a place for old-fashioned marketing? That, of course, depends on who you ask. If you ask a digital marketing guru, you’re likely to get some spiel about how digital marketing is the future and we’re all going to be moving online. Ultimately, we’ll leave our physical bodies behind and join with everyone else in the cloud. Everything will be digital in the future and we need to prepare for that day.
At the other end are the people who think that digital marketing is gimmicky. It has its uses but it doesn’t replace the business practices that they’ve always known.
However, what matters most is what gets us to our goals. So for some people, old-fashioned marketing might be the way to go. In this blog, I want to give you a little perspective on marketing. Having a great business is not just about getting likes on Facebook or having great SEO. There’s a little more to it than that.
There’s Still Value In The Physical
Believe it or not, the physical world is the place where most people spend their lives. Yes, they’re online more than ever before, and yes, the trend is pointing up, but sometimes people want a little escape from the digital.
This might be a bad example, given the recent failure of the Independent Newspaper in Britain. But people still like reading physical objects, like newspapers. When books first went digital back in the days when Kindle first launched, we had a lot of punters proclaiming that this was the end of the bookstore. Turned out, they were wrong because people like holding something in their hands when they read. A phone with a screen just didn’t cut it.
There are many beautiful websites out there using the latest HTML5 web development and wonderful SEO optimization. So the competition is tough. But physical literature has almost become a chimera. And the business with quality physical marketing is almost a novelty. So there is an argument suggesting that it’s easier to stand out through this channel.
Use Your Body
You might not want to work it quite like Beyonce, but using your own body to interact with people is still probably the most influential tool you have. Being a human being, rather than a computer is still a big advantage in 2016. Granted, in the future, we may have businesses that “live on the blockchain” and use AI to generate their own revenue streams. But for now, your body is the state of the art.
To win people over and influence them, you probably ought to step back a little from focusing exclusively on digital marketing. Spend a little time thinking about how you present yourself and how you can improve on your business relationships.
