Are traditional or digital marketing methods best for your business?

March 8, 2017 Tom McShane

With so many marketing methods available, business owners can find it tough to decide what will benefit their company the most. Whilst there are numerous successful strategies, the real question is: is there a marketing method that best suits your industry?

Leaflet distribution specialist Direct Letterbox Marketing has compiled some data on the best marketing methods for different industries. Where does your business sit? Find out below…

Direct marketing
Target Marketing Magazine analysed some of the most successful companies’ direct mail campaigns of that year. In the top 10 results – the following industries appeared:

Financial
Telecom/Cable
Clubs/Associations
Insurance

In addition to this, Startups analysed brands that used effective door drop marketing campaigns:

Domino’s spend a huge £10m a year on door-drop marketing – and why? This strategy is their second most effective marketing tool after TV advertising. They target their door drops specifically depending on the time of the week, area and its affluence.

Freeview HD are another company who successfully acquired more business through door-drop. They managed to get their audience to sign-up through direct mail. It worked by promoting the quality of HD through a pink feather door-drop.

Wyevale Garden Centres door-drop strategy worked as they acquired customer data prior to help target people’s interests but giving them up-to-date messages through their door.

From that, we can also add the following to the list of businesses that benefit from door drop marketing:

Takeaway/food and restaurants
Retail/specialist stores

Email marketing
According to the 2016 Email Industry Census – Key Sector Report, email ROI was up to 73% in 2016, proving that the email marketing strategy still very much has a place amongst businesses.

The census identified the top six sectors in the survey for using email marketing:

Charities, Government and Not-For-Profit organisations. 84% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 65% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Travel & Hospitality. 63% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 83% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Retail/Mail Order. 82% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 57% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Print/Publishing & Media. 73% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 77% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Financial Services & Insurance. 67% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 56% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
Technology & Telecoms. 51% of respondents rated the performance of their company email campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. 66% of respondents from this industry rated email ROI as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.

Social media marketing
Some industries seem to be running more successful social media campaigns than others, accord to Social Media Today. They reveal that some of the top-performers include:

Retail: Social media marketing works for retail businesses because it enables them to talk directly to customers and encourage interaction with the brand; they share news about products, get feedback and share offers and promotions.

Food and drink: With 8 out of 10 restaurant operators already using social media, or are planning to use it in the next two years, it has become a significant marketing strategy in the industry. Food provides attractive imagery that people want to take and share on their social accounts, which in turn leads to a large online social presence.

Fashion: Fashion is moving and developing, and there’s always something new coming to the market. Fashion brands create visually-interesting posts on social media that their audience enjoy looking at – and sharing. Fashion influencers and bloggers are also very active on social media. Endorsements can influence new sales.

Entertainment: Written content is particularly effective for social media marketing in the entertainment sector, as 79.3% of the posts shared in this industry is informative, written content. Content about the entertainment industry is extremely sharable, so social media performance naturally does well.

Real Estate: Social media provides a great platform for selling properties and putting them in front of those looking to buy them. Instagram and Facebook have been proven to be effective in selling and leasing properties. Similarly, to fashion and retail, the audience shares and comments on properties – attracting the attention of new audience.

Marketing: It goes without saying that social media marketing will be utilised by marketers – 96% of marketers use it as a marketing tool. What type of content is the most effective? Video is one of the highest performing medias last year, with 57% of marketers currently using it.

Education. In recent years, universities and colleges have had to drive forward their marketing efforts to recruit students. Social platforms such as Facebook are a great place to interact with students on a platform which they are familiar with. They can encourage visits to open days and engage with students.

Sources

One thought on “Are traditional or digital marketing methods best for your business?”

Aaren

April 24, 2017 at 11:08 am

Thanks for an interesting article. We can see many businesses turn to marketing automation and email marketing. Social is not the only successful channel. I’ve started using getresponse for my marketing automation recently.

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