We’ve all heard many times about the death of direct (snail) mail.
It’s passé, we’re told; it’s dinosaur media. Use has plummeted, marketing has migrated to the web, and we all have to get with the new online reality. So imagine my surprise when I recently received not one, but TWO direct mail solicitations from Google!
They asked me on paper to use AdWords and Google Apps. On the last one, they thoughtfully enclosed a paper calculator so I could figure out how much I could save by switching. Of course they gave me a url to get more details, but the initial pitch was with direct mail.
On reflection, it’s no big mystery.
Even though Google is among the most successful web marketing companies ever, it uses more than the web to reach its audience. No business should put all its eggs in one marketing basket, because people don’t get information from only one source. So it’s a business’s responsibility to find out what their audience pays attention to. What magazines do they read? What sites do they frequent? Do they get news from the radio, online or a traditional newspaper? When you’re making media choices, it’s critical to know.
So Google thinks direct mail is a good way to reach its market.
Can’t argue – it reached me and I read it. I also read catalogs, and apparently so do many others. These things aren’t cheap, so you can bet that firms like LL Bean wouldn’t send them out if few sales resulted. Bonus: the catalog drives readers to their web site. The point is, using multiple methods really increases your marketing’s effectiveness.
When traditional and online media are strategically combined, it’s powerful.
You don’t have to be a big national firm to take advantage of this synergy: direct mail and online media reinforce each other. The take-away: look at your marketing mix and make sure what you’re using reaches your target, and that all parts support each other. When all your marketing works together, paper and web-based, you’ll get a much better result from your investment.