As we enter into a new decade, it’s clear that internet, social and mobile marketing will continue their rapid march to marketing domination. The importance of SEO, Blogs, Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook and their ilk in nurturing and capturing leads and building brand loyalty cannot be overstated these days. However, as I’ve argued in a previous blog, despite the dire predictions, traditional print advertising and marketing are not quite dead yet and should still be very much part of a B2B marketer’s strategic arsenal.
It is all too easy to get caught up in the inbound marketing mania that exists today and overlook the relevance and effectiveness of traditional outbound marketing techniques (print/tv/radio advertising, telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows etc.) in reaching out and influencing your B2B target audiences.
Print certainly has none of the business cachet that the internet, mobile and social marketing have today. So it’s always tempting for marketing consultants to talk up and push trending B2B marketing vehicles at the expense of the traditional tried and true, like print advertising, direct mail and good old-fashioned cold calling.
It certainly doesn’t help that traditional print marketing campaigns can be far more expensive to run than its internet based counterpart. And unlike the bounty of analytical data that can be culled in real-time out of internet marketing efforts, accurately measuring a campaign’s ROI and effectiveness in print is still more of a pipe dream than practical reality.
So why even advocate for traditional print marketing?
Because, as I have pointed out in a previous posting, at the end of the day, getting a potential customer to develop awareness, interest and preference for your products and services before a first contact is made is still the name of the game and this simple and fundamental truth of B2B marketing is as true today as it was decades ago.
For all of the internet’s undisputed customer draw and influence, it possesses marketing and audience “blind spots” that can still, at times, be better reached and targeted by traditional print campaigns. Don’t take our word for it: just ask Google.
This is the full page tabloid ad that Google ran in the Business section of the Toronto Globe and Mail – Canada’s National newspaper - unabashedly introducing AdWords to Canadian small business. I discovered it as part of my breakfast routine on December 17th (it ran again on the 22nd). I nearly choked on my cereal! Seeing an ad by Google in a newspaper was for me the equivalent of walking into a Burger King and discovering a renowned vegan guru – with a large cult following – quietly sitting in the corner of the restaurant savoring the last meaty morsels of a Whopper with cheese.
That is to say, you would not expect Google, the world’s leading online juggernaut, with all their back room SEO knowledge and internet savviness at their disposal, to be placing a full page ad in a local Toronto newspaper. After all newspapers are considered to be the most endangered of all media species, thanks in large part to the online world that Google is helping to create.
Everyday internet evangelists the world over preach the Gospel of Google and how SEO is the salvation of Business Marketing. To these true believers only internet heretics could be blind enough to spend their marketing dollars on local newspaper ads when they could get so much more bang for their marketing buck using it online.
To make matters worse, not only is Google advertising in a newspaper, they are also offering a $100 incentive promotion to start using AdWords. One of the great and justifiable arguments for marketing online today is that efforts there can generate the lowest cost per lead as compared to traditional print marketing. And at $100 spent for every customer earned, Google’s newspaper promotion certainly proves that cost differential point.
This is actually not the first time I have come across a print promotion by Google: Across the pond, KnowledgeBank, a leading UK B2B marketing group has blogged about their own similar reaction at receiving a print promotion from Google. They called the piece the most expensive direct mailer ever.
So how to explain Google’s decision to use print marketing to reach their prospects?
It’s very simple. I suspect Google likely wants to reach the large untapped group of small business owners who are, if not wholly internet unsavvy, are at the very least, internet marketing ignorant. They may already have a rudimentary website set up for their business, just enough to have an online presence, but are not really doing much with it. They may have a superficial understanding of SEO but nothing more. The marketing dollars they do have may be going into newspaper or Yellow Page advertising and although they might consider using AdWords online, they have probably never heard of it or at the very least have little understanding of how it can help grow their business.
The bottom line is that this is a classic B2B marketing challenge and the most effective way to reach this particular group is to go offline and use interruptive marketing tactics that can effectively catch these prospects’ attention. This group will likely never come around to doing the research online that will lead them to eventually discovering AdWords on their own. At least, not in the near future. Clearly Google concluded that a full page ad with a stand out $100 incentive offer, running in the business section of Canada’s national newspaper, was the most impactful way to reach out to Canadian Small Business without delay.
It would certainly not have been surprising to hear that Google had chose an online only campaign for promoting their online marketing products like Adwords. After all, not only are they an internet focused business; they are the undisputed master of this domain.
What is perhaps most encouraging for me about Google’s offline efforts is that, unlike their devoted followers, they are not rigid ideologues when it comes to their marketing strategies. They are evidently prepared to use whatever means is necessary and available at their disposal as marketers to achieve their sales and marketing objectives. And if that means using print – so be it!
This is in strong contrast to the growing list of marketing consultants who insist that their clients drop all offline efforts and turn to online strategies only; A declaration derived not out of an intimate understanding of their clients’ marketing needs but more out an ideological marketing “philosophy” that dismisses out-of-hand and on principle, anything in marketing that is non-internet based.
Surprisingly yet heartily, Google is clearly not in that camp. They understand that no one media (even the net!) has all the answers to a company’s varied marketing challenges and target audiences. As we do, they believe that sales and branding challenges are best served with an integrated mix of both online and offline strategies.
