Types of Marketing & Their Benefits

Why is marketing important?

Marketing is your communication line to your customers. It tells people that you exist and gives them a reason to buy your product. Furthermore, marketing is what allows you to retain customers that you have already gained, as constantly reinforcing your brand’s offerings is what stops your clients from buying elsewhere.

Even the most popular, famous companies and brands invest heavily in marketing, which is actually a primary reason for their popularity and fame. Apple, for example, spent over $100 million on advertising in the past year, according to media radar, and according to Zippia, Coca-Cola spends about $4 billion a year on advertising. Hardest to believe yet, Temu bought five commercials on the latest Super Bowl, with each costing $6.5-7 million. These whopping numbers reflect the importance that these world-famous brands rightfully attach to marketing.

This blog will give you ideas for how you can best market your product by exploring the various types of marketing channels. You can use the list of different types of traditional and digital marketing below to choose the ones that make the most sense and will be most effective for your company.

Let’s begin with:

Types of traditional marketing

1. Print Ads

Though old, print ads are by no means outdated. From highway billboards to posters in shop windows to magazine ads, this form of advertising can be fabulously effective when harnessed skillfully. The powerful visual from WMF Knives below is a great example of a clever print ad that hit the mark.

Image source: Ads of the world

2. Direct Mail

There’s nothing quite as personal as receiving a letter in your mailbox. The trick is to segment your audience and only send direct mail to existing customers, or at least very warm leads. This is because someone who has never heard of your brand is likely to throw your letter out without a second glance. The exception would be if your mail is particularly captivating, like the KitKat direct mail ad below. Because it’s so intriguing, it’s likely to have been opened, read, laughed at, and acted upon by many people, irrelevant of whether they were existing KitKat consumers or not.

Image source: WDM

3. Experiential Marketing

This immensely fun and memorable type of marketing has been proven to significantly increase ROI. Experiential marketing means creating an immersive experience that physically connects people to a brand. M&M's recent ‘flavor rooms’ campaign is a great example of this. M&M created pop-ups in public places like shopping centers, which people could go into and experience different M&M flavors in a fun setting.

M&M’s Flavor Room

4. Phone Calls

The ultimate in traditional marketing, phone calls are still an immensely effective means of marketing as there’s nothing quite like speaking to a real human voice, who can address questions and concerns on the spot, as well as convey the brand’s messaging exactly how it is meant to be conveyed.

5. Networking

Also one of the oldest types of marketing strategies, networking is still a super effective means of marketing. There are many opportunities for marketers to network with potential clients at events such as Workamajig’s Bootcamp, as well as events that are created specifically for networking. You can bring your business card (virtual or physical), prepare a succinct speech about your offering, or even give out free company swag to help people remember you.

6. Public speaking

A great way to show potential customers that your brand knows what it’s doing is by solving problems in public, aka during a speech. If, for example, you are an advertising agency, giving a speech about the latest advertising techniques will show your audience that your company is confident and capable in advertising. This, in turn, makes your audience more likely to choose you next time they need an advertising agency.

Types of digital marketing

1. Display Ads 

These types of digital ads are the banner ads or pop-ups that appear on websites. The point of these is to get people to click on them and take them to the brand’s website. The advantage of this type of digital advertising is that you can get your ad front and center of your target audience. The con is that these types of ads get an extremely low click rate and are often perceived as annoying.

2. Native Ads 

Native advertising is a great marketing solution. Native ads take the form of helpful types of content marketing which also ‘happen’ to be an ad. Think blog posts, sponsored advertorials, YouTube videos, etc. Although native ads can be hard work to produce, they come across as authentic, credible, and helpful.

3. Social Media

There are different types of social media marketing. Social media ads can also be paid or organic. Paid ones will be labeled ‘sponsored’ and can be leveraged to reach specific audiences. Organic social media ads can be stories, videos, short posts, carousels, and more. Both paid and organic ads are easily spreadable - if someone enjoys your content, or your paid ad is humorous or exciting, they’ll send them to their friends. This increases your reach with minimal effort on your part.

4. Search Engine Marketing 

Again, we must differentiate between organic and paid SEO ads. With excellent SEO skills, you can get your page to rank one of the first on Google search. If you can manage this, it’s ideal because it’s free. However, few people can outrank every other company on Google search, which is where PPC ads come in handy. Commonly referred to as ‘Google Ads’, these allow you to get right to the top of the search page, with the caveat that you have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

5. Video Ads

Video ads have the major advantage of being both interesting and taking minimal effort to engage with, making consumers far more likely to pay attention. Video ads can be mid-youtube videos, on websites, or apps. The disadvantage is that they take time and a lot of creativity to produce.

6. Email Marketing

Within this category, there are different types of email marketing. Email can be used for cold marketing as well as for your current clients. They can be used in different forms as well, such as newsletters and a series of campaigns. Once you have an email list, you have the major advantage of being able to send email ads to people who are at least somewhat interested in your brand. There are a few ways to gather an email list but a common method is to have a pop-up on your website that requests the viewers' email address. You can then send promotional emails to those who have already shown interest in your brand.

7. Audio Advertising

These can be employed on online audio platforms, like music sites and podcasts. The costs of producing these are low and they can be recycled across many platforms. You can also reach specific audiences and use site analytics to track ROI. The obvious downside is that people don’t generally enjoy having their song/podcast disrupted by an ad. They therefore have to be made cleverly and kept short to have a chance of being listened to.

Vary your marketing

Having read through the above lists on both traditional and digital advertising, you might be wondering which types of marketing campaigns to choose. The answer is twofold.  

First, a varied marketing approach is usually the most effective, so explore different options rather than sticking to the same marketing format every time. 

Second, the type of marketing that will work best for you depends on the size of your company, as well as your product and audience. Think about what makes the most sense for your company and what your customers would appreciate most. If, for example, your average client is above the age of 70, you would likely do well with phone call and email marketing, whereas if you have a young audience, an experiential form of advertising might hit the spot.

How can Workamajig help you market successfully?

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