Advertising and marketing are two of the most fundamental branches of business. By creating effective strategies to get the word out on your product, you are casting your net to a wider and specific audience. But some marketing pools are drying up and dying. Here are some examples of campaigns you probably should avoid.
Print Marketing
Some people will try to tell you that print advertising isn’t dead, but the decline in its relevance is obvious. Fewer people than ever are reading newspapers and magazines, making them a shoddy investment for your advertising dollars. While some publications may still be in circulation, print marketing isn’t a great way to guarantee a sale.
If you do decide to go this route, your product should be useful to older demographics. Young people don’t use paper coupons anymore, and they aren’t as inclined to figure out how to read a newspaper. Print ads served their purpose for a while, but it’s probably time to throw them out.
Cold Calling
If you want to spend hours on the phone not talking to anybody, cold calling is for you! In the past, cold calls were much more effective since people extensively used their phones. But now cold calling is time-consuming and produces few results.
This is in part because of automated scam calls. People have become desensitized to getting calls from random numbers, and most don’t answer the phone unless they know who is calling. This form of marketing may have been popular thirty years ago, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any real potential in it now. Hang up the phone!
Pop-Ups and Banners
Another type of ad that the majority of people find to be kind of trashy is the pop-up and banner advertisements. Most small websites will allow these on their site in exchange for ad revenue. Are they effective? Hardly. There is a negative stigmatization with pop-up and banner advertisements. They feel trashy, and some might worry that their data is at risk.
On top of that, it is unlikely your ad will even reach the eye of the user. Many phones and computers can easily block pop-ups, leaving your ad unused and unsuccessful. If you want to buy an ad like this, try making a more professional and classy advertisement.
Advertising is a huge experiment. You may not know what is successful or not until you try it. But these three types of marketing campaigns do not work and will not work in the future. Save yourself the trouble and find new innovative ways to share your products.
Read this next: How to Make Your Website More Engaging for Customers
