Analog marketing tools let your campaigns reach into the spaces where people’s attention isn’t fixed on a screen. These are proven old-school hacks — the kind of advertising tricks your grandfather used. The idea is to find out where your target market’s eyeballs land most often, and then put your message in the space.
Here are five products that let you take your message offline while keeping it in your demographic’s line of sight.
Note Cards
Trust me on this one. People aren’t using cards enough. Worse, they’re not using them well. Think of a beautifully designed custom card with your logo or just your name in vintage capitals with a matching envelope. You send it because you know your favored client watches “Goliath.” (Spoiler alert!)
Pro tip: Write that note by hand!
Stickers
My love for stickers is well-documented. You should fall in love with them too. Stickers are cheap, fun, and get you in front of a trend fast. They enhance existing campaigns by enlisting your clients, potential clients and staff into your decal deployment troops. Sticker Mule and Redbubble are respected players in the sticker game.
Pro tip: Celebrate a great employee by putting their face on a sticker.
Newspapers
Most newsletters are boring and go right to the garbage can. A newspaper lands on someone’s desk. They are big. They carry old-school cred. They look expensive — as if it took a staff of 50 people to put it together. Fortunately, they’re not that expensive. And you can make one from your laptop with a staff of nobody. Print-on-demand newspaper publishing is an example of the internet making an analog tool easier to use. France’s Print Newspaper and England’s Newspaper Club make publishing a broadsheet of your own as simple as a click. Print Newspaper will even mail them to your uploaded Excel list as part of the cost — which is about $1 per paper (four pages at 500 copies).
Print Newspaper’s broadsheet sample.
Bookmarks
Consider doing bookmarks if you are the kind of person who likes to send people books or market your services with a physical book (perhaps your own). Your readers will appreciate the convenience and will touch that bookmark every time they read your book. The advertising real estate is limited to about 10 square inches per side. A creative designer can pack a lot into that space. VistaPrint offers two sizes with a quick turnaround.
Pro tip: Add a QR code linking to your law firm’s or book’s review site. (Here’s a free QR code generator from Canva.)
Full disclosure, this bookmark is for this writer’s book.
Print Advertising
Remember that old chestnut? It still works. Where are your potential clients looking? If you specialize, there is a magazine serving your target audience. Do you represent regional aviation firms? Aviation Week is on your client’s desk. Plus, print advertising allows for plenty of creativity. Snowbird Ski Resort turned a light powder of one-star reviews into an effective ad for the advanced skiers who were their target market.
What are your favorite analog marketing tools? Tell us at editor@attorneyatwork.com.
Illustration ©iStockPhoto.com
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