How to Get Found: Some “Traditional” Approaches

It’s clear that getting found is critical to your demand generation efforts so whether you do it through brand awareness or lead generation, you clearly need to deploy the right tactics to get found by your target audience. Now, a lot has changed over the last number of years in this regard but it’s important to remember that there are still some tried and true tactics that can help you get found and generate demand.

Before we look at some of these tactics and the changes, you can’t forget how critical content is to making these efforts successful. And while this idea is now called content marketing, I would argue that using content for demand generation is not new at all and has been a cornerstone of many efforts before it had this name.  So my first tactic for getting found, would always be to create compelling content and make it easy for your prospects to discover and share.

Social media, including Facebook, Twitter and others, has clearly changed the game in this regard. It has made sharing very easy and the tools are free or inexpensive. You can also look into sharing this content on other sites that are specific to your industry or depending on format Slideshare, YouTube and others are a good platform to consider. I’ll look at these tactics in more detail in the next post.

Because these are the cool, new ways of getting found, many organizations fail to consider some of the more “traditional” approaches which is what I want to focus on today. I believe some of these to be very effective and while many may cost more, if you have the budget they may make more sense as many don’t tell you that social media can take time. Let’s look briefly at these “traditional” marketing tactics:

• Direct mail: In some industries this has largely been replaced by email marketing but that could be as good a reason as any to try it. If there is less direct mail being done, you have less clutter (although there is still some) but you need to do something creative that stands out from the crowd so the piece gets noticed.
• Email marketing: Does anyone remember a time when this was not the most overused communications? Having said that it is still very powerful, especially if you have a relationship with the prospect and they found you in a different content. Email marketing is great at ongoing communications and to keep prospects warm so start building an email list today and leverage it going forward to share content.
• Advertising: US digital ad spending surpassed print in 2012 and is quickly catching up to TV ad spending. It’s clearly one of the biggest changes in advertising in recent history if not ever. The ability to target prospects based on keywords or interests means that you can launch a campaign for a fraction of the budget it would take for a TV or print ad campaign. 
  
• Events: This industry has clearly changed as well with some of the larger shows, like Comdex, disappearing and others changing significantly. But others have flourished, like MWC, and there is always a long list of new shows that pop-up to support the latest trend. It’s important to pick the shows you go to carefully but they are a great way to get found. There are also smaller shows and other events that may deliver more bang for the buck.
• Webinars: The digital equivalent of the seminar but in reality quite different due to a lack of face time. These are definitely an option for those with a lower budget but the hard part is attracting the right audience more than the technical details of hosting a webinar. Working with a third-party to help draw an audience can solve this and mitigate some risk but clearly increases the costs.

It’s clear that these tactics need a decent marketing budget but they should be considered as a way to share your content and get found. Many dismiss these tactics in the age of social media but they have been proven through time. There is also a cost to social media in terms of time and resources so all these tactics need to be considered as part of the larger demand generation plan.