So… what do you call something that’s dead but still continues to move around and as though it was living? Zombies! Is that what news and print marketing has become? I mean, we constantly hear about how traditional news is “dead” and we’re moving on to a digital age. But if newspapers are dead, why do I still hear about articles in the Dallas Morning News and I see at least one person with a newspaper in this coffee shop right now. The living dead are among us (on tables, no less)!

What’s really going on is that more “traditional” form isn’t going away; its evolving. Sites like the NYTimes.com are just changing to meet with public consumption of information. This blog is not about predicting the death print or anything like that but to point out a small flaw in many online marketers’ logic.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

This post is based on #5 from How to Tell if Your Webmaster is Cheating on You: “Your website or social media or email or whatever is the only marketing your company needs.” I especially hear this about social media, but really anyone who seems to specialize in one form of marketing be it print, design, web or otherwise will spend a lot of time telling you how they are the best. The fact of the matter is, rarely will one form of media reach your entire audience. In online marketing, I constantly have to make sure that what I do for a client’s online presence works with and not against any other form of marketing they may choose to use.

Marketing is a Gem of Many Facets

I base a lot of my articles on knowing your target market. When deciding on a medium to use, this is key. Now, you may have more than one audience to reach, or that audience may vary greatly in how they find your product. There’s lots of ways to get out your message and measure its effectiveness but like my partner Edward says, “Roughly fifty percent of all marketing works, its knowing which half that’s the problem.”

So let’s say you target audience is small business owners in their forties in the Dallas area. A great many of these people still read the Dallas Morning News, on or offline. A lot of them commute, or are mobile regularly, so signage might also be a good way to reach them. This is also one of the fastest growing demographics on Twitter and Facebook (not to mention mobile browsing). All of these might be a great marketing avenue for you, and probably work best as a whole strategy and not separate pieces.

To clarify a little, I wanted to share a case example by Jeff Hasen about how he used traditional and new media to market a company. Its worth a read.

The Zombies Live Among Us

Now that we know that zombies still walk among us, we might as well embrace them. Trying new strategies that integrate with old ones can only increase your visibility (and hopefully your client base). I don’t mean don’t target, just be smart about where you spend your money. But don’t write off a traditional media form for being dead. I mean, if Shaun of the Dead can coexist with the living dead, than so can you!

Do you have an example of someone who used social media and traditional zombies together in a marketing campaign? We’d love to hear about them!

Tags: Dallas Morning News, death of newspapers, how to know if he's cheating, Jeff Hasen, New York Times, News, newspapers, shaun of the dead, Social Media, traditional media, zombie Ed, zombies

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Trends, Veribatim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.