Back to the future
Ways to Modernize Your Traditional Marketing Touchpoints
Many would describe living in this age as a “digital,” “paperless” and “virtual” world. As a result, brands have focused the majority of their time and energy towards building new websites, posting more on social media, launching SEM campaigns and embracing other digital marketing to reach the online crowd. And while these efforts are all worthwhile, it has often resulted in firms overlooking the opportunities to modernize more “traditional” touchpoints as well, such as business cards, newsletters, brochures, and other collateral materials. In their current state, many of these materials no longer generate the desired interest or impressions, leading to these materials becoming more of a relic collecting dust in a drawer rather than providing value as a key marketing tool at your firm. However, these traditional touchpoints are not heading towards a complete marketing death just yet; instead, they have begun to evolve and are becoming even more important than many firms choose to recognize.
It's time for firms to upgrade their traditional marketing materials and tools in ways that will reach and resonate with key audiences while becoming more effective in supplementing a firm’s website and other digital marketing efforts. Here are some ways traditional touchpoints are evolving in 2023:
PDFs to Immersive Presentations.
“Click here to download PDF” is often the limit of interaction clients and potential clients get when being directed towards other, digitally-produced marketing materials. While PDFs are great because of their small file size, eco-friendliness and ability to be shared and emailed out to clients with ease, they unfortunately lack much interaction and the ability to fully capture the energy of an important topic or the attention of a busy prospect. They also have no ability to measure data (other than perhaps how many times it’s been downloaded on a site). This means traditional PDFs are essentially the same as the printed brochures of yesteryear and do little to enhance the positive experience of a reader.
As an alternative, digital content platforms such as Foleon, Ceros, and Paperflite are paving the way for better user experiences and are the PDFs 2.0 of today. Unlike a traditional PDF, these content display platforms allow users to have an enhanced visual, and even auditory, experience guiding them throughout the presentation of your important information. Typical PDFs don’t allow for scrolling, have no responsiveness (as they were made to either be sent to a printer or viewed on a large enough screen), and do little to keep your client or prospect engaged. The dynamic functions offered by these platforms can create a more effective and memorable user experience than a primarily static PDF is capable of doing.
With these interactive platforms, your firm’s information now has the power and dynamic functions of a regular website, including scroll animations, buttons, navigation links, and responsiveness. Not only that, but it has the ability to collect data and client information, and present it to you in a way that is easy to digest and comprehend. Now you can see who is viewing your files and what they are clicking on, in order to better understand your audience and what grabs their interest. Lastly, updating the content is simple and effective by eliminating the need to resend files each time there is an edit to your materials because of the platform’s ability to keep the same link.
Business Card to Smart Cards
Eight billion of the 10 billion business cards printed every year are tossed within a week of distribution. Despite this, company sales increase by 2.5% for every 2,000 business cards given out. So while we can conclude that, yes, business cards are still positively impacting your business, there has to be a smarter way than seeing more than 80% of your business cards end up in a landfill.
Smart cards are an opportunity to overcome this problem. A smart card, like a traditional business card, gives you all the general information about a business and a contact, but can include so much more than a 2 x 3.5 paper card. Limitations such as space, font size, durability and cost are all alleviated with the use of a smart card such as Popl, Vista Connect, and Mobilo.
These cards (sometimes not even cards at all) work by scanning to a person's phone and then instantly populating the desired information. A contact card, a website, social media accounts, and even signup sheets for people to schedule an appointment or meeting. Instead of crossing your fingers and hoping someone will check out your firm’s information, you can create instant conversions with a simple tap. A single plastic card, a button attached to your phone, and even Apple watches and wristbands can come with these tappable chips that not only get you an immediate connection to a client or prospect, but serve as a conversation starter to explain your firm’s modern and innovative positioning.
Print to Digital Advertising
Advertising is still an important piece of the marketing matrix for many professional services firms. Often, this can be the first touchpoint that people encounter before reaching out to a firm. While magazines, newspapers, OOH opportunities and other forms of print media used to be the standard when it came to targeting desired business audiences, this standard has changed to follow the more recent digital-first trends.
Digital ads have become a new essential marketing tool for many firms. Some of the more obvious advantages to these platforms include:
- Ability to include animation.
- Ability to target more defined audiences
- Ability to collect user data
- Ability to be mobile
- Ability to reach a wider audience
- Ability to link to resources and other information of value
Digital ads today can be run from platforms offering what is known as First-Party-Data ads, which means that when users visit their site, then they can “follow” the user to the next site they visit and display an ad on that site (if it is within their list of brand-safe websites). Ads like this allow you to target specific people wherever they are and lead them directly to your website. You can also collect data (how many impressions, clicks, views, etc.) with digital ads that will help you better understand your audience and behaviors.
Digital ads can also be placed directly on homepages of websites, email communications, e-newsletters, social media channels, and more. The placements for these ads have many choices depending on the desired target audience and the capability of each channel. Many brands even give you the chance to simultaneously run multiple ads (e.g., running a homepage takeover, email newsletter ads, and first-party data) ensuring that you get the most impressions possible, No more waiting for the next issue of that magazine to run another ad.
Videos, images and animated GIFs are all acceptable formats for digital ads, which create a much more impressive and engaging ad experience when compared to a static billboard or magazine ad. Because the ads can go into so many different types of digital and online touchpoints, they can be viewed globally and on any online device.
Pages to Podcasts and Channels
Providing the latest and greatest news and industry insight is an important marketing strategy for professional services firms. Content is still king in many ways. Many firms implement a robust schedule for creating whitepapers, blogs or articles dedicated to these type’s firm updates and insights. However, this can require a substantial time investment by the firm to get the content written, not to mention needing a great storyline to capture someone’s attention and keep it. And without the right content marketing and promotion strategy, many times these well-written articles and blogs are overlooked.
In addition to the content you are serving on your website, consider including a different format for messaging such as a podcast or video series. With these alternative formats, readers feel more engaged because of the inclusion of tone, music, video, and sound effects, feeling and experiencing the story and subject line, and not just reading it.
A firm could produce different podcasts or episodes that either tackle one specific topic or serve as a general, all-inclusive firm series. Farella Braun + Martell’s EO Radio Show describes itself as “Your Non-Profit Legal Resource” specifically helping non-profit brands get information from a credible source. Linklaters has a general firm podcast that tackles a range of subjects from Diversity in the workplace, to international developments, to distinct practice area news that attorneys in any area may want to learn more about. And even solo practitioners have jumped on this trend such as attorney Mike Mandell (better known as Law by Mike), who has over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, proving that everyday people on everyday platforms have an interest and need for law content beyond a written article or blog.
As we can see, many of our traditional marketing tools are not as useless as some might want to claim, but instead, they have evolved to fit the needs and trends of the current market. Simple moves and transitions such as paper to digital business cards can modernize your firm. Creating more engaging resources such as dynamic online presentations instead of traditional PDFs can bring in a more engaging and positive user experience for your clients. Taking advantage of digital marketing outreach can generate more potential opportunities than traditional avenues. And by enriching your messaging format to include podcasts and videos, you can become accessible to more people on more platforms, wherever they are. Your next marketing project doesn’t have to be something completely new; rather you can look for ways to upgrade and enhance the marketing materials you already have on deck.
Are you interested in growing and evolving your marketing touchpoints and collateral materials or creating your next digital campaign? Contact Herrmann’s Chief Business Development Officer John Albert today at john@herrmann.com to see how Herrmann can help.
