22 Marketers share the Biggest Mistakes when it comes to Traditional advertising

Traditional advertising has surely taken a backseat but is still a part of the marketing mix of a lot of brands and companies. Here are 22 Marketers from companies and agencies who have done traditional advertising for themselves and their clients and what they have learned:

Jordan Choo, Kogneta

The biggest mistake that I see is not attributing your traditional ad campaigns to actual customers.

With the shift to digital, we as marketers have been spoiled by understanding what does and doesn't drive revenue so having that knowledge for traditional campaigns is crucial. Some easy ways to do this on a campaign by campaign level are:

• Using custom call tracking numbers
• Configuring custom coupon codes
• Creating custom websites/vanity URLs
• Incorporating QR codes that have UTM parameters in embedded URLs

Amanda Thomas, Konstruct Digital

The biggest mistake I see is not tracking it.

Although traditional media cannot be tracked in the same ways that online media can, there are still multiple avenues for doing so. Some of these ways are old-school but still work. Others tie into your digital platforms:

1. Call Tracking: you can use a system like callrail.com to set up specific campaign tracking phone numbers. This will allow you to track direct phone calls from an ad.
2. Coupons: unique coupon codes for specific campaigns or channels allow you to track which sales come from where.
3. QR codes: old tech, but have seen these be really effective in specific circumstances.
4. Campaign Specific URLs: take advantage of specific website URLs for different channels and campaigns, monitor the website traffic going to those.
5. Monitor website traffic: traditional advertising can often boost your website traffic in a lot of ways, here are some quick wins you can look for: (a) Increased searches from campaign-specific keywords: you can monitor google search console for an increase in queries specific to your campaign. (b) Increase in branded searches: monitor google search console for an increase in searches related to your brand name. (c) New direct visitors: monitor your website traffic for any increases in direct visitors to your website that have never been on your website before.

The above are just a few easy to implement ideas. There are more advanced solutions available, but if you’re just getting started with traditional advertising, the above is enough to get you off the ground!

Adam Walters, muON Marketing

The biggest mistake we made in Traditional Advertising was by not doing it ourselves. In the past, we recommended outsourcing radio and print ads to others. Our issue we began to realize with this is now the Physical Brand began to skew differently than the Digital Brand.

Just think a moment about the brands you trust and how many times you hear and see their names throughout your daily lives. It’s not just digital, it’s everywhere. That is why we decided to increase our attention back to Traditional Advertising.

After speaking with our clients, they agreed that having two companies managing their brands was beginning to be a problem so muON Marketing took over their traditional ads.

Now we use traditional media to build trust in our client’s brand while using digital advertising on top of local SEO to reel in customers for them. And using our digital tools (e.g., tracking numbers, UTMs, etc) we were able to supercharge traditional advertising giving out clients more data visualization than ever before.

We do follow one rule with Traditional Advertising. Our #1 rule is, if the lead can’t be traced back to the source ad, we don’t do the ad.

Carlos Obregon, Bloom Digital Marketing

Although advertising is not really an exact science, there are a number of do and don'ts that are widely accepted. Here are a few of these principles:

1. Being too wordy: Yes, some of the best advertising campaigns out there are based on slogans that are just a few words in length, but pack in punch in terms of message retention. Here are a few: "Yes we can', "Just do it" and many more.
2. Shotgun approach: Creating ads and putting them in front of absolutely the largest number of people, whether they are the target market or not. Sure this may work sometimes but this is so 20th century.
3. Not enough frequency: Imagine a radio ad that only runs a few times. Traditional mediums need repetition, you have probably heard that advertising adage that says people need to see your ad 7 times or so before they even notice it.

There are other mistakes but the three above are the ones I notice the most.

Nathan Gotch, Gotch SEO

I've made two big advertising mistakes:

1. Not having a clear objective

   It's easy to focus on vanity metrics like views, clicks, and traffic. However, none of that matters if it isn't converting into qualified leads and sales. So every advertising campaign should have a clear objective. This is particularly important when you're working with small budgets. Your company likely doesn't have a budget like Coca-Cola, so you need to be more tactical. The good news is that platforms like Facebook and Google make it easy to target hyper-relevant audiences. Audiences that have a high probability of becoming customers.

2. Having poor tracking

   Tracking is EVERYTHING when it comes to advertising and marketing in general. You may not get it right 100% of the time, but if your tracking is 90% accurate you'll be able to allocate more resources to channels that are producing big results.

Kas Andz, Kas Andz Marketing Group

One of the worst, most prominent, and unfortunately forgiven atrocities in traditional marketing is false advertising. This deception is common in packed foods, fast food restaurants, and is now spilling over online shopping.

You get more air in your bag of chips, the Big Mac is actually a small mac, and the item you ordered is two times smaller than expected. What makes things worse is that the consumer has no power in changing anything about the "mistakes."

It is sad knowing that false advertisement is too familiar that it is virtually accepted in general. People complain here and there, but the corporate giants cannot be effectively budged.

One unsettling effect of this is when “new marketers” pick up on the deception and advertise more than they can deliver. Many think they can get away with it but forget those unsatisfied customers are the most potent negative social proof.

A few bad Yelp reviews and you’re done for.

Pui Teng, Sell Click

One of the biggest mistakes when it comes to traditional advertising is having a lack of USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

Having a good unique selling proposition (USP) helps your potential customers to differentiate why they should choose your product or services over your competitors.

Your USP, in spite of what you plan to accomplish with a specific campaign, should always be the core theme of any and all of your marketing activities.

Many business owners feel that they have a unique selling proposition by saying things such as "great," "highest-rated," "most successful" and etc.

These kinds of sentences don't help your potential client to recognize how they can benefit from your service or product.

So, if you want a compelling Unique Selling Proposition (USP), it should have the following elements:

• What products or services do you offer your customers.
• What solutions does your product or service provide to your customer.
• Who is your target audience.

Dwight Zahringer, TM Jumpstart

Not having goals, a timeline and a plan to get there. If you do not know everything you want to do or what it involves you should know your goals. Start with broad goals and determine your budget. If not sure of a budget then determine how much time you'd invest in man-hours then, what those man-hours would cost to get an idea of a budget.

As someone famously said, you might succeed even if you have a plan, but you will definitely fail if you dont have a plan

Maciej Biegajewski, LiveWebinar

In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to traditional advertising is that the advertisement is aimed at too broad an audience.

It does not matter if we are talking about traditionally understood advertising, that is advertising visible on TV, newspaper, Internet, heard on the radio; or with a more subtle form of sales, such as packaging or catalogue. Reaching everyone is not only impossible but also not practical.

If you don't narrow your core target group, you're talking to everyone. And if washing powder commercials have taught us anything, it's that "if something is good for everything, it sucks." When you talk to everyone, you are talking to no one.

Any good ad campaign speaks first to selecting your audience. You need to know your audience, identify it, reinvent it if needed, and make sure that you send the right message to the right group.

Skyler Reeves, Ardent Growth

There are two primary mistakes I see businesses make when doing traditional advertising.

The first is not setting up a way to track ROI at all. Even though traditional advertising has limited means of tracking ROI versus digital advertising, it can still be done to some extent. The use of promo codes, unique tracking numbers, or even asking leads/customers how they heard about you and recording it is better than nothing.

The second biggest mistake I see is a rush to put together and deploy the campaign without hiring the right creatives. A good sales-driven copywriter is the best investment you can make — if you're trying to write the copy yourself, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you're running your campaign on a medium with any visual component (TV, print, etc.), then you should be investing in a professional designer as well. Copy and design can make or break a traditional advertising campaign.

Nestor Vazquez, Nestor Vazquez

Not focus on a niche

When you don't know your target, you try to advertise whenever possible. Not knowing your customers can be devastating, it is best to segment and knows your prospects very well. When you know your users, you surely think about what types of social networks could spend time. Then you can define the social network in question and develop a strategy to reach them.

From the first social networks like Facebook to the most recent and fashionable ones like Tik Tok. Just make sure that your users if they use those social networks, one way to find out is to make validations, big brands like Social Bakers or Nielsen usually publish the interaction of users regarding the social networks they use. In my scenario, as SEO Mexico I target marketing project managers, so I can think that PR campaigns or LinkedIn advertising might work.

Will Cannon, Signaturely

Spend too much, too fast

While digital advertising is becoming far more effective day by day, traditional advertising is still effective. If you find the perfect magazine for your small niche or the perfect billboard to advertise to locals, you can still see a pretty good ROI.

However, that’s where traditional advertising shines: when it’s laser-focused. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that more is necessarily better. While movies and high-end fashion brands still plaster all buses and buy all of the ads on TV, they do it because they want to reach as many people as possible, and they have millions of dollars to burn to achieve it. And even they rarely rely on traditional advertising alone.

If you want to use traditional advertising, make sure you’re spending as little as possible, and that your advertisement is guaranteed to go to the right people. Ensure your user persona will be watching TV during your desired timeslot or listening to that radio show.

Once you have narrowed down the desired channel to fit your user persona, try it out, and measure your ROI with strong analytics and sources. And, even after you’ve established that the approach works, be careful when raising your budget, and measure your ROI continuously, to know when to pull the plug before it’s no longer profitable.

Lisa Dietrich, Let's be crazy

Ignoring the uniqueness of traditional advertising

When we look at traditional advertising, we may just see another place to put up an ad. Maybe, look into getting a nice photo or write a good motto. But that’s not all that traditional advertising can do for your brand. Traditional advertising, at its best, isn’t just another place to put a resized version of your Facebook ad. It’s part of the world your audience interacts with. If you’re going to spend the money to be a part of it, might as well make it as memorable as you can.

When people think about memorable ads, they often think about things they saw in the world, not a billboard with a pic of the new McDonald’s burger. They may think of that time 3M placed stacks of bills in a bus stop to advertise their new security glass, or that giant floor sticker of a dog that made people look like fleas to advertise a dog shampoo.

Those are the ads that make it into BuzzFeed lists, where people click just to experience seeing them, even if they never saw them in person. When designing your ads for traditional advertising, try to make it memorable by studying the environment the ad will be placed in.

How can you make it unique? Can you make it interactive? Can you play with perspectives, or give the user a sound experience they’ve never had before? Find a way for your ad to be something people want to share. Or at least, find a way to make it stand out. If you do, your ad will live for longer than what you paid for, at least in people’s minds.

Sandeep Mallya, 99signals

One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is not paying enough attention to the headline of their ads. As the advertising legend David Ogilvy once said, "On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. If you haven't done some selling in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your client's money."

On traditional media like print, you're not just competing with other ads for readers' attention, you're also competing with news articles and editorial pieces. So make sure your headline is attention-grabbing and stops the readers on their track. You can do this by appealing to the self-interest of your target audience and addressing the specific problem your product or service is trying to solve.

Ryan Stewart, The Blueprint Training

Too many marketers think that ads are like a light switch that you just turn on when you need more traffic and sales. Advertising requires up front strategy with a heavy focus on content - what is going to engage your target audience? Your content / creative is ultimately going to dictate your success.

One of the most important skills one can have as an advertiser is copywriting. Making people to take action with just your words. And my top recommendation for a copywriting book is breakthrough advertising.

Chris Porteous, My SEO Sucks

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to traditional advertising is when you fail to see the bigger picture. Business owners sometimes think that it's adequate to advertise on only one medium. For instance, they only choose to run ads on print, instead of exploring other traditional media like outdoor advertising or radio TV.

The mistake is exacerbated when they release only one ad for the duration of the campaign, and never consider preparing several ads that are different but conveying a consistent message. It's worth remembering that in any campaign, traditional or digital, one of the objectives is to reach as many potential customers as possible.

To achieve this, it helps if you can just pause and try to think of the bigger picture before launching your campaign. That way you can make sure that the ads you run get proper mileage, no matter how small or how big your ad spending budget is.

Kris Nicolau, Brain Box Labs

When it comes to traditional advertising, one big mistake is forgetting that attention to detail always counts. In traditional advertising, you don't always get a second chance to redo ads you've already released (unlike in digital formats). So it's always important to double-check everything.

From the start, you need to remember that the most effective ads are those that connect with the target audience emotionally. Include your brand, of course, but the central message should be something that people can relate to.

In the design stage, the ad should be designed well because you might not be able to revise it later. Then make sure the copy is good -- no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. If readers see them, they might think your business is not serious or professional enough.

Finally, be disciplined with your copy -- avoid long paragraphs and sentences, and be concise. Your target market should be able to read and digest everything easily and quickly.

Jeremy Diamond, Diamond and Diamond Law

"Some marketers would say that they'll promote their products or services to everybody, but it would be challenging in reality. It would be time-consuming, futile, and impossible to sell a product to anyone because each of us has different interests.

But it's not time to give up yet. Even though the market is already competitive because of the plethora of brands trying to get our attention, there's still a way for our products and services to stand out: going back to marketing 101. One of the concepts taught in business school that most marketers often forget is the concept of segmentation of your market and targeting and positioning your product or service to them.

Before you strategize, it's essential that you would know the demographics of your target audience. Know their everyday struggles. Learn about their interests and dreams. Collect and quantify this data, if possible. If you have all this information, it would be easier for you to come up with the right message for your brand, and since it's tailor-fit to your target audience, it would stick, and conversions will follow.

Andrea Loubier, Mailbird

Traditional advertising has been seen by many companies as the "safe" way to promote their companies and increase their sales. However, no return is ever guaranteed, and traditional advertising methods keep increasing in price, making it even more difficult to produce a return that outweighs the financial investment.

This is why so many companies have turned to other processes to promote their companies and increase visitors to their sites and, therefore, increase sales. I spent a lot of time and effort on traditional advertising initially, as everything else seemed to be a bit of a gamble.

But, I wish that I had learned earlier on that marketing strategies like Outreach and Digital PR can provide better, faster results without the high budgets that are typically required from a traditional marketing campaign.

I feel that a good strategy must be based on content, SEO and innovative marketing that will not only provide sales results, but will also establish my company as an expert in its field.

Adam Steele, Loganix

The biggest mistake I see with traditional advertising is the lack of message match between offline and digital channels. The same branding, offers, and calls to action need to be streamlined across all channels. What a user sees in a magazine should match their experience on your website, too.

However, that doesn't mean you should use the same tactics for offline and digital channels. It's important to personalize your approach the more you go digital. On the other hand, traditional advertising focuses more on a one-size-fits-all approach. You can expect your audience to be more diverse and dynamic -- not to mention relatively larger.

Master techniques to integrate offline and digital channels and your advertising strategy will surely attract more potential customers, increase your conversions, and help reach your business goals.

Ray lim, I-credit

Due to regulation in Singapore, there’s a lot of red tape to go around for getting leads in the moneylender niche. No social media, no advertising. The whole moneylender niche here focuses on walk-in traffic and digital presence, which creates a lot of competition.

We took the first step in getting online early but did not focus on the branding and lead generation side of things. As a result, we lost tons of leads without even realising it due to brand trust, as well as conversion issues.

Swadhin Agrawal, DigitalGYD

Traditional marketing is great but only when you know what you are doing. I tried traditional advertising in the past and thought of going the route of those shiny billboards that we all see on the roads.

I got a billboard made and planned to hang it on a very busy crossroad in our own location. Since ours is a rural area, there are not many regulations to get one hanged and with this low entry barrier I thought of giving it a try.

I placed a very decent billboard that aimed at getting brand awareness for my blog and what I do online. My aim was to get people to know about my work and subtly expect a few clients that would be interested in building websites for their shops/businesses.

But that was a disaster, the billboard stood there hung till eternity (until a storm after 6-7 months uprooted the setup). There was no brand awareness and absolutely zero client calls from the billboard.

The lesson learnt was simple. Know your audience before you start to project your ads (traditional or modern) towards them.

As I said, my location is a rural one and people are hardly interested in the online world. And even if there was a client interested what would their website aim? Their business is local and their customers are all local so there was no point for them to make a website and get visibility at a location they couldn’t serve.

This was my biggest mistake when it comes to traditional marketing.