Marketing professionals know that putting together marketing isn’t an easy simple process. There is no one size fits all marketing plan that you can magically put in place to capture all your potential customers. Just recently a new survey came out showing that 62% of consumers say social media has no influence whatsoever on their purchasing decisions ( Marketing Land survey about reliance on social media ) So what do you do if you’ve been loading your marketing focus up on social media? No need to panic; that’s still 38% of the public that’s interested in your marketing message. Hopefully those are the people who are interested in purchasing your product or service.

Seriously though, other marketing options do exist. Why do marketers feel that they must use social media to the exclusion of other types of media? There are marketing alternatives to social media that can also be effective, depending on the type of product or service you are selling. Marketing isn’t about going with trends, it’s about being creative, doing your homework, and using all the marketing options at your disposal to get in touch with the broadest potential customer base possible. Marketing media options that don’t rely on social media have taken a back seat lately, but might be effective marketing options for you. They won’t replace social media marketing, but they might help round out a marketing campaign. Here they are in their broadest categories.

1. Hard cover yellow or white pages. Depending on your product and customer base, there are still people that use hard cover yellow and white pages. Not everyone is comfortable on a computer, ipad or cell phone. Large numbers of baby boomers still feel more comfortable with low tech or no tech traditional marketing to get information on products and services.

2. Newspaper or magazine marketing. Look for niche publications that cover an audience that includes your potential customers. Keep in mind that you need to assess whether your likely sales numbers from this marketing media will cover your initial expense to place the ad and get you a nice rate of return to boot.

3. Mailed marketing pieces. Fewer companies are mailing out marketing pieces. A well crafted marketing postcard might be just what you need to get above the noise. Turn it into a seasonal or monthly campaign and you might really get above the noise.

4. Old fashioned marketing referral requests. Ask for a referral from each customer you do business with. It seems simple, but most companies don’t ask for a potential new lead when they are completing a sale. If your customer is not willing to give a referral think about why they aren’t. If you’ve provided a good product or service, your customer should be willing to refer a new customer to you.

5. Let loyal customers help you sell your product or service. Don’t underestimate word of mouth from your loyal customers. Give customers incentives to bring in new customers. Make the incentive plan easy for your customers to use, understand, and worth their while. Give a customer a gift card to a local restaurant or local business as part of the incentive. Showing you support the community shows you want to maintain roots in the community.

They say old fashions never really die they just get reborn with a new twist. Maybe it’s time that we take a closer look at some of the low tech old school marketing media ideas that we dropped for social media. New twists on some old marketing media might help us to get in touch with a potential customer base we’ve been ignoring recently.