Tell me something… Do you think my subject line seemed a bit like tabloid journalism?
Subject lines (headlines) like the one you just read have been appearing for as long as we’ve had new, bright shiny objects.
It seems like calling the time of death on any given marketing tactic has gone from grabbing attention to completely cliché.
The problem with casting doubt on a marketing tactic is that everyone already knows whether it’s dead or not.
Do we really need to ask “Is Yellow Pages Advertising Dead?
Take the Yellow Pages.
If you can find anyone leafing through a phone book in a phone booth, or even find a telephone booth, you’re probably watching an old movie.
But come back to 2019 with me.
Two of the most common marketing death hoaxes have been email marketing and print marketing.
So let’s take email marketing’s pulse. I’d hate to have facts to get in the way of a good story. But email, especially e-newsletters, is used by 93% of Content Marketing Institute’s respondents according to their research.
Given those stats, if email marketing is dead, a doctor must be asking where their patient went, because it just got up and helped convert some new business.
Print Magazines are only used by 24% of CMI’s respondents. But that says nothing about Direct Mail’s resurgence in popularity.
Did people completely stop using business cards since 2007 with the iPhone’s debut?
According to my source in the printing business, people are still using business cards.
The bottom line is when an audience is able to quickly see enough relevant value in the content you’re sending their way, they will consume it.
It would be nice to see the complete extinction of marketing tactic speculation. It is not only a tired mantra, but usually steeped in fiction. Or in the case of the Yellow Pages, redundant.