I’m not going to spend a lot of time on marketing before the Internet. There are loads of histories but I want to make two points to kick off my review of marketing online.
Broadcast Marketing
My first point is marketing was expensive. Advertising via billboard or TV/radio commercial cost a lot of money and so in effect it was available only to large businesses. Without a doubt, it was very effective.
Large businesses invested in broadcast marketing. Broadcast is a word that comes from farming. Broadcast sowing is where you spread seeds around and not planting individual seeds in specific places. Some people will know the parable of the sower where seeds fall on the path and stony ground. This particular broadcast sower was not very good at his job as most farmers would avoid the places where the seeds would not thrive.
The broadcast approach meant targeting of marketing was perhaps a bit less important. Certainly billboards and television would be seen by many people. You might put your adverts around certain TV programmes; children would see adverts about ice cream and not insurance, but mass media meant you could depend upon enough of the right people seeing a strategically placed advert to make it worthwhile.
This approach has not entirely disappeared but it is possible to target advertising online in ways not available pre-Internet.
Long Sales Letters
My second point is perhaps one of the more targeted approaches pre-Internet was the long sales letter. Older readers might remember the days when our letter boxes were full of junk mail. Most of this has disappeared into the ether but at one time a lot of unsolicited mail arrived almost every day. The long sales letter was the letter that accompanied the glossy brochures. It often covered several pages and would explain some special offer in detail with bonuses, guarantees, etc. More sceptical readers may find this hard to believe: the reason they did this was because it worked! It worked if done properly. One-size-fits-all sales letters going out willy-nilly to anyone and everyone were less successful than targeted letters but overall they worked.
And they worked when they went online. More of which next time. Reminiscences about junk mail will be gratefully received!
