{"id":4130,"date":"2021-10-08T14:36:45","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T13:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unihost.com\/blog\/?p=4130"},"modified":"2026-01-09T13:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T11:05:07","slug":"how-to-sell-more-with-xx-century-techinques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unihost.com\/blog\/how-to-sell-more-with-xx-century-techinques\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hipster Age of Marketing: How to Use Old-School Techniques to Sell More Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ads which ran 30-50 years ago, even a hundred years ago, are often better than those you see today. You\u2019ll get great ideas to use in your marketing.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Ted Nicholas<\/span><\/p>\n

Marketing is as old as human history \u2014 according to the archaeologists, the ancient city of Pompeii already was\u00a0full of advertisements<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in 79 AD. Sure, their marketing methods were crude, but it was almost 2000 years ago!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An antique advertisement for Scaurus fish sauce.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So it is both funny and wrong to think that marketing as a science has developed only in the 60-70s. Even what has been referred to as marketing has been around for at least a century and a half \u2014 twice as long as the term \u00abmarketing\u00bb itself.<\/p>\n

In this piece, I want to talk about the often overlooked time when marketing was only figuring things out, and what lessons can be learned from those raw, unpolished examples. In my mind, I call it\u00a0The Hipster Age of Marketing<\/span>\u00a0\u2014 because it was full of people who not only did it before it became cool, but also played an active role in making it absolutely awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Teach the man to fish<\/h2>\n

\u00abGive the man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach the man to fish, feed him for life.\u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n

A good marketer would immediately point out, that the first option is better \u2014 the man would come back to you for the fish, which you can eventually sell to him instead of giving away for free.<\/span><\/p>\n

But\u00a0John Deere<\/span>\u00a0(company, not the inventor), didn\u2019t have a good marketer back in 1895. In fact, the term \u00abmarketer\u00bb won\u2019t even emerge for the next couple of decades. Instead,\u00a0John Deere<\/span>\u00a0had a great advertiser. So when the tractor sales began to slip due to customers not accepting this new fad for motorization,\u00a0Deere<\/span>\u00a0didn\u2019t order billboards or hire door-to-door salesmen. Instead, they used the most powerful tool possible \u2014 US Post Office.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Quite soon, the American farmers got an offer to subscribe to\u00a0The Furrow<\/span>\u00a0\u2014 a dirt-cheap, yet well-written magazine dedicated to the problems of farm life. Of course,\u00a0The Furrow\u00a0<\/span>was really published by\u00a0John Deere.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The magazine told farmers the best ways to produce or gather crop, explaining the attrition of soil and ways to combat it, and overall earning their trust. Some articles, of course, talked about tractors and how easy they make certain jobs \u2014 but it was shown as a curiosity at most, without pushing it front and center. Eventually, farmers started to trust the magazine \u2014 and\u00a0John Deere<\/span>. So when a year later the magazine offered them a deal on the tractors, they jumped on it immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nowadays\u00a0John Deere\u00a0<\/span>(or, actually,\u00a0Deere & Company<\/span>) is one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural machinery, with 27 billion dollars of annual revenue. As for\u00a0The Farrow<\/span>, it is still one of the most popular farmer magazines, published in 12 languages in 40 countries all over the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lesson to learn<\/span><\/h3>\n

Marketing\u00a0technique invented by\u00a0Deere\u00a0<\/span>is nowadays called\u00a0content marketing<\/span>. It doesn\u2019t create attrition, unlike the more traditional marketing. While people may get burned out on your posters, flashy video ads and other intrusive methods of effective advertising, they will never get tired of interesting content.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the new digital age, it is easier than ever to start marketing with your content. You don\u2019t even need\u00a0John Deere\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0resources \u2014 just a place to blog. BTW, here\u2019s our review of the\u00a0most popular blogging platforms<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But blogging is not the only way to market with content. You can also have a Knowledge Base with manuals for your services. Or a YouTube channel. Or even an e-book on a relevant subject for your target audience.<\/p>\n

The only downside of the content marketing is the scale. It is not as effective and requires way more investment. But it also allows you to reach the audience that is not responsive to traditional marketing techniques and once combined with those techniques, content marketing is nearly unstoppable.<\/span><\/p>\n

3\u00a0rules of\u00a0TV<\/span>\u00a0Youtube<\/span><\/h2>\n

When was the last time you were annoyed by the commercial? Unless you are an avid AdBlock user, it was probably the last time you tried to watch something on Youtube.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a multitude of problems with modern video advertisements. They are loud, aggressive, same-ish and overall irrelevant. Every agency tries to make their ad quirky and unique, in attempt to pull an Old Spice and go viral \u2014 but if everyone is unique and quirky, ultimately, no one is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Surprisingly, the very first TV advertisement did not have any of these problems.\u00a0This Bulova watches\u2019 ad<\/span>, first broadcast way back in 1941, is absolutely perfect.<\/p>\n