In 1897, when Mark Twain was living in Europe at least one US newspaper reported that the legendary writer had died.  It was actually one of his relatives who passed away, but the information got twisted somewhere along the way. When I hear that the death of some form of traditional advertising or another is imminent, I’m reminded of the famous quip that the mix-up inspired, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

You might think that an internet junkie like me would agree with all the murmurs of death that surround traditional media, but I don’t.  Just because I’ve got three computers, have owned one website or another since 1997 and make most of my income through online efforts, doesn’t mean that I’m jumping on *that* bandwagon.

Radio, Television, Newspaper and Yellow Pages advertising will continue to be strong choices for a long time to come. They’re changing and adapting to new technologies, but they aren’t dying by any stretch of the imagination. Each of them has specific strengths that can’t be matched by online marketing.

That’s not to say that a lot of the advertising they feature isn’t completely ineffective and counterproductive - most of it is! There are techniques to maximize the impact of each of them that most people just don’t know about (which is easily conquered by hiring someone like me who reads over 400 books a year and spend endless hours researching and analyzing marketing methods on top of that)

But to simply dismiss them as possible solutions to your marketing needs just because they don’t have the hip and cool factor of online options is a huge mistake.

It’s the message, not the media that ultimately determines the difference between success and failure. A good marketing plan considers the combination of what is said along with where to say it…and truly effective marketing considers the ideal target market first and foremost.

To reject any of the possible tools at your disposal just because it’s supposedly “dead” or “dying” could be shooting yourself in the foot.