A recent marketing study asked 200 managers about the advertising methods they find the least annoying. Door drops and direct mail were the least bothersome, according to the managers.
1. Door drops – Door drops are mail that literally get dropped on your doorstep, whether you are at home or not. According to the study, this form of marketing is the least obtrusive way of getting your message out.
2. Direct Mail – Direct mail used to be the most popular form of advertising, until the internet came along. Still, people are not annoyed by direct mail and even find reading them interesting.
3. Telesales at work – While you often hear people complain about telesales calls at dinner time or at 5 in the morning, generally people don’t seem to mind getting telesales calls during work hours. To clarify, telesales is not the same as telemarketing. Telesales means selling your services/goods over the phone directly without lead generation or informational phone sessions.
4. Email – As expected, email shows up on the list of least annoying ways. People can check email any time and calmly and swiftly ignore marketing emails by simply deleting the email. Meanwhile, a few might just click on the email if the subject line is interesting enough.
5. Radio – A radio station that doesn’t play advertisements is a rare one. People have gotten so used to hearing ads on the radio that they no longer seem to find the marketing bothersome or annoying–rather, the current trend seems to be that people appreciate the ads for keeping the radio station free.
(Source: SCi Sales Group, 2012 n = 200)
While we’re sure people would not like to see piles and piles of door drops on their front lawn, we’re also sure that if you don’t want to annoy people with advertisements, you can use the above five marketing methods to promote your goods and services. You should note, however, that the above 5 marketing methods also frequently show up as the least effective marketing methods–you can never fully avoid annoying seventy year olds who just want to eat their dinner in peace.