Back in the 1930’s when my grandfather and his brothers founded DiBruno Brothers, their marketing efforts were predominantly word-of-mouth. They had to provide a great product and service, hope that their customers would tell their friends, and hope that those friends became patrons of the business.
In order to do this, they first had to listen to their customers, not shout at them with television ads.
Isn’t it funny how we’ve come full circle? Once again, businesses grow or die by word-of-mouth. As business owners, we are once again forced to listen to our customers and current customers. We are forced to interact with them, just as a our fathers and grandfathers had to interact with their customers 60 years ago.
The only difference between marketing today vs. marketing in the 1930’s is scale.
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So true. Read (or re-read) Scientific Advertising or Dale Carnegie and you’ll see that while some of the language is a bit antique, the basic principles haven’t changed one bit.
By the way, the goodies on the DiBruno Brothers’ site look divine. I wanna be on your holiday gift list!
Jodi, this stuff hasn’t changed in a hundred years. It worked before, it works now.