The first is because you want to be able to gauge how well a particular message or advertisement is going to play with your customers. This leads to a strong desire to find any way of figuring out how this has done in the past. I would suggest as well to look to other companies as well to see this, but you'll have the best understanding of how it worked for you because you'll have all of your information available.

The second reason is because a previous marketing message might be able to work well again. No marketing message is going to remain the same forever because the longer you use something the less of an impact it has. If you've been using a single marketing message for a year, than by the end of the year that message won't be as strong as it was in the beginning, because too many people have now heard it.

However, don't let that fool you into thinking it's the message itself that has grown weaker. The circumstances have led to the message momentarily weakening more because people have seen it too much, rather than the message itself being bad.

Think about a movie you've seen five times in a row in a short period of time. You thought the movie was pretty good the first time you saw it, but after five times you're starting to get bored of it. Well, wait five years and when you see it again suddenly the movie seems good again. Enough time has past to ignite your previous interest in it.

Pull up any brochure printing samples from years past, or see what kind of postcard campaigns you ran before. Pay attention to the look and the message for all of your earlier advertising. What you might start seeing is that many of these messages are still effective, and can be used again.

You can also use those brochure samples as a starting point for designing your new advertising. Don't use the exact same design, obviously, but you can make use of certain features for your current marketing. Alter them to make them more up to date, and go from there.

If you've been around for a few years or more than you have a wealth of previous marketing to call upon and make use of. Why let those previous marketing pushes fade into oblivion when you can still make good use of them now? If it served you well in the past there's no reason why your previous marketing won't be able to help you out again today.