Leveraging a diverse marketing strategy for your brand might be the secret you need to boost your sales. You need a wide customer base to see significant growth in your business. For most businesses, investing in digital marketing has been the primary marketing avenue. However, apart from digital marketing on social media, business websites, or search engine result pages (SERPs), you can also expose your brand through other offline strategies.
Offline marketing is an effective way of attracting potential customers to your company through physical interaction. If this is an untapped area in your marketing strategy, here are proven offline marketing tips that you can use to complement your online campaigns.
1. Branded Merchandise
Branded items are an effective way of sending a message out there of the existence of your brand. You can look into several ideas when deciding on branded commodities that you can use as gifts to your employees or visitors to your company. For instance, you can have branded laptop bags or tablet bags to give to your office workers as a way of helping them protect their gadgets and for brand promotion as well.
These bags should have your business logo in a visible place. When you’re working at different locations, or even when you’re on your commute, a promotional laptop bag or tablet bag can help generate brand awareness passively and spark conversations about what you do.
In addition, you can supply your staff with branded office stationery such as notebooks, pens, or books for their kids. You can also utilize clothing such as shirts, T-shirts, scarves, or caps. These are more effective as they can be used in community promotional events where the message penetrates deeper into the community. Furthermore, other branded items you can use are mugs, cups, or watches.
2. Print Media
Being strategic in using print media can also go a long way in promoting your business products. Even though it might be relatively costly, you can’t overlook the returns that may accrue. Therefore, you can buy advertising spaces in local magazines and journals to boost your brand’s visibility. One advantage of magazines and journals is that they have long life spans as long as the material is not destroyed.
Moreover, when it comes to print media, you also use billboards. The visibility with billboards ensures that your target audience can see your brand as they come across the billboard. Finally, whichever print media you use, ensure that it’s the most preferred by your target audience.
3. Direct Mail
This mode of advertising is far much costly compared to digital advertising. However, if your budget is sufficient, why not give it a try? When you’re gathering customer data, one of the information you should ask for is their postal address or physical address. Then, using either of them, you can send direct mail to your target customers.
In this strategy, ensure that your mail is personalized as much as possible. This strategy is effective when you want to inform your customers of new additions to your product line. You can also use it when you want to let them know of discounts you’re running to take advantage of the discount window.
4. Speaking Opportunities
One pro tip to have when using speaking engagement is to ensure that you go in places with the kind of audience you need. Otherwise, you would be wasting your resources and finances. For instance, if you deal in school supplies, you can seek permission from schools to showcase your products to their students. In addition, you can also provide some free supplies to the students who may get thrilled to purchase your products from the stores.
Moreover, if you sell ladies’ products, you can target community events, such as fundraisers, to support them and ask for an opportunity to introduce your brand. The reception of your brand at the community level, especially if you own a startup, may work a great miracle to your sales. Speaking engagements help in establishing credibility for your products.
5. Seminars And Workshops
This strategy requires good planning and strategic choice of the venue and date. Publicizing your seminar or workshop may work effectively with other digital means, such as announcing the event on your social media pages or website. Ensure that your seminar is as engaging and educational as possible. Make it an avenue for networking between you and the attendees, and for networking among the attendees.
During the seminar, you can let your attendees register with their emails and any other relevant data you can use for personalized advertising.
6. Attending Trade Shows
Trade shows are opportunities that you won’t want to miss. This is because, during such events, there is usually a big crowd that turns up. As a result, this is a great time to stage your product to your target audience. When preparing for a trade show, identify an ideal place where you can be noticed quickly. If possible, you can use branded tents or booths for more promotional material.
In addition, let your best employees who have good people skills do the work for you. Normally, during trade shows, target customers usually have many questions to ask. Thus, ensure that you answer them in a friendly way even if the target customers seem indifferent.
Furthermore, you can combine trade fare events with other strategies like giving out printed materials such as brochures, business cards, and flyers. These materials can be used to get more information concerning your business. Also, include contact information for your business such as phone numbers, email address, website URL, and the physical location on your printed materials. Such information will help your clients reach out to your business if they need to make a purchase or they need assistance.
7. Cold Calling
While cold calling may not be a very popular strategy anymore, it’s still in use. From your customer database, you can get their phone numbers and call them to inform them of new products that they can come to your stores to see. You can also encourage them to log into your website to learn more about the product.
Conclusion
Just like digital marketing, offline marketing is essential in developing leads for your business. After the emergence of the digital platform, many businesses shifted to that space for their advertising campaigns. However, as a business owner, you should not forget that you can also utilize offline marketing so that you can level up business revenues.