One of the most common mistakes that online businesses make is focusing solely on digital marketing. In reality, the best way to build a strong brand is to use both online and offline marketing strategies. Targeting both mediums allow you to extend your reach, get in front of new audiences, and increase the effectiveness of your existing digital marketing campaigns. Here are seven of the best offline marketing strategies that you can use to strengthen your brand.
1. Direct Mail
Yes, you heard it right. Direct mail can be one of the more common go-to offline marketing strategies for online businesses. The reason why is because the channel works similarly to email marketing where the goal is to get your email read and elicit the reader to take some kind of action. For some reason, many business owners think that direct mail is too expensive and not as effective as online marketing. That is far from the truth. A DMA study showed that direct mail outperformed email by a factor of 36. It’s just a matter of learning how to make this channel work.
2. Offline Joint Ventures
If you’re working with a limited budget, one of the best offline marketing strategies you can utilize is joint ventures. Come up with a win-win scenario where you can partner up with related small businesses. In many cases, it will cost you next to nothing to execute. It’s just a matter of being creative and making sure there’s a big benefit to your partner partaking in the deal. Even if the business owner decides not to take you up on the deal, you can follow up and ask if you can advertise your business to their customers.
3. Sidewalk Signs and Banners
While it seems like the most basic way to market your brand offline, you should still be using advertising signs. There are many different ways to grab the attention of people in local areas from signs, printed banners, to sidewalk signs. And don’t worry if you don’t have a storefront. You can use these signs and banners to present a QR code to people passing by. Once they scan your code, they can be redirected to your website, blog, social media page, etc. As a matter of fact, Juniper Research projected QR code coupons redeemed by mobile devices will quadruple in the next 5 years.
4. Print Advertising
While many online business owners think otherwise, offline advertising is still a viable way to generate leads and customers. There are numerous ways to get your message out there from magazine ad placements, newspaper ads, to classified ads. Many of the direct response strategies apply to making these ads work. The great thing about print advertising campaigns is that you can really start scaling your campaign quickly once you find a winning a formula. This will quickly open you up to a large audience that otherwise would not have found you online.
5. Trade Shows
Trade shows are one of the best ways to acquire leads, customers, and business partners. Some of the biggest industry brands and buyers show up for the biggest trade shows. This will really build your brand presence if you manage to set up a successful booth. Trade shows can be quite expensive, so it’s essential that you have a clear strategy for your booth as well as how you intend to generate a positive ROI from your efforts.
6. Press Opportunities
One of the most underutilized offline promotion strategies is press. Getting your story or idea featured in TV shows, radio spots, magazine stories, and offline events can build your brand equity in a way that no other strategy can. A perfect example is when the company FourSquare set up an actual kid’s game of four square at an SXSW convention. This drew thousands of people to their staff and leads to a large number of installs for their app.
7. Phone and Mobile Marketing Campaigns
A relatively new offline marketing channel that online businesses need to use more is mobile marketing. Mobile marketing is a mix of both online and offline strategies. It utilizes everything from text messages, smartphone apps, and push notifications. A great way to use mobile marketing is to capture the phone numbers of your leads and customers online. You can follow up later with voicemail drops, text message marketing.
These are just a few of the many offline promotion strategies you can use to boost your online brand. The idea here is to use online and offline strategies together in a synergistic manner. You’ll find that they complement each other very well and will make campaigns in both mediums more effective together than alone.
Related Article: 5 Offline Marketing Mistakes Your Business Could Be Making
