RIP Offline Marketing?

So is offline marketing really dead? I mean with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet and social media sites like Youtube and of course facebook and their inevitable implications on the world of marketing and how businesses are conducted and advertised throughout the globe, the fact remains that offline marketing methods have not yet lost their effectiveness and appeal and today I’d like to discuss a few of the different offline marketing techniques which I believe with a bit of tweaking should still be included in your businesses marketing toolbox.

People still do not spend all their time glued to their computer screens and hence can be reached by incorporating a variety of offline marketing methods to successfully communicate their message. It should be kept in mind that while the internet is an important tool for reaching larger audiences in a short span of time, the more traditional and age long methods of offline marketing cannot be ignored completely without suffering ill consequences.

In this series I will be exploring different ways to market your business using tried and true offline marketing methods to bring your business more customers.

Offline Marketing Basics

• Before the internet and social media, conventional offline marketing techniques were being practiced by organizations all around the world and some of them are as old as the history of mankind.

• Even in the beginning days of radio and television, people had figured out that they could play a key role in the propagation of their businesses. If you are a business owner and want your product to be known across the households of your locality, it will perhaps be a good idea to prepare and run commercials on radio and television channels. The larger and more popular the channel, the more you will have to pay to get people to listen to what your advertisements have to say. However, the upside of this increased cost is the obviously greater and wider influence of these channels.

While I believe the radio is an excellent medium for mass distribution of your marketing message it does come with a few cons. The first con is that you are paying to advertise to the masses. What I mean by that is that your message is being broadcast to every set of ears listening to the commercial at that time and not all of those ears will be interested in what your selling or may not have a need for your particular product. Therefore your paying to advertise to an audience which may not be interested in what your trying to sell them. An example of this would be a business selling services usually purchased by another business (b2b). It would probably be more cost effective to simply make sales calls rather then spend advertising dollars using the radio. You need to know who your customers are and then match the offline marketing methods to match your target audience.

Another con of advertising using the radio is that it is very difficult to analyze and track the effectiveness of your radio advertisement.  What I mean by that is unless you present every customer entering your business with a questionnaire then it becomes next to impossible to track the results of your ad. A work around is to incorporate a direct response message into your ad copy, like tell them Mike sent you for a 15% discount or ask about our new X service when you visit.

• Newspapers and magazines continue to be the primary tool for offline marketing of products and services. Companies can pay to acquire space in a newspaper for their advertisements. And the featured ads can be as brief as a line or as massive as an entire page of a particular edition. An advertisement of your product on the front page of a newspaper might do wonders to your sales.

Once again this form of offline marketing has its cons as well which are much the same as radio. Unless you incorporate a direct response message into your ad copy then tracking and analyzing its effectiveness becomes very difficult if not impossible all together. The advantage of the newspaper over radio is that you could create your entire ad to be a direct response ad by getting your potential customer to clip out the ad and bring it to your place of business. They may be required to fill out information for a draw and must visit the store to deposit it into a ballot box or simply use the ad as a coupon when making a purchase.

• Distributing business cards has been an age old yet effective form of offline marketing for building a relationship with your trusted consumers. It gives a more personal and friendly look to your dealings in addition to providing the necessary contact details of a business outlet and/or personnel. It’s important to mention that I believe you should definitely make your business card stand out by thinking outside the box when it comes to design as well as the copy you use on the card itself. There is no steadfast rule to how your card should be designed or what information is on it. Be creative and remember to spark curiosity.

• Posting of flyers, leaflets, and posters. These should contain information about your business—an overview of the service or product you’re offering, rates, business address, and contact number. A warning before you begin plastering these offline marketing methods all over town though is to check with your local laws to make sure you’re allowed to put up posters. Also…you guessed it…be sure to incorporate some sort of a direct response message for tracking the results.

• Conventional mail systems have been in place for centuries and are still a trusted offline marketing method for reaching out to your existing customers. People who sign-up to be updated via mail are usually sent brochures, pricing plans and newsletters containing new products and available discounts etc. If you haven’t begun a database of your customers…then what are you waiting for? Just think of all the time and money you’ve spent attaining your existing customers…its much easier to sell to an existing customer who you’ve already gained the trust of  then to sell to a brand new customer right? Learn to nurture your existing relationships for greater profits using this key offline marketing method.

• Another strategy of offline marketing is simply giving away free stuff. People love getting something for nothing so why not capitalize on this by using promotional material. Items such as stickers, pens, key chains, cheap gadgets bearing the company logo pleases people and makes them want to come back for more…and lets not forget about the fact that having your potential customer using your offline marketing promotional material with your logo on it keeps your business at the forefront of their mind.

So still think offline marketing is dead? I don’t either. I believe it just needs to be tweaked. I read somewhere that the average human is bombarded by hundreds of both online and offline marketing messages per day so you’d better make sure your message stands out.

One thing I hope you take away from this article is this…if you’re going to use these or any other offline marketing strategies, I highly suggest you incorporate direct response marketing strategies into it. If you’re not analyzing and tracking your offline marketing methods then how can you tell if its successful? Don’t just spend the money you’ve allocated to your advertising budget on the traditional offline marketing methods because that’s what you’ve always done. The perfect practice is to use every medium of advertisement (both offline marketing as well as online marketing) to its maximum potential and integrate them effectively for the convenience of your customers as well as the betterment of your bottom line.