How to Use Offline Marketing to Promote Your Online Business

 

The online world is a crowded place. As fast as a pay per click ad appears before the eyeballs of your audience, it is gone.

It is a never ending swirl of advertising and promotion with many businesses either failing to keep up with or bother with offline marketing. By doing so, they are effectively failing to use channels that reach a large chunk of their audience.

Promoting your website offline is just as important as all the online advertising and promotional stuff that you do.

Effective offline promotion – what does it look like?

Promoting your business offline is about recognising and acting on all the opportunities that are presented to you and your business. Unfortunately, when it comes to advertising and promoting offline, not everyone realises each opportunity nor to its full potential.

Which of these offline promotional opportunities do you use?

Company documentation

From letterheads to compliment slips, there are many opportunities that you can take to firmly place your logo and brand into the eye line of potential customers. Your website and logo should be added to everything, including your business cards, invoices, you name it, anything that is printed should have your website on it!

Branded vehicles

How many hundreds of branded vehicles do you see every day? From vans to HGVs, to cars and push bikes, business vehicles will display company name, contact details, website, logo and so on. This is seen by fellow road users, pedestrians, dog walkers etc. and triggers the reaction ‘must contact them about…’ or simply raising awareness of your company, its existence and location.

Some of these people will be your direct customers, others will not but no opportunity to make your business well-known in your locality, and beyond, should ever be resisted.

Newspaper and magazines

The Daily Mail is the leading newspaper in the UK in relation to readership size, boasting a net readership of 23.5 million, with 9 million of these being online users. Local newspapers, especially the free press, are also holding steady with its readership figures.

The advent of rolling news online and on TV has meant that sales of newspapers has declined in recent years but, the fact that 23.5 million people are still reading a newspaper (other newspapers boast healthy readership figures too) that advertising in newspapers and magazines is still a worthwhile consideration for the offline marketing of your business.

When looking to advertise either in national or local press, check their circulation figures as well as who their readership is; you may be more than delighted to find that the readers fit your demographic profile.

Radio

Radio is still an effective medium of communication and for any business, but especially small to medium sized enterprises, it can really hit the mark when it comes to promotion. Like all advertising channels, there are do’s and don’ts and can be expensive which is why having a plan, using the services of a specialist radio advertising company is probably a great idea. But say radio advertising execs, that the return of investment from radio can be very high indeed.

TV

Prime time TV advertising slots are priced at a premium and, for a small business is likely out of their budget range, But, localised TV advertising may be within grasp.

TV advertising and promotion makes your business appear bigger than it is, and illusion that can pay dividends. Don’t dismiss TV advertising as something only the big companies can do.

Branded items and freebies

Having your website printed on everything from roller banners to mouse mats, pencils and pens can seem like a great move. And indeed it is if you have a promotional plan that includes the distribution of branded items and freebies.

All too often, a business will invest several hundred pounds in branded stuff, only to find it gathering dust on the shelf for months to come.

Before printing these items, as well as having an idea of who to give them to, where, when and why, it is very important you consider the information you have printed on them. Is your phone number going to change? What about email addresses?

Word of mouth

This is possibly still one of the most effective offline advertising mediums for your business, customers telling other people what they think of you, recommending you and so on.

Exercise caution though as this can work two ways – do something right or surpass expectations, and word of mouth is great. However, when things go wrong, it can be almost impossible to stop…