Even though the world is going digital, there is not only a continued place for offline marketing, there’s a strong case for arguing that it’s more important than ever, particularly for smaller companies with tight marketing budgets.
The reason for this is that cyberspace may be vast but it is also both crowded and potentially confusing, hence it can be very difficult (and time-consuming and possibly expensive) for smaller companies to get the sort of traction they need to get to a place where search-engine and social-media algorithms favour their accounts, let alone to a place where brand recognition means that they are immune to the algorithm.
Effective offline marketing can not only help you build your customer base in the real world, while you work on growing online, it can also help you to strengthen your online presence to grow even further.
Target your offline content in the same way as you target your online content
By this point in time, probably even the smallest of companies will have grasped the importance of starting out in a targetted niche and focussing on it with precision, only expanding as their resources and results permit. It is generally wise to take the same approach to offline marketing.
Essentially, you want to be a big fish in a small pool, the go-to standard in your tiny niche, rather than just one minor player swimming around aimlessly with all the others.
Make sure that your offline and online content has a similar look and feel
If your Instagram feed is full of pastel whimsy and your analogue marketing literature is all monochromatic minimalism, then you will be sending conflicting messages to your customers.
Pick a brand image and stick with it, even if it means spending a bit more on printing costs.
Use your offline content to point to your online presence – and vice versa
Make sure that every, single piece of real-world marketing literature you create has your online contact details on it and if your budget will stretch to promotional merchandise then make sure that this also points recipients to your online presence.
For the sake of completeness, in this context promotional merchandise includes things like promotional pens, mugs, business cards and branded confectionery.
Likewise, use your online presence to connect people with your real-world business. Remember that customers do not generally feel loyalty to websites; they feel loyalty to people, so use your digital presence to put a human face to your business.
Blur the lines between the online world and the offline one by hosting real-world events and live-streaming them.
Create marketing resources which can be used both online and offline
The best marketing resources educate, entertain, inspire and/or serve a practical function. Rather than dividing your resources between the creation of online content and offline content, focus on creating content which works in either environment.
For example, let’s say that each month you create a mini-calendar with relevant information pre-filled on certain dates and space for the customer to make their own notes.
You can offer this both as a physical gift in-store (or at events) and also as a download for customers to print at home. (In either case, you’ll always have your contact details on it).
Peter Scully
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