What is Offline Marketing and How Can it Help Boost Your Business?
What’s Offline Marketing?
Offline marketing is exactly what it sounds like, any marketing that isn’t online. From leaflets to radio adverts and everything in between. Offline and online marketing may differ in approach but used correctly these can help one another and create a full unified strategy. Offline marketing can help improve your brand awareness, get your product or services details in to the hands of your customers and of course increase sales. With any strategy your goals may differ so consider these when choosing which route of offline marketing you wish to take.
Tracking Offline Data
If you are used to online marketing campaigns the tracking data is at your fingertips. You’d be forgiven in thinking that offline tracking is impossible right? Wrong there are many ways that you can track the effectiveness of your campaign and ensure you get a good ROI.
Custom landing pages. Create a custom landing page and advertise that page in your marketing campaign and then track the conversions using that page.
Surveys. Create a quick survey (survey monkey is a great free tool) asking customer how they heard about your business.
Discount codes. If you are offering a discount use a unique code. You can then track sales using that code and there you have it analytics.
Before and after. The easiest way is to measure the before and after data when your campaign is finished. If it’s website traffic you’re interested in then pick a time frame and see if your traffic has increased during that time. You can do the same for sales. This is not the most accurate way of tracking campaign effectiveness but it will give you a good idea.
The above are just a few examples of ways to track the effectiveness of an offline marketing campaign but there are plenty more ways.
Offline Marketing Ideas
There are many, many, many types of offline media to pick from and depending on your goals and target audience some may be better for you than others. For example say your aim is to just drive brand awareness in your local area. Then a billboard advert may be just for you. Or say you are launching a new toothpaste? A sample and leaflet distribution may be the way forward. This gets your new toothpaste in the hands of the people you wish to target. Finally maybe you are setting up a new estate agent branch in a different city. You may wish to advertise on local radio or hold an open day? All these are all types of offline marketing, below I’ll go into a little more detail on a few options of offline marketing.
Leaflets or Flyers
This is probably what you first think of when you think of offline marketing right? And there is a good reason for that. It’s been around for years and it still works. What’s that old saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Leafleting is a fairly cheap way to engage with your customers and can be more targeted than you think. You can put them in relevant magazines, for instance a cooking magazine if you want to advertise your new cupcake business. Or targeted distribution, you can narrow it down by area or demographic etc. Leaflets or flyers are a great way to get your message physically into the hands of your potential customers. Unlike digital adverts where people can aimless scroll through, a leaflet is handled and can cause the customer to take notice. The average lifespan of a leaflet is 7 days compared to a social media post is seconds. Take a look at some of our leaflets here.
Brochures or Magazines
Brochures or magazines are a great way to fully advertise the products or services your offer. You are not constrained to a small leaflet meaning you have the freedom to advertise anything you desire. People expect companies to have brochures and they can be a huge time saver. Instead of a sales person going on and on until their voice gives out a beautifully designed, engaging brochure is the sales person. Brochures can be hugely effective if used in the correct way. Like with the leaflets they can be targeted and there are creative ways to ensure they are always at hand. For instance a magnet on the back to stick to the fridge ensuring it is always to hand. Brochures don’t always have to be selling something, they could be stunning guarantee books for jewellers see here for inspiration.
Hold an Event
Events are a great way to interact with your customers face to face. Customers can see the people behind the brand and put faces to names. Events can be large scale conferences where you teach people saving techniques then tell them about your bank or smaller stands at exhibitions where you can meet people who are interested in the industry you’re in. Events are brilliant at drumming up interest in your business. Psst don’t forget to have handouts.
Editorial Pieces
Editorial pieces are great if you have huge news to tell the world. These can range in size from huge appearing on the front cover pieces to smaller articles. The reach can be far and wide or smaller local papers and magazines. Editorial pieces don’t necessarily mean print they could be a news story on a radio station.
Sponsor a team or event
If you are trying to promote brand recognition in your area then sponsoring a local sports team or event is a great way to get your company name out there. Many teams have sliding scales, for instance, sponsor the kit so your name is on the teams kit every single match or if you want to dip your toe in then match day sponsors can get their name in the programme or an announcement for that particular game. Match this with a customer visit at the stadium where you’ve hired a box and they’ll sure to be impressed.
Everything in between
Like I said the possibilities are endless and I could go on and on listing a million and two ways you could market your company offline like billboards, point of sales, business cards, telesales the list goes on and on. If you have a project in mind and don’t know where to turn please let Print Strategy Europe help you on your way. With over 25 years in the industry, we know our stuff. Get in touch with a member of the PSE staff today!
