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Promoting Your Online Business In The Offline Community

In today’s digital world, a huge number of businesses is being run online, and their marketing efforts are generally focused on this realm as well. There is no question in how essential it is to have a strong online marketing strategy. You need to expose your brand to a wide public and turn yourself into an authority in your field, which is something that is easily done through creating unique content, a top-notch SEO game, and a marketing strategy that is bound to turn website visitors into leads.

However, while there is an obvious gap between online and offline marketing, it is particularly being bridged nowadays through personalization. The fact is that you must never set aside offline marketing tactics, as they are still vital for gaining a large audience, especially the people who still prefer more tangible marketing forms, or are simply not as computer-savvy as younger generations. Furthermore, offline and online marketing approaches complement each other, so make sure that you cover all your bases.

In this article, we are going to discuss how you can promote your online business in the offline community with some methods that don’t seem like they are going to get out of fashion any time soon.

Collaborate with a local company

One of the best ways to promote your business in your local area is to find someone else who can benefit from what you’ve got, and work together through mutual promotion and collaboration. If you can find a company that can really make use of your products or services, meet with them, pitch your business idea, and get their brick-and-mortar store to make use of what you have to offer. This way you will build integrity, and also earn more money. What is also important is that, if the company that you have chosen to co-operate with likes what you’ve done, they will recommend you to others, furthering your reach.

Sometimes it’s even a good idea to co-operate with a local company that is really strong in the offline field, but is pretty weak when it comes to their online presence.

Sometimes it’s even a good idea to co-operate with a local company that is really strong in the offline field, but is pretty weak when it comes to their online presence. This is a great way to generate a strong relationship that can last for a long time because you will help a company that knows their offline game well to improve their online efforts too.

Make sure that your business cards are available to everyone

The fact about business cards is that they are still in fashion, and almost everyone likes having one around in their wallet and remembering who they can turn to when they need a particular product or service. Sometimes they will forget details about your company, and that business card will always be there to remind them where they can find you, both in the online and the offline realm. The best way to truly benefit the most from business cards is to drop them everywhere.

Public bulletin boards are a great place where you can pin them. Announcements of local events that are related to your business too. You can even go as far as visiting a public library and leaving your business card in a book written about your particular industry. Today, it’s quite popular to have business cards with QR codes, which, when scanned, lead directly to your website. It’s simple, and people love it.

Engage people visually

You must never forget that people are visual beings. And while your website’s design is one way to engage with them, you need to also think about the “real world” and how you can draw their attention there. The truth is that visual assets remain important as ever, and creative and top-notch visual assets are bound to attract the attention of any passer-by and make them interested in what you are all about. So, get your marketing team to put a lot of creativity and effort into billboards, posters, banners, signs, displays, magnetic frames, and so on.

It’s important to make these assets as effective as you can. Your product or service needs to take the front stage, making it the first thing that people see. Right underneath it should be your website address, so that, once their interest is piqued, they instantly know where they can find and learn more about you.

Guerrilla marketing

If you really want to be creative and attract wide attention, guerrilla marketing is certainly the way to go. The term covers a variety of unusual and unexpected marketing tactics. Forget what you have been taught about traditional marketing, and allow yourself to think outside the box.

For example, you can organize a street festival that will eventually let people know that its purpose is to market your product. You can also find someone who is going to do an amazing stunt that is going to wow everyone in the public. They will surely be interested in learning more about you after you manage to pull that off successfully.

Guerrilla marketing can go even smaller though, such as leaving sticky notes in bars and coffee shops or making sure that a local library has bookmarks with your brand on it. You can even create temporary chalk ads on the sidewalk, which people are going to notice and think about how “down to earth” your thinking is when it comes to reaching your desired customer base.

Just take a look at how original some companies were when it came to their guerrilla marketing approaches. Maybe you can find some inspiration there.

It is still important to have in mind that every business comes with the kind of marketing tactics that work the best for it. So, depending on what your industry/niche is, you should find the right combination of online and offline marketing efforts that are going to perfectly complement each other and make sure that you draw the kind of attention that you need.

Never forget that the fact that we live in a digital era doesn’t mean that offline marketing tactics have become obsolete. They will, in fact, help you reach a much wider audience.

Nick Brown
Nick Brownhttp://www.mediagurus.org.au/
NICK is a blogger and a web developing experts whos search for knowledge does not stop 24/7. He is an aspiring street artist and does Audio/Video editing as a hobby.

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