Even though there has lately been a huge emphasis placed on every business’s online existence, there is no point in entirely abandoning the traditional channels of advertising.
Regardless of whether you are selling an actual or a digital product, you can still make use of the offline world in your efforts to attract more traffic to your website and consequently more customers to your business.
Here is a reminder of the online strategies which are still very current and applicable and shouldn’t be forgotten.
Direct mail and cold calling
Hire marketing analysis agencies to target the customers by demographics or interests and send out direct mail using direct mail API.
The letter should be concise and customer oriented. Point out what it is your business can do for them and include a special offer as an incentive.
Since you are interested in increasing your website traffic, ask them to visit your URL to claim the specials offered. In the instance that you are a green business, print them on recycled paper to get your point across.
When it comes to cold calling, the strategy is quite similar, with an exception that you get an immediate response and a disadvantage that the person you are calling usually does not know much about your services, and it is a little bit harder to get them to write down the details of your website.
Put it out there
Create striking promotional billboards with CTAs no one can ignore. Make sure your URL is easily noticeable.
Target the locations potentially most frequented by your target audience and ensure great visibility. Create a mobile ad on your car and take your commercial with you wherever you go.
Referrals
The referrals strategy can work both offline and online. The goal is to get your existing customers to recommend your services or products, provided that they are satisfied.
In this case, you would have to offer an incentive to those who are recommending, as well as those who come to see you upon a recommendation.
Again, a great trick to use in order to attract more traffic to your website is to make it a requirement to register online in order to claim the incentive. While this strategy appears cheap on the front end, the cost of incentives has to be added up and carefully tracked.
Promotional material
Promotional material can include leaflets, business cards, notebooks, T-shirts, mugs, key chains, pens, stress balls, fidget spinners, samples of your products with the company’s details printed on the label or anything else you find interesting enough.
Wherever you go and whatever you do, you should have some of these ready. Even if it is a non-business related activity, it does not hurt to have a couple of business cards ready to hand out.
All of the promotional materials should have your URL clearly visible. You can print separate, additional, material for different events including special offers.
Sponsorships
Support an event which by its nature can promote your brand image. Be one of the sponsors and get your name out there. Hand out T-shirts to the participants, as well as the selection of your promo material.
Apart from events, you can sponsor nonprofit organizations. If you are targeting your local audience, make sure that your marketing strategies are also focused on the local community.
Conferences and trade fairs
These two are designed for business promotions. Conferences are usually revolved around a topic or an issue from a niche interesting to most.
You are more likely to find other business representatives there than the actual audience, however, they may also be interested in what you have to offer and your approach to the industry.
If you are offered to speak at one of these, accept it by all means. You will have a vast number of people listening to what you have to say, and they are very likely to be interested in the business behind you.
Trade fairs are all about presenting a product or a service in an attractive way and offering promotions.
Buddy marketing
Use real-life buddy marketing based on the connections you have probably made during the above-mentioned events. Ask them to use creative DisplayME solutions to lay out your promotional material in their waiting rooms and reception areas.
Offer to do the same for them and always have a spot available for your buddy’s promotion. Choose who to pair up with by selecting businesses which are complementary to yours, do not promote competition.
If you are interested in tracking which of the marketing strategies are more effective, create different URLs for each one of them (e.g. www.mybusiness.com/startgey1, www.mybusiness.com/startgey2).
Since people may find them a bit too long to type them in or they decide to look you up in Google instead of typing, use one URL, but slightly different offers for different strategies and track the traffic based on the offer selected.
The same way you can use your website to have the customers visit your office, you can use real world to ask them to visit your website.