Offline Promotion Channels for your Business – Where Do You Start?

When it comes to marketing your business, almost all promotion channels exist in the online world nowadays. While digital marketing is undoubtedly important, offline promotion channels can still play an important role in your overall marketing strategy.

From print adverts to trade shows, businesses have an impressive variety of offline channels to choose from. Here are some pointers to help get you started.

Strategise

Your starting point when it comes to offline promotion is the same as with any other form of marketing – you need to come up with a strategy. There are multiple different types of offline promotion that you can make use of, and only some of them are likely to be appropriate.

You want to make sure that the channel you use is appropriate for your niche, ideally reaching a target audience that you couldn’t otherwise reach via digital communication channels. If you just use the first channel you come across, it’s likely that you’ll be overlooking other options that could be better suited to your needs.

Print adverts

Print adverts are a great form of offline promotion that can be adapted to your particular needs and budgetary requirements. If you have a larger budget, you can place ads in bigger national or international publications – if you’re a more local business, you can stick to industry newsletters and smaller papers.

With printer advertising, you can ensure that you’re reaching the appropriate target audience by choosing a specific publication. Like this, you hardly have to do any marketing research yourself – most publications even have detailed information available on the demographics they reach, either available on-demand or on their website.

Attend trade shows

Trade shows are a unique form of offline promotion, with multiple associated benefits. First of all, by attending an industry event, you know that you’re going to be in contact with the right people. Again, you don’t need to do much in terms of trying to reach the right people – anyone else at the trade show will be there because they want to be.

Second, it’s a great way of creating a physical presence. While a lot of marketing, both online and offline, is done via print and other similar media, with trade shows you actually get to meet your target audience face-to-face. It’s important to maximise the returns on your attendance, and custom exhibition stands can play a significant part in that regard.

Attempt to measure the effect

While digital marketing is much easier to measure when it comes to gauging efficacy, it’s still possible, and indeed important, to measure the effectiveness of your offline promotion efforts.

A simple way of doing this is by offering quick surveys to customers, asking them where they first heard about your business. If your marketing team really needs the data, you can even offer discounts or other incentives to those who take the survey.

Offline promotion is clearly something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Do your research thoroughly to see what channels might be best for your specific business; it might take some time, but it’ll be worth it in the end.