Best 10 Offline Marketing Ideas to Help You Connect With Your Audience
Is your company often confused about whether it should grow online or offline? It’s good news that you don’t have to choose just one category!
You can employ numerous traditional forms of marketing and integrate them into your digital channels effortlessly.
Yes! You may need some automated tools to keep up with everything, but first, choose the offline marketing channels you want to use.
Are billboards still in style? Do marketers send direct mail items even today?
Is there a way to track your offline advertising results?
This blog covers such queries by enlisting the top ten offline marketing ideas that can help you get positive results!
Let us dive in!
What Is Offline Marketing?
It refers to all promotional activities marketers carry out using traditional means, like radio, newspaper, television, etc. Unlike digital marketing, it does not rely on an internet connection to help you connect with your audience. And there are higher chances that your prospects view your offline marketing ads and respond to them.
The reason could be the overwhelming number of social media ads, display banners, emails, etc., that people need to deal with today!
Yet, most companies use online marketing more often because they believe it is more cost-effective and speedy. We cannot deny that using digital media to communicate with customers is more convenient. But offline marketing makes up for it by generating higher results. It adds more value to your brand and differentiates you from the crowd.
Also Read: Integrating Offline and Online Marketing
How Does Offline Marketing Work?
Like all advertising campaigns, your first step should be to list your objectives and plan every aspect. It is best to find answers to the following questions before you go ahead with your offline marketing program:
- What do you want to achieve with this campaign?
- Who is your target audience, and how to reach them?
- How to measure offline marketing?
- What are your strategies for managing responses and following up on the leads?
Tracking an online marketing campaign is simple because everything is automated, and your customers can respond online, helping you record everything. But there is no reason you cannot do the same thing with your offline marketing programs.
Once you plan the whats and hows, you can move ahead with your artwork and copy. These aspects must be interactive, attention-grabbing, and persuasive, irrespective of the offline marketing ideas you use.
However, consider the dimensions, size, outreach, etc., to design your promotional materials. For instance, creating graphics for a billboard would be different than designing artwork for a small direct mail postcard.
Try paying attention to your target customers and their preferences. The best way to segment your offline marketing audience is to identify your buyer persona. Determine what age group most of your customers belong to and where they live. These details can help you compile a well-curated prospects list you can use to market your products or services.
The next thing you should think about in advance is the timing and location of your offline marketing campaigns. Some companies launch standalone, one-off campaigns to saturate a particular market or place. But your best bet is to conduct repetitive programs, enabling your recipients to remember and trust you!
You can add many trackable features, like QR codes, PURLs, custom phone numbers, etc., to track your campaigns. Once you have the results, match them with your expectations and decide whether you must use the same offline marketing examples for your upcoming campaigns.
Also Read: Best Direct Mail Marketing Companies
What Are the Benefits of Using Offline Marketing Ideas for Your Business?
Some modern marketers might not believe in the power of offline marketing and think of it as ineffective. Though the excessive use of digital marketing makes the concept of traditional advertising a little blurry and outdated, it cannot knock it off completely.
Also Read: Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing
Here are the primary benefits of offline marketing strategies to consider:
Get In Touch With Your Local Community
An offline marketing program can help capture the entire market if you run a local business and all your intended customers live in the same city or neighbourhood. It makes more sense to buy a billboard down the street from your store than run an elaborate social media campaign for the whole country. Moreover, you can save money and resources and get quick results.
An offline marketing campaign like such helps you use targeted messaging and localized visuals that showcase your brand as genuine and trustworthy.
Create Brand Awareness
More people pay attention to an offline mailer, newspaper ad, or streetside signage than online ads. Using offline marketing helps your business give its prospects and customers a break from the digital clutter. They can see something in the real world instead of on a screen, helping them remember your products or services much better.
It increases your chances of getting more recognition and driving sales levels!
Contact Customers of All Age Groups
Online marketing is limited to only those customers who are active digital media users. And it can be hard to know which channel they use the most, allowing you to channel your effort in the right direction.
An offline marketing program helps you resolve this issue because it appeals to everyone, primarily to senior citizens above 60 years. Older audiences can be valuable for your business as they have the resources and time to make purchase decisions.
Printing your ad in newspapers or running it on television are the best offline marketing examples to reach this age group. Other ideas include sending handwritten letters and postcards.
You may need to rethink your approach if you think millennials and gen X do not pay attention to offline marketing. This advertising type offers you many ways to reach people from all walks of life, depending on your business type, budget, and goals.
Testing New Markets
An offline marketing program is an excellent strategy to tap into new markets or capture varied audiences. It helps you test whether they work for your company without draining your budget.
Moreover, you can collect personalized insights and customer responses that can be helpful for your product or service launch plans.
Also Read: Insurance Marketing Strategies and Ideas
Top 10 Offline Marketing Ideas and Examples
It can be overwhelming to decide which offline marketing channel you want to use and when. So, here are the best ten ideas for you to get started:
Radio and Television
If you are unsure about your offline marketing plans, you can always go for the classics: radio and television. People still rely on the information they get through these channels and base their buying decisions on it. Using both media together can help you reinstate your messaging, spark your audience’s interest, and improve brand recall.
However, you can use any of these offline marketing channels and pair them with other marketing types. Nearly 68% of Canadians hear commercial radio weekly, and 39% listen to it daily! It makes it evident that your customers are ready to hear what you have to say—you only need to launch a thoughtful campaign and drive responses.
Choose the relevant radio stations that can play your message for your audience. Also, ensure your message can attract listeners enough to pick up their phones and call or contact you using other ways.
Another study showed that Canadians watch television for over 29.4 hours weekly. It makes television a fantastic offline marketing medium to help you connect with your prospects and customers and persuade them to give your brand a go!
Both these offline marketing ideas allow businesses to meet their audience outside the digital world and make a positive impression.
Promotional Items
Leaving a long-lasting impact on your audience may not be easy for some companies. They might see your ads today and forget about them the next day. Though you can remedy this situation by running repeat campaigns, here is another influential offline marketing channel you can use—promotional materials.
The trick is to produce branded items that carry your company name, logo, and contact details. For instance, healthcare organizations can send colourful magnets with their information to every person that moves into the area. It helps them introduce themselves to new prospects before the competitors and establish personal bonds at the right time.
Other examples of offline marketing items include:
- Pens
- Notebooks
- Calendars
- Pen holders
- Mugs
- Artistic showcases
- Apparel, etc.
Your prospects are likely to carry these items with them for several years, converting them into your brand advocates. Every person that sees them using your offline marketing materials might also contact you, helping you increase brand visibility.
Event Marketing
Participating in local events and communicating with your community helps you discuss your company and get more people interested in your offerings. Choose an event that fits your brand’s vision and lets you talk to a broad audience, like a charity fair.
Event marketing is one of the most effective offline marketing tools because it is very personal. It helps your representatives show up at a place and meet with potential and existing customers face-to-face, which helps increase the impact of these interactions much better than other channels.
You may also host events as part of your offline marketing ideas to showcase your industry expertise and create a network of people who support your brand.
Some examples include
- Webinars
- Product launches
- Press meets
- Seminars and conferences
- Workshops, etc.
Remember to invite all your prospects and stakeholders to your event to increase traffic and create more buzz.
Vehicle Wraps
Applying your branded posters on vehicles helps you resolve the location issue. If you are unsure where and how to market offline or how to connect with more people, using vehicle wraps can help!
They are eye-catching and convincing, helping people know that you are an authentic brand. You can add your contact details to let them get in touch if interested, ensuring you only get valuable leads.
Similarly, you can use street signage as one of your offline marketing ideas to catch the attention of passersby and encourage them to purchase from your company. You can place your signage on park benches, subways, bus stations, outside stores, etc.
Direct Mail Items
Direct mail is another result-driving offline marketing idea that lets you talk to your audience on a one-to-one basis. It is personal, memorable, long-lasting, and result-driving. The best part is that it is also data-driven and trackable, unlike the old days when it was daunting to conduct a direct mail marketing campaign.
You can select from many direct mail types, like postcards, letters, flyers, brochures, etc. Try sending them to a targeted list with relevant offers and CTAs to drive the highest campaign results!
Luckily, direct mail services like PostGrid allow you to automate printing and shipping tasks using a single platform. Using PostGrid helps you make offline marketing more cost-efficient, speedy, and effective.
Using PostGrid helps you draft your mailers and place orders for any number of items. Our reputed network of printers assists you in the printing process and makes your mail items ready to mail in only two days. Set up your offline marketing campaign in advance to send your mailers to the right people at the right time!
PostGrid also allows you to combine your online and offline marketing strategies through its API integrations. You can use Hubspot, Zapier, Quickbooks, or other integrations to launch a multi-channel campaign to improve your brand image and spread awareness.
Here are some ways you can combine offline and online marketing:
- Use QR codes to drive online purchases: You can print custom QR codes on your direct mailers, newspaper ads, etc., to redirect customers to your online store. Or you can take them to your website, social media pages, etc., to boost online traffic.
- Ask customers to use the same hashtags: One of the trendiest offline marketing practices includes using hashtags in your billboards, printed media ads, signage, etc., and asking customers to share them online. It helps combine your online and offline marketing strategies and create more publicity for your business!
- Use pURLs to track results: Using custom codes and links helps you to track every respondent’s actions individually and as a group. It allows you to determine your offline marketing campaign’s performance.
Billboards
The OOH (out-of-home) and billboard industry generated $1.3 billion in revenue in 2022. It shows how businesses continue using billboards to make their audience stop and look at their message.
Using billboards as offline marketing examples can be expensive compared to other advertising channels. But, it is worth it because it generates high-quality leads for a long time, helping you get an improved ROI.
Try using catchy headlines and minimalist images that make your offline marketing message pop. People love looking at billboards as long as they are unique and can spark their interest.
Magazine and Newspaper Advertising
Printed media still helps companies get their message across in an elegant way. Imagine seeing a full-colour, full-page advertisement in a magazine and stopping to admire how it looks or what it says. We have all done that at least a few times, making printed media an appealing offline marketing tool.
Magazine ads produce excellent results if you do them right! Choose a magazine that most of your targeted customers read, depending on your industry and the magazine’s coverage. Ensure to stay updated on its country-wide readership and content to help you get an idea of which publication to select for your offline marketing campaigns.
After deciding on these things, you can work on your design—which must be impressive and persuasive. Use short titles and big images with your contact details and message to make your offline marketing ad look fantastic!
The same goes for newspapers when we discuss deciding which ones you must print your ad in. With the daily newspaper circulation being 19.3 million copies, you can rest assured that your ad gets enough publicity. But offline marketing in regional or local newspapers helps you reach out to more people and sideline your competitors.
Business Cards
Exchanging business cards among businesses and their prospects, suppliers, associates, etc., is common. However, now is the time to use your cards as an offline marketing tool to appeal to your audience and make them call you.
Giving out business cards is also effective when you do not know how to market offline and where. You may distribute them at an event or while meeting your potential clients personally. These cards allow your prospects to have something to remember you by—and contact you first when they want to buy something similar to your products or services.
Sponsorships
Sponsoring events helps people to know about your brand and see you as a company that fulfills its obligations to society. Though sponsorships are a primary part of completing CSR (corporate social responsibility), you can also use them as an offline marketing strategy.
Select an event you support—and that can help you get your audience’s attention. It is more effective when these sponsored events allow you to come face-to-face with your prospects and talk about your brand.
Press Releases and Newsletters
Press releases and newsletters can also come under direct mail marketing, but they are different from the other items. You can use them as a part of your offline marketing ideas by inviting people to subscribe to them. It allows you to collect your prospects’ details voluntarily and provide valuable information, helping you take them ahead of your marketing funnel.
Also Read: Bulk Or Mass Mail Services
How Do PostGrid’s Direct Mail Solutions Help Businesses Conduct Effective Offline Marketing Campaigns?
Our direct mail API helps companies plan and execute successful offline marketing programs that allow them to acquire and retain customers. Here is how we assisted one of our long-term clients to pull off a large-volume campaign:
We were asked to send out 6,000 postcards to our client’s existing customers.
The goal was to upsell and cross-sell products to generate more revenue and provide customers with better services.
The planning stage: The company wanted to send postcards because they planned on creating mystery around their new products with wordplay and attention-grabbing headlines. They timed the offline marketing campaign immediately before Thanksgiving—so they also wanted to make their mailers seasonal.
Since people like getting themed postcards and tend to pin them to their walls, the client wanted to ensure their design is worth looking at for a long time. Thus, they were required to create excellent artwork but did not have adequate resources.
The execution: Executing this offline marketing program in-house would be very complicated. But, being one of our long-term, loyal clients, this company knew they wanted to automate the entire process.
They started with designing the postcards using PostGrid’s pre-built design templates. Our template editor allowed them to make changes and add customizations, helping them complete the task in minutes.
They got their items printed within the pre-decided SLA (two business days). But that was not all! PostGrid helped them
- Print metered postage on every postcard to get postal discounts.
- Adding tracking codes.
- Verify mailing addresses beforehand to prevent mail returns.
- Presort the offline marketing items according to the postal codes for fast deliveries.
- Mail the postcards via Canada Post and get real-time updates.
The final result: The company generated an ROI of 25% on their offline marketing campaign, which is more than they ever received using email and social media. And they saved nearly 75% of their costs by automating the program with PostGrid.
Conclusion
We hope this blog helps you understand how crucial offline marketing can be for businesses. It transforms how they advertise their products and services and enables them to go beyond promotions.
A well-thought offline marketing campaign helps companies form emotional connections that help them keep their customers for years. Try combining it with online marketing to improve outreach and leave no stone unturned.
PostGrid’s direct mail automation solutions allow you to get flexible prices to create, print, and ship any number of items. You can pay as you go with our monthly plans, and rest assured that your campaigns earn you back more than you spend!
Request a demo to see how PostGrid works to help clients execute profitable offline marketing campaigns!
