Offline marketing is not dead, it is still effective and in some cases more effective than online marketing.
How to Promote your Business Offline? Drop a Business Card, use unique packaging, use membership cards, implementing loyalty programs.
If you are into clothing, home decor, and other lifestyle products, having stalls and participating in events can help generate brand awareness.
We used offline marketing to generate sales and leads for our business. We did this despite being new to business and also new to the service we were providing. We actually started learning how to do the work while working on our first few clients.
This was such a crazy time for us and I still cannot believe we were able to generate leads, sales and actually set up an office in a couple of months.
It all started with my husband knocking on the doors of small businesses near where we lived. He got one signup and that’s how we got started.
Offline marketing is something new business owners tend to ignore. They skip it in entirety and move onto social media marketing and online marketing.
Offline marketing can generate a lot of instant traffic and sales. It can boost your brand image. People love experiencing a product before purchasing it. Let them have the experience and then convert it into a sale.
Business Cards
Have business cards handy always. In our initial days of business we literally dropped them everywhere.
We handed one out when we went door to door marketing. We exchanged cards at any events with potential clients. Here are some ideas to distribute your business cards
- Leave them in the bus, in taxis,in local trains and metro trains.
- Exchange cards, ask a client for his card and offer yours in return
- Print out a calendar or some beautiful quotes on your card and hand them out
- Explain a solution for a problem graphically and have that printed at the back of your card and hand these out.
- Place the barcode for your Pinterest Board which has pins on multiple ways to use your face cream or bath powder and ask them to check it out
Flyers
Budget every month to print out a few flyers and have them handed out. Here are some tips for using flyer marketing effectively
Flyer Marketing Strategy – Simple yet Effective
- Keep the Flyers short and small.
- Understand your customer and address the pain points you are looking to solve with your offer. Now write this down in a concise form. Let your marketing message be short and compact.
- Include your Business name, logo, contact number, website
- Don’t focus on how great your company is, focus on the needs of the customer.
- Use unique designs for your Flyers. Flyers in different shapes such as a coffee cup or a football, catch the attention and people tend to check out what is in it.
- Offer Discounts – This is the easiest and fail-proof method to capture attention. Discounts and Coupons are always game changers.
- People prefer certain fonts and colour schemes, which varies from business to business. Research your market and identify the best colour schemes and fonts. Personally, we looked at many flyers in the same business
as ours and designed one based on what we found. - Find out who your customer is and target those customers while distributing your flyers. We asked a newspaper agent and he was able to identify localities and houses where he could distribute our flyers as inserts. We got quite a few calls and sales.
Other methods to distribute flyers
- Pay college kids to distribute them near colleges or offices – Totally depends on where your customers are
- Leave flyers on notice boards in communities, colleges, businesses
Coupons
Coupons bring in new customers in droves if used effectively. People love to save money and offers. Add on services like a Free oil change, free home delivery, free haircut, are always attractive offers.
You can incorporate loyalty programs into your coupons with conditions such as the 5th service is free or at a huge discount.
Membership Cards
I personally have accepted membership cards at shops where I shop often. Looking back I accepted them because I got points for shopping which I could redeem. I also received membership benefits such as 10% off, Free Shipping and Handling, Early Bird Offers.
Membership cards attract a loyal following. If you are looking to market your salon business a membership card is very effective and will ensure repeat sales.
Creative Effective Membership Cards Marketing Strategy
- Make the Membership Program an Experience which the customer enjoys. Kohls has a loyalty program and one of the incentives the had was to select a member for a photoshoot of their new clothing collection. This was a very effective initiative and a new experience for the winner. Customers are always eager to share such initiatives, as they feel they tend to gain a lot from them.
- A loyalty program I am a part of with a Beauty company sends me free products for every 5 customers I refer. I like to get free products especially because they send new products which are just released in the market. I refer people because I love their products and get something in return for sharing the news.
- Encourage Positive Behaviour – There are many companies which reward positive behaviour, such as a visit to the store. Some companies send free Bonus points for joining the loyalty program. Some give points on Birthdays, Anniversaries.
Customer Service
Customer Service is something I always look at when assessing a business. If I ever feel cheated, spoken rudely to, I never return to that business, however great their offers may be.