- Scope of Offline Marketing
“Valuable, Indisputable and highly serviceable”
No business can get through without marketing. Marketing helps you to connect with customers and tell about your products.
“Enormous competition demands enormous marketing”.
‘Offline Marketing refers to any type of marketing process which excludes the usage of internet.
Marketing is considered the main aspect of any business to generate huge number of sales and for the promotion of any given business.
Offline marketing uses media channels which are offline and are not related to internet. Some of the popular offline media channels are telesales, magazines, events, television, radio, billboards etc. These offline marketing channels came into existence way before the Internet era, helping many businesses thrive in ways that have historically been effective since ages.
Offline marketing not only requires printing and radio commercials, but also a lot of creativity and perfection. Usually people do not consider offline marketing as an effective way by neglecting the fact that it is as useful and beneficial as online marketing.
Offline marketing strategies are also equally important to drive your target consumers to your business.
Some of the offline marketing strategies:
- Newspaper Advertisement & Listing
- Telesales
- Attractive Business Cards
- Events
- Magazine Stories
- Speaking
- Interaction with Customers
- TV Ads (Commercials)
- What makes offline marketing still important?
‘Marketing ameliorate businesses’
Among various marketing strategies, offline marketing has its own importance. There are many organizations and businesses, local or national who still do not use internet or are unaware about the modern technology.
Even though digital marketing is being used, there are certain aspects of different industries where online marketing is unfruitful or does not account for a greater share of audience on the internet.
According to Google’s Consumer Barometer, 22% of global consumers purchase products or services online, while others stick to offline sales. Most of the adult population watch television which increases the chances of purchasing your products by offline marketing strategies. This study shows businesses need more offline marketing for the improvement and increase in sales.
Offline marketing does not only work because it must, but for some businesses, it is the only way of advertising.
When offline marketing is used by the right hands, it can create room for a lot of company growth.
Who can use Offline Marketing?
- Local Business: – Businesses which are not yet popular or is lacking due to less marketing or unable to reap the benefits of digital marketing due to any reason, can use offline marketing strategies. These businesses should think about their reach of products to consumers and start marketing their products by advertising on radio and giving out leaflets. That is one effective way to getting word out on the street.
- Startup Business: – Unlike a regular company which is usually well funded and has resources to allocate for online marketing strategies, Startup’s start with a small workforce and will look to capitalize on their investments in short time which requires heavy revenue generation. In such case, they can target their customers and start promoting their products by tele sales, face-to-face meeting, brochure, magazines & Word of Mouth.
- Family Business: – Family businesses can never really stop advertising regardless of their location and name. Internet unfortunately cannot give them much exposure depending on the competition and niche they are into so they should always try to market outside Internet using offline media channels which could be very beneficial.
- International Business: – Most of the international businesses use digital marketing, however some businesses keep in touch with offline marketing to increase their number of sales.
Scope of offline marketing in future media
Offline marketing basically refers to any advertising that is carried out using traditional offline media, for example: television advertisements, billboards or radio broadcasting. These methods of advertising are such that they do not require an internet connection or any online presence to carry out a successful campaign.
In a world that is becoming more and more dependent on technology, offline advertising might seem like too much of a conventional route when it comes to reaching out to people.
Digital marketing is taking the advertising world by a storm, but the traditional methods of offline marketing are an absolute must to ensure that a company runs a successful and widespread advertising campaign.
Think about this, for example in the case of a Third-World country such as India; With the amount of diversity and disparity among the Indian population in terms of socioeconomic status, level of literacy and income, not every person might be able to access a digital advertisement on social networking giants like Instagram or Facebook. In such a situation, making this part of society aware of a brand’s presence can only be done by methods such as billboards, flyers, newspaper advertising or radio announcements.
Below are some of the ways to boost your business through offline marketing
- Reaching the customers where they are: – Benefits of exposing your product offline are as vast as the Ocean. You can reach the customers who are not available on internet and mostly people who do not look up to internet for any such experience. Most importantly you can interact with the older consumers. You can set up commercials based on age, group, effective time & periods and much more which gets the attention of such audiences.
- Engage with the local: – Local businesses need more marketing to go huge.
- Speak at the events: – Offline marketing doesn’t require area or platform to speak. You can speak anywhere, like in events as there is a huge crowd and speaking about your product can attract many people.
- Organize and Attend Education events: – We always don’t need informal events to promote your products rather you can even use the formal platforms.
- Organize Competitions & Giveaways: – Competitions have a huge influence on people, because they have an immense desire to prove themselves. Think accordingly, what kind of a prize you can give to your customers, what kind of skills they would have, and what kind of a competition would be interesting and attractive.
- Building Brand Awareness
- Print Media Interviews: – Print media never break down to attract consumers. Giving print media interviews can gain a lot of attention from customers. Your interview will be printed, and readers will find about your products.
- Advertisement: – The most powerful way to attract public attention is to advertise your products on T.V, newspapers, banners, pamphlets, leaflets & Magazines etc.
- Telesales: – You can even promote your products through calls. Still there is a population who pays attention to the telephonic advertisement.
- Make Brochures: – Making companies brochures or products brochures can help you reach wide range of customers. It ensures that you are reliable and trustworthy.
- Direct Mails: – Many people ignore the mails, but your regular consumers read the mail undoubtedly. Sending random mails to the people creates awareness of your businesses.
- Use Promotional Products: – In order to get huge number of sales, businesses can use some promotional products to make the customer understand about your products. Give customers free products to ensure that you’re genuine.
- Hand out Business cards: – Although business cards are from the older era but still it enhances your business. It keeps people be in touch with you and your business quickly by seeing what’s on the card. Don’t neglect the making of business cards.
- Customize the clothes: – Printing your business website or address on t-shirts or clothes in order to attract customers and gain more customers.
- Greeting seasonally: – People love greetings. In order to keep your consumers happy, send them seasonal greetings.
- Interacting the customers directly: – Interaction with customers make them feel more comfortable for purchasing as it reduces trust issues and allow them to purchase on regular basis. Even you can know the mindset of the customers, you can customize your area of customers.
Benefits of Offline Marketing: –
- You can order exactly what you need: – In offline marketing, you get what you want. Whereas in online marketing, your requirements aren’t fulfilled. There is specific range of your requirements.
- Creates an impressive image on customers: – Creating a good image on customers is the main motive of businesses. Offline marketing is heard, seen, and perceived. Customers are fully satisfied when they perceive the product live.
- Immoderate for advertising huge schemes: – As offline marketing ensures that your way of marketing can be counted on, many huge companies can come forward to promote their businesses.
- You can have various distribution methods: – Offline marketing is not restricted to few ways of marketing. It can be used in various distribution methods.
- Builds good relationship while networking: – You get to know your customer in offline marketing. It avoids misconception about the business as well as consumers.
- Makes a huge impact in large businesses: – When the digital ads grow, other hands these offline marketing strategies also increases. So, you get noticed even in the larger businesses.
- You can stick with your audience for long: – Get creative by giving your customers something new and exciting and your branding will be displayed to them for long time.
Conclusion
Widespread advertising campaign always has two components, online and offline marketing. Even if the online portion maybe more popular. Utilizing a combination of both will ensure that the company is able to reach every part of society and truly make the masses aware of its presence in the consumer market. Therefore, offline marketing will continue to have a large scope for many years to come and will always be in use. These marketing methods are the foundation of advertising, and for successful marketing, the foundation must be strong.
Credits: Afrah Siraj, Mehdi Syed