The hype created by online marketing has reached stellar heights in recent decades that many marketers forgot how offline marketing looks like. In reality, establishing an online presence of your brand should make just one portion of the whole marketing picture. Sure, apps, websites, and online ordering platforms are all mandatory but you shouldn’t forget the basics.
In fact, the year 2020 will see a comeback of original offline marketing strategies that are everything but old-school. It is challenging to engage a new generation of shoppers that are used to mobile phones but this task is definitely feasible. We offer you the top 10 offline marketing trends that will dominate 2020.
Engaging the local community
Even if you are a manager in a company that does business worldwide, the global market is really a collective term for local markets. These niches are precisely the target group both for your online and offline marketing strategy.
Being in the world of business, you cannot afford yourself the luxury to disassociate yourself and your brand from the community you do business or perhaps live in as well. This is important for large retail chains as well as local grocery stores, for instance.
Organize a neighbourhood party or sponsor a local sports club to promote your brand. Once local folks start associating your business with the area you live in, you will win over loyal customers which is the ultimate goal of every marketer on the planet, or should we say, in the good.
Paper e-mails?
First, there was mail and then came e-mails, right? Although this historical sequence is correct, there is a twist to it. Namely, customers and business people got so used to e-mails that they have stopped reading it. When you have an inbox full of irrelevant e-mails, not to mention spam, you start sending promotions straight to the trash.
In order for an e-mail promotional campaign to succeed in 2020, you have to fund an alternative way to get the memo to customers and business partners. Well, why not go back in time and send paper e-mails. They would have the structure of a regular e-mail you would still send but they will be also printed and sent as a hard copy. Of course, not all e-mails will revert to the paper form; only the most important ones that you don’t wish to fly under the recipient’s radar.
Networking through workshop attendance
There is no need to point out in particular that networking is good for your business, as you are already aware of this. However, it might have never occurred to you that an educational workshop could be an excellent opportunity to meet new business contacts.
You are probably bringing your business card to big conferences and industry events but why bother for a small local workshop, right? Well, you are wrong. You should not only mingle after the workshop is over but try to organize educational workshops of your own and expand your business network.
Become a keynote speaker
Have you noticed how everyone wishes to converse with the keynote speaker after he or she delivers their moving speech? Well, there is no reason against becoming a keynote speaker, using the opportunity to network and promote your business. Once you take centre stage, you will instantly raise the visibility of your business.
Even if you are the top dog in your industry, you won’t be invited to hold a keynote speech unless you’re a solid orator. Practice the speech a couple of times in front of the mirror and remember the wise words of Sir Winston Churchill that “good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
Leaving promotional materials at key locations
If you’re about to give a speech, you can give out branded pens and notebooks because you will slyly insert an exercise inside the speech. This is a prime example of the oldest marketing strategy: giving out branded items. The key is not to give out promos to just anyone but to the right crowd, at the right time and location.
These cheap-to-make items like T-shirts, mugs, pens, notepads, key chains, etc. won’t cost much to make. Just think of custom T-shirt printing and how cheap it is compared to the fact that you get a virtually free mobile advertisement for your company.
Give out these and similar freebies at conferences, workshops, and other events in the industry. If your marketing strategy is aimed at a wider consumership, then set up street stands to promote your business by giving away branded items.
Canvassing still works
You can print all the fliers, business cards, and pamphlets you want but unless someone offers them to prospective customers, they are bound to go to waste. If you are struggling to distribute them to the right location, then use the method much-adored by political parties and go canvassing.
This old-school marketing method might have lost some of its charm (a euphemism for annoying people) but it still promises to yield good results. Pounding the pavements in your neighbourhood is not only a great cardio workout but it premises to raise local brand awareness.
Trust us, you will be surprised by how many people have been overlooked by competition’s online campaigns. These prospective customers will be glad you knocked on their door and showed interest in them, especially the elderly who are not tech-savvy.
Everyone’s favourite: Guerrilla marketing
Offline marketing doesn’t just include traditional strategies but new approaches that will peak in popularity in 2020. One of them is guerilla marketing which has been used for some decades now. n Using surprise and unconventional interactions to promote your business is without a doubt tricky but it promises to yield excellent results if the gamble pays off.
The most important thing you need to remember about guerrilla marketing is to be original. Easier said than done, right? For this reason, you need to assemble a great team of individuals that will brainstorm guerilla marketing strategies that promise to put your business on the map.
If you wish to come up with top-notch guerilla marketing strategies, you’ll need to be more creative than spray-painting your brand’s name on the back wall of the local drugstore, for instance.
Putting a human face to your brand
One way to think of our business would be to perceive it as a living, breathing organism preferably a human being. If you can put a face to your brand, customers would relate to it more easily. Take this marketing strategy quite literally and hire spokespeople and make ads with models that will animate your company in the literal sense of the word.
Once you add some spirit to your brand and hire people who will promote it, times comes to add a personality to it. Try to appeal to the target group of customers by adapting the personality of your enterprise to their liking. For example, millennials would love to see a business that is chill and laid-, with savvy TV and social media ads.
Ending up in the newspaper
You would be surprised by the number of people who still like to start their day with a cup of hot coffee and the morning newspaper. In a sense, they are out to escape aggressive marketing campaigns that they are exposed to every time they go online.
This relax mood is the perfect opportunity to advertise your brand. In general, there are two ways you can end up in the newspaper. Obviously, you can pay for an ad that would run in the agreed number of issues. This strategy is valid but there is a high chance your framed ad will be skipped by the inattentive reader.
Secondly, your brand could be featured in a news article. These articles van be paid but then you need to make sure that the text is not written by a copywriter but by a content writer. Finally, your brand can appear in a real news story, which is the best solution.
Just make sure you end up in the papers because of your charity work or company success and nit because your brand is associated with a scam, affair or scandal. When deciding which papers to run the ad in, favour local ones over national news agencies since the effect will be more profound.
Cross-promotion is always a good idea
We’ve mentioned earlier the importance of networking and one of the reasons why it is important is the opportunity to cross-promote your goods and services. Cross promotions are particularly important for small businesses that are trying to make a breakthrough in the market.
If you know the owner of a particular store that could be the local grocer, you can ask them to advertise your company by organizing a giveaway. Both businesses will benefit from this cooperation as you raise customers’ awareness about your brand and the shop owner will see an increase in foot traffic.
Any experienced marketer will tell you that there are countless more offline marketing strategies but the 10 we have listed are the most promising for 2020. You can apply them all or decide on a single strategy that promises to draw in more clients.
