Offline Marketing Areas that Help Businesses Get Noticed Online
The World Wide Web and the Internet have all become the mainstream platforms for businesses to garner maximum leads and prospective buyers onto their platforms. These have become the best platform for the marketing of products/services.
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Over the years, technological advancements, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Machine Learning have all aided businesses in getting the maximum attention in the least of the time. 
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The usage of online platforms for garnering business attention will continue to grow at a steady pace. However, in the marketing world, offline tactics cannot be fully ignored. This is because marketing is a dynamic and ever-changing process and a single medium can never be fully successful. This is where offline tactics of marketing come in handy. These mediums spread the news about the company’s offerings and aid in their online sales building by creating brand awareness. The offline tactics are more so important in areas where internet and mobile user penetration is low.
Here, we will try to cover certain offline tactics, which are good boosters of online sales and brand promotions.
1. Newspaper & Magazine Articles and Advertisements
Advertisements in the newspapers and articles in magazines are one of the best offline tactics to garner people’s attention. Although digital forms of newspapers, magazines, and blogs are widely used, a certain section still does not have access to these. Furthermore, some people still have the habit of reading a newspaper with tea as in their daily routine. With properly designed advertisements and articles, marketers can easily gather quick customer attention for their offerings. In the case of magazines, well-designed product offerings are added in between the pages. Magazines are naturally engaging and an attractive post in it is most likely to have a long-lasting impact on prospective consumers.
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These advertisements are cost-effective too. Full-sized offerings from the company can be displayed in newspapers and magazines at the least of the cost. Companies like Amazon, Flipkart, BigBasket, Grofers all widely use these offline marketing tactics.
2. Advertising on the Radio
Radio Advertisements are a very good medium to promote a company’s offering. Radio advertisements also offer marketers the option to target customers basis on demography. Each radio station has a certain reach in terms of demography and targeting the right one can lead to massive sales results. For radio advertisements, the entire focus of the marketing team should be on how to enhance the audio output and make it more and more engaging with audio effects. One-liners should be developed resonating with the brand’s offerings.
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Amazon, for instance, has developed the tagline, “Aapki Apni Dukaan”, which it uses simultaneously on television and radio ads as well. This helps people relate to the name of Amazon each time they hear the one-liner.
3. Hoardings and Billboards
This conventional advertising means still holds ground in demographies where internet penetration is considerably low or in demographies where the company thinks that it is not getting required sales. These hoardings and billboards are extensively used in areas where the company has entered recently, and where the competitor’s share in the market is already very high. Although the cost of hoardings and billboards is quite on the higher side, it is still very effective in countering competition. When people notice the same hoarding on their way to homes/offices, the brand can make a mark in the customer’s head. It is because of this repetitive value that the companies spend on billboards and hoardings even today.
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Brands like Jio extensively followed this offline marketing tactic to gather more and more customers in areas where its rivals Airtel and Vodafone Idea had large market shares.
4. Event Sponsorships
Brands can undertake the sponsorship of famous events across the country. Sponsorships are a great way of offline promotions as wherever the event is telecasted or viewed, there the company is being marketed repeatedly via word of mouth, logos, hoardings, and even entry passes and tickets. Although, the cost of sponsorships is very high in comparison to other offline tactics, yet more and more businesses are engaging themselves in event sponsorships.
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Event sponsorships are also set to grow exponentially in the years to come, as the scale and the reach of the big events increase. Companies like Dream11 (which sponsored IPL 2020) used sponsorship as a means of gaining share in the highly competitive Indian Fantasy Games Market. Sponsoring of an event also makes an image of brand dominance, over the competitors, in the eyes of the prospective customers.
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The impact was visible in the Dream11 company valuations, which shot up to US$ 5000 Million in FY21.
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5. Branded Merchandise
Adding logos/ taglines of the company on various merchandise like Caps, T-shirts, Pens, Notebooks, Keychains, Ring holders is a smarter way of offline promotions. These merchandises speed up the process of marketing. They are also cost-effective and wide spreaders of the company’s offering. These merchandises also open up avenues of revenue for the company. They serve the dual purpose of advertising and simultaneous revenue generation.
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Edtech major Byju’s for instance uses branded merchandise with almost each of its offerings. This branded merchandise helps in retaining customers’ interest in the brand for a longer period.
6. Free Demos/Consultations
Offering certain services for free does attract a lot of prospective loyal customers to the company’s platform instantly. Companies should try to offer their best possible services and assistance with an ultra-smooth user interface to the customers. This is because the better the company provides the free-of-cost service, the more are the chances of getting a paid loyal customer. These free demos work on the principle of the first impression is always the last impression. Companies like Pharmeasy offer free plus memberships to their new customers to garner maximum future paid customer leads.
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7. Workshops
The conduction of free workshops are a great way of engaging in face-to-face conversations with prospective consumers. Workshops are mostly conducted for services and offerings that operate primarily in the B2B segments. This helps the companies and the brands better tackle the customer’s questions/ queries about the usage of their products. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook which are primarily engaged in the services sector frequently organize free workshops. These free workshops offer a more personal touch to the advertisements, as people interact directly with the companies.
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8. Business Conclaves and Trade Show
Trade Shows Participation is necessary for every brand as these help in the maximum engagements with an entire customer community. In addition, businesses get coverage from media personnel, bloggers, vloggers, and other communities. This helps in garnering maximum attraction towards the business with the least of the efforts. Businesses can also display prototypes for their upcoming launches, which will further keep the customer community interested. Events like CES (Consumer Electronics Show) have brands coming up from almost every part of the world. These brands display their current as well as glimpses of their upcoming products.
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9. Brand Stickers
Adding usable stickers inside the boxes of the product offerings is also a means of offline marketing. Nowadays, companies add cool stickers insider their product offerings. Now, wherever the customer uses that sticker, the branding of the company follows. Companies like OnePlus, Apple offer stickers of their logos inside the boxes.
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10. Cold Calling
Cold calls to the prospective consumer are also an offline tactic to gather attraction and leads for the website of the company. Nowadays, companies inform prospective consumers about the perks of owning their products.
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Furthermore, they often tell the customers, that they can instantly avail of additional discounts if they confirm purchases right now on the call. This has changed how cold calls used to work in the past times, wherein they were mostly rejected. In today’s world, marketers have learned how to retain customers’ interest over the call, which has led to greater leads to expense ratios for the companies.
Wrapping Up
Online Business owners can find many ways in the offline mediums to promote their businesses. In the marketing world, businesses that use a mix of online and offline marketing have a greater success rate than companies that follow a single medium.
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Brands have also started taking the help of professional business consulting agencies, which offer end-to-end marketing solutions for companies. These agencies combine both digital marketing and offline marketing techniques for boosting the brand’s reach. They also enable the companies to focus more on other aspects of the business like Research and Development (R&D), than on sales and profit margins.
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