There has been a venomous mindset you’ll find if you spend too much time digging through online marketing. The mindset I’m talking about is the notion that “there is no place for traditional marketing methods” when there is so much to be had through online marketing. Online marketing is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but the whole world hasn’t just miraculously shifted from buying at retail stores to solely ordering products through websites. When you buy into this idea that “offline methods are worthless” you miss out on a ton of potential leads for your online business.
I’ve got seven that should help get you convinced:
• T-Shirts – We are all walking billboards to businesses that proudly display their brand on our t-shirts. You won’t be inside your home all day, every day, which means you’re going to bump into a great amount of people throughout your daily routine. T-shirts remain relevant for marketing because it’s in-your-face. There is another level to all this in which die-hard fans of a brand will proudly display their t-shirt in public and often use it as a way to kickstart a conversation (which becomes your word-of-mouth marketing). A few hundred bucks on a great design and a few more on the printing costs and you could ship out shirts to your loyal followers and bring your brand to the streets!
• The Box – A huge part of the buying experience actually happens in the packaging and logistics. Why do you think there are so many unboxing videos (and websites) across the web? People actually feel they are part of the experience which brings them joy (and it causes discussions). If your company were the type to send simple brown boxes with very little packaging, you’re preventing your customer from having this feel-good experience. A few extra bucks to go toward corrugated boxes can go a long way for your branding. Great packaging and logistics can be a major point for customers leaving reviews. Great design also gives all those unboxing personalities a better reason to show and share your product. Make the investment if you have the budget and if you need a reminder just think about the next time you purchase a brand new cell phone and that feeling you got taking it out of the box (because that’s what your customers want, too).
• Booths – We live in an incredible age when we can hold online meetings with anyone in the world. Though online meetings greatly cut down on time and resources (for items like travel) it loses on of the most important parts of business: the human touch. Conferences, on the other hand, are well worth the investment because you can physically interact with interested parties. Business is about the human connections. It is difficult to feel empathy with an individual when you’re looking at them through a screen. The slight tension of the room during a sales pitch can give off physical clues that you can use to land the deal. The embrace of a handshake can often be all that’s needed to convince the party to consider your offer. Consider digging through a list of conferences and various business meet ups within your location to really get to know your market and its competitors. You just may forge new alliances that will allow the online side of your business to grow far faster than the relationships you’ve formed through a Twitter feed.
The post is, in no way, taking away the power of online marketing methods but it is here to help you remember that traditional methods still hold their value in this digital age. The best is to combine the two in order to have a well-rounded arsenal of marketing campaigns.
See which traditional methods could help in your business. There are plenty more if you do the research.