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Reasons Why You Should Still Use Offline Marketing

Besides occasional flyers and business cards, most businesses don’t use offline marketing to reach out to their customers anymore. In these digital times, this seems logical since online marketing seems to be far more popular, but this view is actually a product of misapprehension and misguiding. The fact is that both online and offline marketing is important and the success of every business depends on finding the perfect balance between the two. So, what online marketing still has to add to the mix?

Reasons Why You Should Still Use Offline Marketing

It’s Not Just Flyers

The greatest part of the above-mentioned misapprehension comes from the fact that many people think that online marketing is all about handing out flyers at street corners. But in truth the term is much broader, covering any type of marketing that doesn’t happen online. That leaves us with a variety of offline media channels for advertising such as radio, television ads, telemarketing, pamphlets, billboards and other kinds of printed media. These numerous opportunities demand an organized, planned, and carefully developed strategy in the same way as with online marketing.

With so many channels outside the Internet space, there are many things you need to pay attention to, and this takes an equally serious approach. In other words, it’s not just about running a radio commercial or printing the text, but a complex process that requires both hard work and creativity. So it’s not that these methods don’t work – they’re neglected because they’re far more than what people assume. This has created a situation where many businesses don’t realize that offline marketing could be a far better choice for them than a digital one.

Far From The Spamming Crowd

We live in times of immense competition when guerilla marketing plays a very important role in staying afloat. Now, guerilla marketing online has become the same thing as spamming, and Google doesn’t like it. Of course, there are many businesses out there who bomb their potential customers via the internet, but they’re in constant risk of penalties from Google. Furthermore, the internet has become so crowded that spamming really can’t deliver results among so many spammers. On the other hand, take a look at our letterboxes – they’ve never been emptier. So if you leave something in a letterbox of a potential customer, there’s a much greater chance that it will be read. In fact, direct mail is opened much more than email marketing, so it’s a golden opportunity for high-quality printed material.

Going guerilla offline eliminates the side effects while increasing exposure and, on top of that, these methods are much cheaper. No matter what you choose – giving away branded gifts, distributing flyers, sticker printing, using posters, leaving sticky notes – you will connect with your customers more directly. Put off by the spammers on the internet, this comes to them as a tangible refreshment.

Reasons Why You Should Still Use Offline Marketing

The Gaps in The Online Space

The number one rule in every business is – know your audience. And yes, you can get to know them via the internet, mostly on social networks, but people seem to neglect the fact that not the entire population is online. In developed countries 80 percent of the population is, but what about that 20% percent? In still-developing countries, there is 30 percent of people who still don’t have access to the internet. By neglecting this fact you’re only limiting your reach.

Another great gap is a generation one – we look at all those internet-savvy youngsters and immediately think that everyone’s online. But what about the older generations? If they’re your target you’ll certainly fall short of reach if marketing only online.

And the third gap is social media platforms themselves. Today it’s popular to have an account on every platform out there, but that doesn’t mean users are actually present. Today everybody’s on Twitter, but  only a handful of people actually tweets on regular bases. In other words, social media profiles don’t mean engagement, which means you may be shooting marketing blanks. But if you include hashtags and QR codes on your printed materials there’s far more chance that your potential customers will actually be there.

As you can see, offline marketing is much more than people think these days. These old school methods are still efficient if there’s a good strategy, they’ll cover the places neglected by competition, and fill in the gaps in the online space.


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