Can Your Online Business Benefit From Offline Marketing?

When running an online business such as an ecommerce store or a digital service company, it makes sense to stick to online marketing tactics. The likes of SEO, social media marketing and email marketing can be the most effective ways to drive customers to your website. However, that isn’t to say that offline marketing strategies can’t still play a part. Below are just several ways to promote your online business through physical marketing.

Increase Brand Exposure With Event Marketing

Events can be a great way of building extra brand exposure, as well as allowing you to connect with potential customers in person. Some of the most common types of marketing events include:

• Trade shows
• Launch parties
• Sales conferences

Trade shows allow multiple businesses to promote their products. Each company rents out a booth, giving them their own space to promote from. There are many tech-themed trade shows that can be ideal for online businesses such as software companies and ecommerce companies. You can make your trade show appearance productive by investing in an eye-catching booth, picking the right promotional products and hosting competitions as a way of encouraging people to sign up to your mailing list.

Launch parties are useful for building buzz when initially launching your business or launching a new product. By making it a fun event, you can encourage guests to spread the word of your business. It’s worth inviting key people such as fellow business owners and journalists who are likely to have a lot of influence. Even with an online business, such events can be useful.

Sales conferences are a means of marketing directly to customers. They are better suited to high ticket items in which customers may require more persuasion to make a purchase – they give you a chance to give a presentation and answer any questions that attendees may have. Online companies like software providers, IT consultancy services and digital marketing services can benefit from giving sales conferences a go. You can encourage potential customers to attend these events by offering exclusive discounts to those attending and choosing an interesting location.

Invest In Print Marketing With QR Codes

Online companies can also use print marketing such as flyers, business cards and posters to their advantage. QR codes have made advertising a website in print much more effective – instead of having to manually type in your website, people can easily access your site by scanning the code. There are free tools online that you can use to generate QR codes for pages.

You may be able to mail flyers and business cards through doors of targeted people who you think will be interested in your business. For instance, if you’re a business software provider, it could benefit you to target business premises around the country.

Network At Third-Party Tech Events

Networking is a valuable form of marketing that any business can get involved in. By making the right connections, you can spread news of your business through word of mouth and even create partnerships such as cross promotion strategies (you promote someone’s business and in return they promote yours).

The likes of LinkedIn have allowed people to network digitally, but you may find that you get more out of networking in person. To find valuable connections in your industry, target events within your niche. For instance, if you’re running a software company, you can network by attending launch parties of other software companies, attending seminars and conferences on tech subjects, attending hackathons and tech conventions and attending tech trade shows as a guest.