Hey what’s up it’s Jerad with Hill media group and I have five ways to market your business offline. Now I know I talk about online marketing a lot because my company Hill Media Group is a digital marketing agency. So offline marketing is still hugely important and I think it’s even more important these days because it’s so easy to market online sure it’s it can be expensive and time-consuming. But marketing online has definitely gotten easier and more effective over the years and that kind of gets us away from offline marketing, because if you’re, maybe even a little bit more introverted like I am, you might look to online marketing before offline marketing because it means being Around less people, but nonetheless I still really enjoy offline marketing and it’s always been a huge growth factor for my business.
So I want to talk about five ways that you can market your business offline in an online world, and these days networking is still huge. A lot people do less networking than ever before, because there’s less networking events to go to there’s less opportunities for networking. So when we get involved in nonprofits or we find different ways to network, you know they’re they’re fewer and far between than there used to be. But networking is still hugely important because it puts you face-to-face with other people, whether they’re, the type of person, that’s looking for your product or service or not doesn’t really matter.
It’S all about top of mind awareness, and you never know when you’re gon na get that word-of-mouth referral that might come from somebody just being aware of what it is that you do or offer. So networking is hugely important and I’ve got a couple of ways that you can do that. The first is to get involved with a non-profit.
Of course, that means investing some of your time and maybe even your money to get involved, because you can’t just pay money and to the nonprofit and expect to see results. You have to network with the other people that are interacting and working with that nonprofit. This might mean other businesses that are contributing and helping that net, that nonprofit grow beyond being on the board of that nonprofit or helping organize fundraisers. Those are different ways that you can get involved, the general conversation of what you do and all those things tend to come up natch as they do in most other conversations that we have with people. Another way to network is any local types of things that are going on. You know, maybe you have a Chamber of Commerce or some sort of local group that meets and those are good ways to network and and get to know people.
I’Ve been a part of networking groups and I’m currently part of a BNI group, a business networking international group which is hit or miss. It really depends on the group and the people that are in the group. Definitely the better the people and the more proactive the people are in the group, the better the group is going to be, but those are great networking opportunities, because they’re, scheduled and part of being in the group is that you have to show up, and that means Getting there interacting with people getting to know people informing people of what it is that you do, and the type of customer business that you’re looking for to do work with and that’s important because top of mind awareness is scarce. These days with so many things on our mind that it, it means needing repetition in order to actually have that top of mind awareness, so networking in person is definitely a great way. Number two is speaking. I think speaking is a huge one.
It might not be depending on where you live. There might not be as many opportunities to speak as in some other areas like if you live in a more populated area. There’S gon na be more events and more opportunities for you to speak on the topic that you would be knowledgeable about, but look for opportunities to speak, even if it means a little bit of travel so that you can speak to larger audiences. Getting to speak about something that you know a lot about in front of others.
It positions you as more of a professional and more of a thought leader in that industry, and it opens up opportunities for you to get to do business with others, especially if you are in a business-to-business space, if you’re in a business to consumer space like, for Example say you are a realtor doing first-time homebuyer seminars, just different things like that or great ways to actually speak to people that might not be ready to buy yet, but maybe in the information gathering stage, speaking engagements and speaking, opportunities are fantastic ways to plant those Seeds to get new customers and just to increase the awareness of you among other people, number three is associations or trade shows.
I talked about like Chamber of Commerce.
Maybe there are other local of local organizations that you can be a part of that are in town. Maybe if you’re in a bigger area, you have an association around the industry that you’re in to where maybe you’re specializing in a certain niche there, and there are other people specializing – you can get together with them and create a team so that you can trade referrals To each other, I know that I get a lot of calls for IT related work. I don’t repair computers, I don’t do anything with. You know getting viruses off of computers, so I send a lot of business to some of the local IT companies that I work with and in turn they send me web design referrals because they don’t do web design. So it really works out. I was only able to create those relationships because I went out and did the networking and met with those people and got to know them.
Trade shows might be less often happening because typically, industry trade shows aren’t happening all the time, but those are also great ways to get involved and to meet people, especially if maybe you have a local business trade show. That is more of a business-to-business, because maybe that’s the profession that you’re in there are a lot of smaller trade shows, even where you have the opportunity to meet people who are they’re. Looking for business services, there are a lot of business to consumer trade shows like, for example. Maybe if you were in the wedding industry going to those trade shows where brides and engaged couples are they’re. Looking at four vendors and looking for opportunities to meet with new companies, those are great opportunities. Trade shows can be hit or miss. They really have to be well put together. Trade shows that are typically driven by giveaways or by door. Prizes are not very good, because people show up just to get those door prizes. They don’t end up doing business with the businesses that are there.
They show up for the free stuff, so you want to make sure that your trade show that they’re going to or the trade show, that you’re taking part in provides value.
Maybe there’s an educational component to the trade show to where people are coming to with the businesses for their services, but they’re also there to be educated and informed. Those trade shows that kind of serve those dual purpose are really good. Some would call those conventions, or you know something like that. Instead, I would definitely lean towards those if they are available in your area, but they’re a great way to actually get in front of the potential person decision maker. That would be looking for the product or service that you offer number four is print ads and it’s a little bit lower down on the list, because I think that there is a time and a place for print ads. Really, it depends on what you are selling and what’s available in your in your target market and the area that you’re looking for looking to find growth in print ads can definitely help because people still pick up a magazine when they’re sitting in a waiting room.
People still subscribe to magazines, and so there is an opportunity, but I think that if you are a local business, you want to be in a magazine that makes sense if you have more of a consumer product, like maybe massage therapy hair stylists. You know a home service you’ll want to be in the local lifestyle. Magazines you’ll want to have an ad, and those people tend to pick up those magazines when they’re waiting and kind of thumb through them. They come across an ad and if it’s a service that they need at the time, then it’s a good fit and you’ll end up getting that phone call. The challenge with print ads is that you can’t really quantify them too much. They are really hard to understand when somebody actually came to you because of that ad.
Somebody may say that they’ve seen your ad-in the in a magazine, but maybe that isn’t the first time they saw you or heard about your business. It was just simply a reminder, so it’s really hard to know whether or not that lead came from that or how many people are seeing it. How many people are thumbing over your ad and not actually looking at it? Online marketing gives you a lot better metrics in that respect, and I really like online marketing because of that. But there is a place for offline marketing with print ads, especially if you are doing some online marketing, because that online marketing just creates a nice experience when there’s offline marketing that matches it.
The fifth is cold, calling now I’ve never been good at cold calling, and I’ve always felt kind of cheese or even low greasy doing cold. Calling. There are a lot of times that people don’t necessarily know that they need a product or service cold calling could be, for example, as me as a web designer. I could be looking at a company’s website and realizing just by looking at it and spending some time on it, why it’s not performing the way that it should for that company, and I can give that company a call and kind of say: okay, hey I’ve been On your website, I want to talk to somebody about maybe ways that you can improve.
That website. Can I meet with somebody and sure that’s a cold call because they weren’t expecting it, but I did do a little bit of homework to try and figure out a way that I can provide value to them. I’M not trying to sell them something out of the gate, I’m trying to provide some information for them and whether they take that information back to the web person that they currently have, or they you know have me, do that work for them.
I’ve set me apart by giving them a little bit of value and they’re goon na. Remember me the next time they need something major done, or at least I hope so cold calling can work.
Definitely there is a time and a place for it, and it is industry specific. There are certain industries, you just can’t cold call or it would be really weird getting a cold call about that product or that service. But if it is something that fits, it’s definitely a valuable offline method, we get a lot less cold calls that are actually relevant.
These days, we get a lot of telemarketers that are trying to sell us stuff that doesn’t even fit our needs. They don’t do any research, they don’t try to figure out anything about us. First, we get these cold calls that just are not good matches at all. So if you have the opportunity to do a little bit of research before actually calling that person or that business you’re setting yourself up more for success and you’re, making that cold call worth that person’s time. So that’s five ways that you can market your business offline things are definitely changing.
We’re definitely much more in an online world, but I think there’s a place for offline, because there is a lot of time of our day that we spend offline these days still, even though our phones bring us more content and more information, you can’t be online necessarily, While driving, you can’t be, there are times when you want to put down the technology, and you want to interact with your environment around you and those are great opportunities to market offline. So let me know what you think in the comment section below. If you have thoughts, share them, feel many questions, or maybe even an offline marketing, favorite of your own, that you’d love to share I’d love to hear that down. In the comments section, my name is Jared with Hill media group and I hope that you subscribe to our channel here so that you can come back when we put out new videos.
It’s all about marketing, sharing and growing businesses together, and that’s what we love to do here. So, we hope to have you back in the next video take care you.
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