6 Cost Effective Ways to Promote Your Business Offline

Aliens have invaded our planet and everyone needs to be cooped up in their houses for the next century. There will be no dearth of materials as multiple drones have been commissioned to deliver everything you order online to your door step.

This is not the breaking news yet, and most probably will not be in the near future. Even though more and more people are steadily spending most of their time on their cell phones or in front of their computer screens, they still go to schools and colleges, step out to visit the local markets and events on the weekends, and hang out in restaurants with friends and family couple times a week.  .

So what should a good marketeer do to grab the attention of people in the offline word? Take a megaphone, stand in the middle of the street and yell about their brand? Umm, probably not. There are more subtle and obviously smarter ways to do the same.  So, check out some ways by which  you can promote your brand offline, without incurring too much cost.

1. Get celebrities and influencers in your business domain to try your product

Gone are the days when you had to shell out millions to get a hotshot celebrity to endorse your product!  The budding fashion designers are now reaching out to celebrities and gifting their creation to them. If the celebrity likes it then he/she wears it, get clicked by the camera and the designer starts hearing good news from then on. Just imagine a celebrity wearing your designs! Take the instance of a Los Angeles based Apparel Company called Spirithoods, which reaches out to anyone and everyone, just to get its product worn by the celebrities. Their success list includes the likes of Snoop Dogg, Pete Wentz and Heather Graham.

Spirithoods promotes its products through celebs like Ke$ha & Snoop Dog

2. Sponsor college and school events

Sponsoring a college event gives you the opportunity to directly interact with your target audience. In fact I would go on to recommend sponsoring a college event over a regular local event. Why? Only in school and college you find the folks who have relatively more time than all of us to talk about your product or brand. Teenagers from college tend to try so many things as they are yet to establish a permanent taste like oldies. So it is relatively easier to market to school and college goers than any other crowd and with a college event you can directly impact the grass root.

Plus, associating yourself with an educational institute wins you credibility in the market.

3. Tie up with Relevant Offline Businesses

Do you sell chic crockery of coffee mugs? There are a number of cafes and restaurants which keep popping up in all parts of a city. Why not tie up with them and give your crockery or costars at low rates? If you get creative, how about the décor or furniture? Find relevant businesses, identify their needs or create one and come up with a relevant mutually beneficially deal. Be creative with your ideas and you may end up finding your niche markets at a lot of places.

4. Sell at Flea Markets and Exhibitions

We cannot even emphasize, how important it is to sell at flea markets and exhibition for your brand. If you don’t have an offline store, then these are your best outlets to get to customers. Flea markets are fun environments which attract a lot of customer from various backgrounds. If you buy a stall at these flea markets, which are usually in the range of 5000-15000, you can sell enough material to not only procure your costs but also make profits. Being an online store owner, it is your chance to interact with your customers personally and make them aware of your products. A popular flea market Sunday Soul Sante, attracts thousands of customers every single time!

5. Stock your Products at Stores Near You

There are many brick and mortar stores which showcase various kinds of products from different brands. When you stock your products, make sure you brand them properly. On the packaging or label (in case of fashion wear) mention your website address. You can offer discounts if customers buy from your online stores. You can also request the store owner to put a banner on your name. Do you know how beautiful your products can look when arranges tastefully in the shop of a famous Stockist?

6. Start branding from home

Below is the image of John Devlin with his car. Care to guess John’s field of business? John runs an Easigrass franchise, a firm that provides artificial grass installation.

Let’s check out this superbly innovative packaging material from a mega store- Gortz to promote its kids section. Gortz could have easily done it with a cuboidal corrugated box, like everybody else, but where is the fun in the convention.

This is business card of hair stylist Yuki Suzuki. Do you think that with this business card Yuki needs to prove her expertise in hair styling in front of anyone?

There could be 999 more such examples, all brilliant than these, but what is so common in them? All these people chose not to opt for the convention, rather, they displayed amazing innovativeness to sell their brand.  They decided to convey their USP through everything that goes out to their audience, and that got them stand out of the crowd.

With the above methods, you can give your brand a good offline presence and grab the attention of your target audience in a sly yet effective way. All these methods are to get your audience to check out your products and buy from you. Once they like what they see, they would want to keep coming back to you again and again and again!