When you’re crafting a marketing strategy for your business, it’s important to make sure that your brand is present in spaces where your audience will be. Online-only businesses may be used to crafting strong digital marketing strategies, but it’s a mistake to think that this is the only way they’re able to promote their business. Marketing campaigns can fail if you’re not able to get the visibility that you need, and real-world marketing offers plenty of opportunities to spread your platform beyond the bounds of the online world.
Tangibility Builds Trust
Nowadays, it’s exceedingly easy for anyone to set up an online business or storefront. This ease also means that there has always been a persistent risk of scams and fake businesses online. This means that online customers can be slower to trust brands that they don’t know. Real-world marketing bridges that gap by giving your brand a face beyond the screen. Whether through printed materials, pop-up events, or in-person sponsorships, tangible interactions create credibility that websites alone can’t always provide. Real-world touchpoints also add a human element to a business that normally presents as an impersonal webpage.
Event Marketing Adds Legitimacy
Hosting or participating in real-world events provides online-only businesses with legitimacy that digital marketing alone struggles to match. Events allow your brand to stand alongside other businesses in the industry, not to mention influencers and reporters who cover it. Take the opportunity to not only appear at events, but to host your own, showcasing insight and legitimacy through speaking engagements, panel discussions, and through the use of event photography teams. This shows that your business isn’t just a virtual identity, but a real leader in the industry.
Build A Personal Connection With Customers
Having a presence in the real world makes it a lot easier to build the human connection that leads to true, lasting brand loyalty in ways that can be difficult to match using an online business only. Meeting customers face-to-face through events, street promotions, or experiential marketing fosters personal bonds and lasting impressions. Not only can you then use these opportunities to fuel your marketing campaigns going forward, but genuine engagement, such as seeking feedback, makes customers feel valued. If you can turn conversations into case studies that you reflect on, this feeling of being heard can extend to your entire online customer base, too.
Target Specific Demographics With Local Media
Even if your business operates entirely online, you may notice specific regions and communities where your products and services are particularly popular. Just as local online marketing can help you target them better, you can do the same with physical media. Whether it’s a flyer sent out through the mail or a billboard, you can make sure that you’re hitting on those areas that seem to show a higher demand for your products, building your customer base within local areas all the more deeply.
Real-world marketing holds potential for almost all brands, not just brick-and-mortar stores. Think about which physical marketing strategies could work best for your business.
