I recently read about an ingenious offline marketing campaign and I quickly want to share the story with you. So here it is:
One day a man was riding his bike to work and was about 10km into it when he stopped in a usual rest spot under a tree. There on the ground was a folded 50 Euro note. He picked it up in a millisecond and put it in his pocket.
When he got home he told his wife about his good fortune and got out the folded ‘fifty’.
When he unfolds it, he saw a total new picture.
The ‘Fifty Euros’ was in fact, as you can see from above, an ingenious and effective way of “God- marketing”.
In a country where openly spreading the gospel was prohibited, the underground church had to come up with a way to effectively reach more people. With the knowledge that people will always pick up money, they printed this flyer (simulating a 50Euro note) and ‘left’ thousands of these “notes” lying around across the country – effectively spreading the message of Jesus.
This is an ingenious example of knowing your target market and then directing your marketing efforts towards them.
As virtual assistants, we can also attract more clients with creative offline marketing campaigns.
The problem however is, because virtual assistants work on the internet, it’s easy to assume the best way to reach potential clients is to utilize only online marketing techniques via things like a website, articles, PPC campaigns, social media, directory listings etc. We then get so caught up with how we do marketing in the online world, that we forget how to creatively create an offline marketing campaign that can be even more effective.
Although online marketing has many benefits (it’s cheap, easy and you can reach a wider audience), there is also a lot of clutter online and standing out in the masses is hard.
That is when alternative off-line marketing techniques can open up a potentially enormous segment of your target audience.
Especially in places like South Africa where the term virtual assistant is still fairly new, potential customers may never know about your online presence and may never search for your services online. And sometimes our best clients are those directly under our nose.
So, assess your current situation, take stock of your marketing efforts and consider some ways where offline marketing strategies can help your business. The ultimate goal is to have all your marketing efforts (both online and offline) support each other, so you have a wide and varied outreach for promoting your business. By getting started today, you can achieve faster results and gain an edge over your competition.
