At first glance, marketing an online store offline might not seem like a good plan. In fact, it might seem really silly. There’s no reason to talk to potential customers in person if they can only buy your goods online. A study by iProspect (that was done a while ago) found that offline marketing channels affect about 40% of internet shoppers. This is a huge chunk of people who shop online, and if you run any kind of e-commerce business, you can’t ignore this number. Now the question is where to begin.
Catalogs of goods
Catalogs seem to have been around for a very long time. It was made in Venice in the late 1400s as the first mail-order catalog. Benjamin Franklin even used it to sell books. It was the easiest way to sell to people who weren’t close enough to come to your store for a while. It’s true that catalogs have become more of a business tool over the years, but they still work very well as such.
A researcher named Charles Nicholls looked into 10 of the world’s best e-commerce sites in 2010 and found that 9 of them also sent out mail order catalogs. The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece that looked at a few online stores that use catalogs, and they do so for good reasons. This is not going to change any time soon: people love beautifully made paper catalogs.
It is important to note that printing and sending out a real catalog can be pricey, but it makes sense when we talk about return on investment.
Putting together events: These aren’t big events that cost a lot of money. Let’s talk about easy, low-cost events that will mark the start of a new line of products or the arrival of a new supplier’s line of goods in your online shop.
For a lot of different reasons, this kind of live event can really help your online store.
One reason is that it’s a great way to get free press. Local media will be interested in an event that is well-run, and there is always a chance that a story will spread across the country. In this way, you’re getting the attention you could only dream of before.
One option is to combine your event with a good cause. This will show that your e-commerce company cares about causes and isn’t just a website that makes money. You can also make items for these kinds of events, like wristbands that raise money for good causes or something similar.
Putting on events like these will give your e-commerce business a “human” face, which is a good idea since many people still think of e-commerce sites as mostly automatic and impersonal experiences that don’t deserve strong feelings one way or the other.
Stores that pop up
In the twenty or so years that pop-up stores have been around, they have become more and more famous. They first appeared near the end of the 1990s. An essentially pop-up shop is a store that only stays in one place for a certain amount of time, rather than staying there forever. It could be a few days, a few months, or even a year. The important thing is that it was planned and actually exists as a temporary store.
The 2013 Specialty Retail Report says that the pop-up retail business was worth $8 billion that year. It has only become more important since then. Some online stores choose to have their own corner in the space of another store instead of renting out whole business spaces. Of course, these stores will never be competitors.
In the same way as before, this can be pricey, but if done right, it can help spread your brand and even give you information that you couldn’t get online. If you’re really scared about opening a real store, you can always turn your pop-up store into a showroom where people can try out your goods and then buy them the “old-fashioned” way: online.
Some people may think that these offline marketing methods are riskier than most online marketing methods. But they can work really well and give your e-commerce business the boost it needs.
The important thing is that you don’t just ignore them.
