The Best Online and Traditional Marketing Strategies for Your Business

As a business owner, it could be in your best interest to use a combination of online and offline marketing techniques to increase brand awareness. Online or digital marketing is done completely over the internet, whereas offline/traditional marketing is not. Online marketing allows you to reach a wider audience, but traditional marketing also has its benefits. Here are the best online and traditional marketing strategies to try for your business.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a relatively new type of digital marketing technique that allows influencers (or those with a large social media following) to promote your products or services, and they will earn a small commission each time someone purchases from you. Affiliates get a special link that allows their following to purchase through your website and gives them credit for the sale. You can also become an affiliate yourself and promote another company’s products or services on your website. Of course, you wouldn’t want to do this with a rival company.

Billboard Ads

Billboard advertisements are one of the oldest forms of advertising, and even though it’s not digital advertising, it still works. Billboards are located along interstates, but they’re also located within cities and towns. So no matter the scope of your business (local or national), billboards are a great way to bring awareness to your company.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the art of creating content to create brand awareness. There are various types of content to create, such as blog posts, ebooks, infographics, and other types of pictures, podcasts, and videos. This content can be shared via your website or through email marketing, but it’s most often shared via social media marketing. The best social media platforms for content marketing include:

• YouTube and TikTok for video content
• Spotify for audio content
• Instagram for pictures
• Facebook and LinkedIn for pictures, videos, and text posts

Newspaper and Magazine Ads

Printing ads in newspapers was one of the first ways that people got the word out about their business, and this method still works today. Small businesses that serve a local community can use their local newspaper to advertise their new business and to advertise job openings. Local magazines operate similarly, whereas national magazines offer a greater reach to a wider audience.

Promotional Marketing

Promotional marketing involves printing your business name and logo on everyday items and selling or giving away these everyday items to your current customers. The idea behind this is that the everyday items will act as advertisements for your business. For example, if someone wears a T-shirt or baseball cap with your company’s name and logo, everyone they come in contact with will see it. Other popular items for this type of marketing include promotional items, including coffee mugs, tote bags, smartphone cases, keychains, bookmarks, and pens.

SEO and PPC

SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) both use search engines like Google to drive traffic to your website. PPC also uses other platforms like paid ads on Facebook, ad campaigns on Twitter, and sponsored messages on LinkedIn. The difference between the two is that PPC requires you to pay every time your ad is clicked, whereas SEO uses keywords on your website and blog posts to help your website rank higher on search engines. SEO is a more organic way to drive traffic to your website.

TV and Radio Ads

Another set of traditional marketing techniques are TV and radio commercials, but they’ve also made their way into the digital marketing world through ads. Ads and commercials, in this sense, are essentially the same thing, but commercials on streaming platforms are known as ads. You can pay for TV and radio commercials for traditional watchers and listeners, or you can pay for ads on streaming platforms (e.g., Hulu, iHeartRadio, etc.)— both of which can reach a huge audience. Just keep in mind that many of these platforms offer a higher price for their members to skip ads.

Online marketing is beneficial for all types of businesses, whereas traditional marketing does have its limitations. For instance, if you’re an e-commerce company (you operate completely online) not every traditional marketing technique will be beneficial to you, such as newspaper ads. On the other hand, you can try all forms of digital marketing.

As for a small business that serves a local community, you’ll be able to benefit from all forms of traditional marketing— but you’ll also benefit from online marketing. Just remember that you need a business website to see the most results from online marketing.