20 iron rules for offline marketing!

Over the years of work, I have worked on many projects, all of which involved offline marketing.

For traditional Internet projects and friends doing business locally, local promotion is an important way to promote and acquire customers.

Today, based on my past experience, I will briefly review some issues that need to be paid attention to during offline marketing .

1. Principle of giving priority to local residents

China has a vast territory, and every place has its own dialect. Most locals are also accustomed to speaking dialects. Speaking dialect is not only easier to express oneself, but also makes it easier to quickly build trust and reduce some concerns.

Therefore, when doing local promotion, you must find a local person to participate and there must be one in the team. In addition to being able to communicate in dialect, it is also helpful for the local business environment and the integration of local resources.

When we were promoting a project before, the venue problem had not been well resolved. However, we asked someone to find a local connection and were able to set up the venue for free. Moreover, for those promotions that require long-term presence, it can also reduce certain costs by simply giving some presence subsidies.

2. Complete promotion materials

When promoting, don’t just do it verbally, even if you are doing research. Because after you finish chatting, others will quickly forget you.

Also, don't assume that others know as much about something as you do, so prepare some information in advance. For example, posters, leaflets, business cards, trifolds, etc., should at least be visible to others.

Even if you don’t prepare these in advance, you must have an electronic version of the content, even if it’s just a PPT or a picture. Otherwise, not only will others not understand you, but the key is that they will not trust you.

In addition to providing customers with information, there should also be some equipment to attract customers as an aid. For example, when setting up a tent, use red, which is brighter. The gifts must be stacked neatly to have a strong visual impact.

When doing field promotion during the day, banners, loudspeakers or some colorful flags can be used. When you do door-to-door marketing at night, you can use some lighting or speakers to attract other people’s attention. This depends on what project you are doing. Sometimes, we even invite some beautiful models to help out.

3. Travel in a Companion

When you are doing a marketing campaign for the first time, never go alone. For new projects, group assessment can be conducted first, followed by individual assessment.

Traveling in a group not only builds courage, but also allows for greater flexibility. When introducing things to clients, you can complement each other and don't be afraid of being rejected.

In addition, when two people go on field sales, they observe different things, which are valuable experiences for the team. When we went to car shops, real estate companies, and dating platforms to do data research, we would form a male and female group and pretend to be a couple, which was very convenient.

4. Simple and direct

The tasks of field promotion must be clear. Don’t let the salesperson do everything at once. If there are too many things to do, the salesperson may not have the ability to do them all. For customers, whether it is experience, interview or ordering, the process should be simple.

Unfamiliar customers are too vigilant and will make excuses saying they are busy even if they have time, so the task must be simple. Otherwise, after all this time, users will not only lose their patience, but also their trust.

5. Be professional enough

Always remember that you are the business party, not the customer. So you have to know what you are doing very well, at least professionally.

The first is the overall attire, such as work badges, business cards, information, equipment, etc.; the second is to be professional in operations, answers, and communications. If you don't understand what others are saying and you have no topics to talk about, others will not want to talk to you.

Especially for those who sell sales solutions, such as those who make tools, if you don’t know the user’s pain points, the probability of being rejected is extremely high.

6. Prepare a speaker

This tool is particularly effective in specific scenarios, so I would like to emphasize it here. For example, when you go to a town to do promotion, you can put a car stereo on and play it on a loop, which will be very effective.

For example, when you need to introduce your business during field promotion, using a little bee can quickly attract people, make your introduction clearly heard, and help you save a lot of physical energy.

7. Run more often when you have time

Don't think you can get a customer in one go, make sure you go a few more times. When the village chief was selling second-hand car tools, he was rejected by customers many times. But after going a few more times, customers found that people around them had the tools and always had time to communicate with you.

Secondly, some customers say they will take a look when they have time, but in fact most of them don’t. The more this happens, the more you should go there more often to see if the customer has any questions, whether they can do the operation, etc.

The more concentrated the places are, the more often you should appear. For example, if you are doing digital-related promotion, you should go to Digital City more often; if you are doing used car-related promotion, you should go to Auto City more often.

8. Plan your route properly

For teams with larger businesses and wider coverage, it is important to make reasonable plans for routes and areas. For example, if you want to develop small supermarkets offline for group buying, or develop restaurant stores with QR code scanning and ordering systems, you need to have a good understanding of the region and advance in a rhythmic manner.

Who is responsible for which area, which streets will be completed today, etc., instead of thinking about coming.

9. Make a daily summary

Those who do field sales definitely don’t go home after get off work at five or six o’clock. Meetings must be held every day. Those who work remotely have online meetings. Those in the same city gather at the branch office or rented apartment every evening to report.

The first is to ensure that everyone is always in working condition and sensitive to data and progress. The second is to promptly understand the problems encountered by each person in field promotion. The third is that the city manager should announce important requirements and strategies every day.

10. Online information is available

When you are promoting your products, customers will definitely search for them on their own in addition to reading the information you send.

The initial research of a new company may not require much information, but once business promotion is started, online content construction must be done well.

The most basic requirement is that it should be searchable. For example, you can search for articles published on WeChat public accounts, small programs, apps, or even a piece of news. If conditions permit, you can create an official website.

If there is nothing, users will have concerns. In addition, if it can be searched, it must be openable.

11. Prepare suitable small gifts

Depending on the form of your business, you can prepare some small gifts appropriately. For example, when the major designated driver platforms were promoting their services locally, they chose various restaurants and hotels as their targets, and then delivered customized toothpicks, paper towels, table mats, lighters, tissue boxes, etc.

This kind of product has no objection to many roadside restaurants because it does not conflict with their business and instead brings convenience to customers.

There are also some gifts that need to be specially made and the cost needs to be calculated. For example, when directly attracting new downloads, you may give out tissues, paper cups, eggs, fruits, dolls, etc.

It mainly depends on your business to decide what small gifts are most attractive. For example, for mothers, you need to get some balloons and small toy cars to keep the children, so that you have time to explain to the mothers.

12. Focus on promotion in target areas

When doing ground marketing, you must be clear about where your customers are and don't look for them blindly.

First, when we were doing serious illness business before, our offline target customers were near the hospital. This is what Shuidichou did before when it recruited part-time workers to explore fundraising cases in hospitals, although this approach is too commercial.

Second, don't stretch the front line too far at once, as personnel, services, and distribution may not be able to keep up. For example, in Hangzhou, Didi and Hello’s shared electric motorcycles have their own core promotion areas.

Always remember, go where your customers are.

The village chief has shared the electric bike battery business before. One of the areas where our target customers are located is the electric bike parking lots in residential areas, industrial parks, and subway entrances. We just need to concentrate all our efforts on repeated publicity.

13. Clear customer interests

In fact, most of our offline promotion business is nothing more than three points: either making money, saving money, or improving efficiency.

So don't explain a lot of nonsense, just be simple and direct.

If you sell batteries, say they are cheap; if you sell software, say you improve efficiency. You must state the points that users care about most.

14. Take photos at any time

In my opinion, one of the differences between good door-to-door sales and ordinary door-to-door sales is whether or not photos are taken to record the sales.

This type of photo record is not only about recording what you have done, or the on-site layout and results of your field promotion.

What’s more important is to shoot what you see during the field promotion process.

First, what kind of publicity did the competitors make and what did the materials look like? Where is it arranged?

Secondly, there are some interesting businesses or promotional methods in other offline industries that are worth learning from.

For example, many of the village chiefs who promoted materials on the ground, such as Ling Gang, all saw non-competitive designs.

Thirdly, take some good photos and post them on Moments and WeChat groups, and provide them to all marketing staff and part-time partners.

If a person spends a whole day doing door-to-door sales and doesn't have a single picture or video on his phone, he is not qualified for the job.

15. Check out the location in advance

Some businesses require you to scout the location in advance to see where is the best place to place materials and where there is more traffic.

The photo records I mentioned earlier are particularly important during the site scouting stage.

Observe the users' walking paths. The most worrying thing is that you don't understand it in advance. On the day of promotion, either the spot is taken, or you are driven away, or there is no one there if you go too late, or the spot is placed but customers will not go there at all.

For example, one of our teams went to a clothing market in Changshu to promote something. There was a main door and a side door. The salesperson thought that customers would go through the main door, but 60% of the customers went through the side door.

16. Provide timely feedback

During the field promotion process, if you encounter any problems with customers, you must promptly report them to the backend.

Therefore, this requires our online operations staff to keep in touch with front-line colleagues and respond to their needs and customer issues at any time.

The most worrying thing is that the front desk does not point out the problem and the backend does not respond in time, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of the promotion.

We have encountered this situation before, where field sales staff would only discuss issues during evening meetings or monthly meetings.

This is not only a problem of feedback channels, but also a problem of front-end managers, whether they attach importance to the collection of problems.

17. Try to add WeChat

At present, most of the ground-based businesses require adding WeChat.

No matter you are doing C-end business, conducting research, or engaging with B-end customer groups.

Be sure to find a way to add customers’ WeChat or invite them to join the group.

Two points need to be reminded:

First of all, it is best to have a WeChat QR code in the materials distributed to customers to ensure that the code can be scanned.

Secondly, if the material is to attract a large amount of traffic, you must pay attention to using active codes to carry it to avoid users being unable to add it.

18. Ensure system stability

This is the most common problem for many new platforms and new products. Even if we go offline to find customers for testing, we must try our best to keep the system stable.

In the past, when we went out to promote store opening tools, we had a hard time negotiating payment intentions with customers, but various problems arose during testing.

Sometimes you can’t even receive the SMS verification code. How can customers trust you if such basic problems happen?

The process of our product can be imperfect and unreasonable, but it cannot have problems and be unusable. These are two different things.

By the way, if the QR code involves interests or binding between superiors and subordinates, it must be tested repeatedly!

19. Don’t make promises easily

In order to complete their task targets, some salesmen will make random promises to customers during the promotion process.

This is a big taboo. If the customer is a long-term customer, disputes will arise during repurchase, promotion, etc.

Some of our businesses have many partner groups, which include people from all over the world.

There have been cases in the past where managers in some regions made random promises but were unable to deliver on them.

Or some private promises were shared by partners in the group, which eventually led to complaints from other partners in the group.

So don’t make promises easily, don’t promise the time it takes to solve the problem, don’t promise to provide additional benefits, etc.

20. Avoid meaningless conflicts

Finally, I would like to emphasize that conflicts should be avoided during offline promotion .

The first is to avoid unnecessary conflicts among colleagues, such as route allocation, business assessment, etc.

The second is to avoid conflicts with competitors or non-peers, otherwise it will be bad for both parties to conduct business and it will be easy to be reported in the future.

The third is to avoid conflicts with customers, urban management staff, residents, etc. If they chase me away, I will run away. If they leave, I will come back.

Many industrial belts and professional markets have their own rules. If you want to treat someone to a meal, you have to spend money. If you want to abide by other people's rules, you have to abide by them. Otherwise, you won't even have a chance to get in.

When we were promoting used cars in the past, many car dealers and administrators in the market would not allow them to enter used car platforms like Guazi.

Finally, I would like to emphasize one point again. As online managers, operators, technicians and even designers, you must go out and walk around more if conditions permit.

The first is to listen to the voices of real customers and see their real expressions and actions.

The second is to get in touch with their daily products, work, and lifestyle, which will be more helpful for you to make products and services.

Thirdly, for managers, they need to go out and find out which salesmen and marketing managers are telling the truth and which problems have not been reported.

The above are the 20 things that the village chief needs to pay attention to in offline promotion. I hope it will be helpful to everyone. We will share other things in the future.

#Columnist#

Shili Village, WeChat public account: Shili Village (shilipxl)