Effective Offline Marketing For Freelancers

With most of your waking hours spent online, it is quite likely that you're concentrating the majority of your marketing efforts online to promote your business as well. It's second nature and not a totally bad habit. After all that's where most of your market is. However, as a freelancer, you should also benefit from offline marketing and advertising gimmicks that have, time and again, proven themselves to generate profit. Here are a few of the most effective.

Talk about your freelance business.
The word of mouth technique is yet to see the day when its luster has lost its money-generating power. For now though, it still ranks high among the most effective advertising techniques there are. On top of this, word of mouth advertising is very inexpensive. You just have to devise means to spread the word about your freelance business or service fast and you can already establish a base market and a few new clients on the side. 

There are many ways to go about this type of offline marketing. The best and the simplest is to subtly spread the word by talking to people directly. Whether you're at Starbucks, in a grocery store, a hardware shop or a library, you can casually advertise yourself and your freelance business. Expect no boom outside your local clientele though as this type of advertising rarely go nationwide. Unless of course you have use strategies that can spread the word on the national level.

Do some networking with other freelancers.
Building your clientele by networking is by far among the easiest to do both offline and online. In the online world, if you know someone who's in the same field as yours, try to connect with him via professional networking websites. That simple. The same principle can be applied in an offline setting. That someone you know may know another somebody who’s got plenty of connections in your field. Try to look into events and gatherings that may build your network. 

Advertise yourself and your products or services in free local newspapers and magazines.
It's cheap and effective. You will likely have to pay some to have your advertisement placed on free newspapers and magazines, but whatever dollar you dole out will surely come back tenfold in the form of wider networking, new clients, and larger pool of potential clients. 

Stretch your advertising dollar to billboards and other signs.
How many times have you looked up a billboard or an ad sign and really have been introduced to a new product, service or company? If you can afford to post an ad via a billboard, you can expand your market exponentially. Offline marketing in the form of signs and billboards may bring in new business to your  online venture. If you have the money to spare for this type of advertising, you might as well try to use it.

Give out your business cards.
No, business cards haven't died yet. In fact, they are much more effective these days than they were a decade ago. Whereas business cards can only contain information regarding your type of business and some contact information, nowadays these can also carry your domain name, social networking addresses, and a few other things that could help with expanding your network to quite a few places. 
