It’s quite tricky to drive offline traffic to your business if your location is less than optimal. But it can be done. A newsletter is one of the ways we’ve tried to create additional interest in our business and our blog. (Click to see the fullsize image of page 1).
Why a newsletter?
We chose a newsletter for a number of reasons over a regular flyer:
- One was the we wanted to start to ‘educate’, ‘inform’ and ‘interest’ our readers in English language learning for children as much as advertise. Of course, we could not leave out the advertisements, but we put them on the inner pages rather than the outer pages so that people would have something to read BEFORE they go to our advertising. We wanted our readers to read something that was intrinsically interesting.
- Another was that a newsletter is a regular thing, so people can begin to expect to read it at regular intervals and we can begin a conversation with people who aren’t our customers.
- A third reason is that it can make our business seem much larger than it really is. With the internet, our newsletter becomes global instantly, available to billions of people worldwide.
- Lastly, it was able to reflect what was going on in our business much more timely than a standard flyer. Its seasonality is important, as our business is seasonal!
There were other lesser reasons, but together they made a lot of sense!
Format of newsletter
We also made the format small using A5 format but printing on A4 double sided. We created a four page newsletter that looks quite effective. You can see from the JPEG the first page. It’s difficult to get the full impression nevertheless. Of course, we can only print in b&w at the moment, but if it becomes a big enough phenomenon, other things become possible.
Putting it together
It’s not difficult to put one together but you have to have a certain mastery of the PC tools at your disposal, especially Word or Publisher (Writer or Scribus, too). Also, if you have a photocopier, you can reproduce the newsletter quite cheaply and quite effectively. Local printshops will do color reproduction but I have yet to investigate that option fully!
Distribution: Targeted is better!
Getting your newsletter out there is sometimes a problem. We built an advertising station for our newsletter, and placed it in several locations suitable for flyers. People would go there and pick up flyers themselves. Also, we sometimes distribute them on the street ourselves by hand. That works well, too!
How do you reach customers? Do you have offline media, too? What other ways are there?
