Whether you’re new to advertising or are looking to expand your repertoire after exhausting all known options or not getting the best results with your current toolkit, these suggestions should improve returns for your efforts:

Stand Out Offline

Focusing all of your advertising resources online is narrow-minded. Even for people who don’t have a local-exclusive business or a business with a physical presence and location, it’s possible to take advantage of more analog advertising methods.

Flyers are a great place to start. You can mail them, pin them to bulletin boards, and even negotiate to give them out through a local business with a physical location. Banana Print leaflets and flyers can be customized to have whatever you want on them- your business logo, promotional text, contact information, anything.

Attend a Trade Show, Conference, or Professional Event

Being an attendee, vendor or dealer, presenter, panelist, or sponsor can all be exceptional chances to advertise, in their way. Vendors and dealers get a spot directly in front of their target audience and an opportunity to sell what they have. It can also be a prime spot to create and display promotional material.

Presenters and panelists can advertise more subtly by presenting case studies, demonstrated advantages of products and services, and expertise. Sponsors have a chance to align themselves with the event and its values to all attendees.

Use Social Media Advertising

Social media is fabulous for advertising, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Yes, you can bolster your social media presence with regular posts, interaction, and premium content. Then you need to start thinking about paid versions of social media advertising. The platform you choose and your audience will determine the exact method. You could spend a lot of money for sponsored post status, work with an influencer in your market, or use the platform to create a giveaway or contest.

Upgrade Your Website and On-Page and Content

This might seem a little bit roundabout, and you might not see immediate results like you would with a more visible advertising campaign. However, the results that you do see should increase over time. Fundamental website improvements should improve branding cohesion, boost overall speed, and update analytics data as well as content quality.

By improving the permanent content on your website to follow SEO or SEM best practices, you create an easy way to reach more people over time. Then, by creating staple content in the form of evergreen resources, you’re inviting other websites to link to yours. Alternatively, you could post this content on other sites as a guest post, etc., and advertise your business that way.

Create a Promotional Event

Anyone can create a unique event centered around a product or service, and it might cost a lot less than you think- or even be profitable. It can be a product release party, a fundraiser for the community (sponsored by your business), a workshop, or something offered in conjunction with a local college or university.

Depending on what stage your business is at, you could even give a paid seminar based on your experiences. Many local groups have small business associations devoted to these types of events. By volunteering, you have the opportunity to network and advertise the name of your brand.

Invest in Your Community

Sponsorship is a great way to build awareness of your brand especially if you have a local shop or brick and mortar presence. Sponsoring a local club, sports team, renovation, or public facility could get your business mentioned in some ways. Press releases detailing the progress of the product may mention critical sponsors, banners may be displayed at events, and logos may be printed on promotional items.

Not only does this method advertise your brand, but it creates goodwill and improves the community. The stronger the community, the more likely your business is to thrive, mainly if you are based locally or rely on local customers for the bulk of your business.

Sponsor a Podcast

Five times more people will listen to a podcast this week than will go to a movie. Further, those listeners are primarily aged 25 to 54, having more buying power than fans of other mediums. The most popular podcasts in America have upwards of three million listeners from their home country alone. Podcast sponsorship, especially on a podcast with a targeted audience, is usually affordable for even the smallest businesses.

Surveyed audience members also agreed that their impression of a company mentioned on a favorite podcast was immediately favorable. Further, podcast sponsorship is recorded into an episode. That means if someone listens to the backlog they will hear your advertisement and, if applicable, any special offers that go with it. That means that if your chosen podcast becomes more popular over time, your brand and business gets more exposure.

There are hundreds of original ways to reach more customers. No two businesses use the same methods. If one method or technique stands out to you, whether mentioned here or that you’ve been thinking about, there is a way to apply it to your business, even if you haven’t seen it used that way before. Take these tips into consideration, you’ll be happy you did in the long run.