When you work at an organization whose buyers are not present on many digital channels, what do you typically explore to reach them?

Here's a quick laundry list of things to consider without diving into your business model and marketing plans.

1. Partnerships: Do you have partners you can work with to integrate a call-to-action? For example, in one of our small business campaigns where we were targeting small business owners we were able to partner with local banks to include our offering in their small business loan welcome package. I know integrations are tough and it requires more than marketing to champion so I would also think about co-marketing. Are there any partners that have a database of people you are currently not getting in front of? Cross-promoting in partnership channels is a great user acqusition tool. 

2. Direct Mail: you're probably thinking this is old school but the campaigns my teams have run are showing positive ROI from direct mail. The reason? It's cheap and you can get a broad reach. We typically pair direct mail pieces with a call to action (ie, register to attend our event, download this ebook, get in touch with sales, etc). This creates a multi-touch journey to your campaigns. 

3. Lastly you can run some fun guerilla marketing to drive foot traffic to your storefront. 

Great question -- I like to rely on our product marketing team to help me understand where my audience hangs out. If it's events, I work with field marketing to identify the best places our current customers go, and make sure we have a heavy presence at those events to capture more mindshare of that audience and even our existing customers. 

I also like to ask my PR team what publications (digital and print) a specific audience group is heavily influenced by. I run digital programs there knowing their digital program will be cheap and try to tack on email and future event sponsorships because I know the deal will be better if I try to negotiate the digital-first approach. 

Ultimately if you have customers in that group, you need to divert some attention to your current customers. Ask them where they get their industry news, what's the biggest event in their industry, where their peers go, what their competitors do annually etc. Having regional events where some of your best customers are will really go a long way in identifying new channels. 

Industry event, associations and other organizations that already support your market are typically very interested in working with new brands. Insights on where your market goes to get additional industry information / current events can be found by simply sending a simple survey (with an incentive!), asking your Customer Advisory Board or by having your CSMs or AEs ask customers of various sizes. Additionally, if you buyer is not present on digital channels, you may want to build an account list and the buyers at each organization and then execute targeted campaigns to each company -- including outbound and direct mail -- which can standout with minimal budget.

If you find that volume is sparse in digital channels like organic and paid, here are a couple suggestions:

1. Conferences

   Your prospects will always try to be leveling up. If they aren't using the world wide web for this, then they are attending their industry specific conferences. Experiment with trying a few different conferences in a calendar year just to determine if it's worthwhile to fish there.

2. Referrals

   Spin up a referral program and use the network of your existing customer base to spread the word on your behalf. Make sure you incentivize both the referrer and the referee.

3. Co-marketing webinars

   This is a very economical way to grow your audience. Find non-competitor companies that are also serving your prospects and ask them to do a co-marketing webinar with you. Set the precedent that you and they will promote the webinar to your own audiences and then share the registration and attendee lists afterwards.

4. Invest in building out your TAM (total addressable market)

   If they aren't using digital channels, chances are you are going to need to invest in ABM and sales outbound. Prior to doing this, put a lot of effort into identifying your TAM. Not only identifying the companies, but then enriching the accounts with useful information. Your going to need tools and resources like Zoominfo, Clearbit, Clay, and Virtual Assistants to get this done.

I always recommend meeting customers where they are - where they like to 'hang out.' Here are a few examples:

• Industry publications for ad placements
• Out-of-home advertising
• Connected TV advertising
• Field marketing for tradeshows
• Radio ad placements
• Direct mail with a tool similar to Sendoso
• Podcast advertising

There are many other ways to reach your customers, even if they're not on digital channels. The key is to meet them where they prefer to spend their time.