If you are trying to promote your business offline, you can move in either of these two directions:

You can take the conventional route to promotion and mount an elaborate media campaign, spending a considerable amount of money. Or,

You can let your creative juices flow and mount a low-cost promotion effort, using a potpourri of attention-getting strategies to bring your message to the buying public.

Conventional advertising is valuable. If your enterprise is large enough or if you are selling numerous product lines, you may find that a full-fledged media campaign is the most efficient and cost effective way to promote your business.

If you are on a tight budget, however, or if you are not sure you can repay the heavy cost of a media campaign over a period of time, the following is a assortment of low-cost offline advertising techniques you can try.

Not all may be appropriate for your particular business, and certainly it would be costly to try them all. But you are sure to find some ideas that will work effectively for you and your purpose.

1. Parties.

Everyone loves a party. And everybody goes to parties.  Why not celebrate the anniversary of your business or some special holiday by offering baked goods and beverages?

If you are running a service business, perhaps you can offer an open house or obtain a small banquet room in your community. Besides refreshments, be sure the place is brightly decorated.

2. Seminars.

In this information hungry age, people love to receive advice, especially about their personal needs and hobbies.

If you sell health foods or run fitness classes, perhaps you can offer "wellness" seminars during lunchtime to your area's business community.

If you are an interior decorator, perhaps you can offer one-hour decorating workshops to any group of ten people who will gather in someone's home.

If you are running a printing business, perhaps you can offer tours and layout seminars at your plant.

With a bit of persistence, you may be able to arrange to have a local media celebrity, public official, or entertainment personally-even a fictitious cartoon character or clown be a part of your seminars.

The celebrity can sign autographs, read stories to children, perform cooking demonstrations, or perform any one of a hundred other traffic-building activities.

3. Magazines.

For free advertising space, many publications will write an article about you or your product if you purchase advertising space with them.

One way publications sell advertising space is to agree that if the advertiser purchases the ad, he will also receive a certain amount of free editorial space.

This free editorial space essentially doubles the amount of space you get for a given amount of money. It is also devoted to an article about the company or individual or product, and it has the added cachet of seeming to be work of an outside source.

4. Community service.

Nothing brings you to the attention of the people faster-or more favorably-than community service. Ask yourself how your enterprise can be a "good neighbor" to your community.

If you are running a lawn care and gardening service, perhaps you can offer one season's services at no charge to a needy charitable organization or nursing home in your area.

Hundreds of people will hear about your work in the process.
Volunteer for various community causes. If appropriate, you can step in during community emergency, offering your products and services to help an organization or individuals in need.

5. Badges and novelties.

You can easily and inexpensively produce badges, bumper stickers, book covers, and other types of novelty items for distribution in your area.

You can imprint your business name and the first names of the customers on many of these products at little cost and distribute them for free.

Or you can tie your novelty program into a contest. Once a month, you can offer a prize to any individual whose car happens to carry one of your bumper stickers or badges with peel-off coupons, redeemable at your place of business.

Advertise in any way you can think of. You just have to invest a bit of time and energy in the project, but the payoff will be worth it.

You will save hundreds-or even thousands-of advertising dollars. Better yet, you will travel a well-worn shortcut to profit.