Deep Arora asked:


Starting an online business is easy, but attracting ever increasing traffic is not! Dont think you are alone in this. The ongoing quest to drive traffic to your site is one that is necessary for all and sundry. The cost incurred in marketing the site with every possible online opportunity can become quite hefty. Sometimes the more traditional offline methods can provide inexpensive and ingenious way is to churn out new marketing initiatives for your online business.

Offline marketing shouldnt be seen as outdated, in fact it is sweeping through the online community. If you are looking for something innovative to add to your marketing mix, then focusing and developing an offline strategy may be the solution you are after. Firstly, know your target audience and then work out on the modes of communication that they remain in touch with, in their daily life. Once you know these modes are available to you for offline marketing, you can develop attractive advertisements and calculate the cost incurred in carrying this out. To consider a few offline marketing modes, read on!

o Radio Shows. Amidst numerous radio channels on air, theres no such thing as information being obscure. The advantage with the radio advertising format is that listeners tune in regularly, while on the go, in shops, their car, at work and so on. The broadcasters are constantly searching for fillers in their shows, hence providing you the opportunity to slot your advertising in. With radio make your ad short and crisp, memorable is the key with this advertising format. Radio is still one of the most effective and relatively inexpensive advertising formats; and there is always space between shows for the advertisers to speak on.

o Print Media. Putting out attractive and creative ads in magazines and newspapers can truly work wonders. The print media reaches out to more people than you might expect. Hence, your message, and in this case your website can be more effectively promoted. When developing print advertising, make the language very target centric, you want to really grab the attention of the target audience. In particular you should look out for publications that are related to your field and the segment of people who read them.

o Mail Packages. Developing a list of people who may find your site interesting is the key to this step. Once you have the crucial element, then the next step is to design an attractive envelope for your mail package, or go for a postcard. Think of exciting offers that may intrigue the receiver to investigate your products and services further, after all these are what will get people to visit your website. Offering easy ways to reach you and learn more about your business is the key here. Let potential customers discover the benefits of going through you and not through your competitors. Create the whole package as consumer centric. This means demonstrate that you understand and know your audience, interesting them and drawing them in so they want to know more of the details on your product and how it benefits them. The cost incurred in the mail campaign may be no more than the cost of printing the materials and the stamps. For this reason the postcard style option has become increasingly popular.

o Event Promotion. Invariably, there is always one event or another taking place in the metropolitan cities at any time. Be on the look out for ways to use these events to your advantage. Be focused and select an event that will attract more of the audience you wish to target. Once you have narrowed down the event you feel is relevant, prepare a marketing strategy that correlates to the event activities. Perhaps you could get leaflets printed with details of your site, in particular, the URL or the link you want them to visit. Get articles like pens, diaries or magnets printed with your website URL on them and distribute these. Human nature is such that people cant resist these things, and they can very quickly put your brand in the mind of the target market, when the person sees the message every time they write or look for a piece of paper and so on.

You should develop a strategy for offline marketing just as you would with online marketing. The elements are more or less the same, lets face it offline marketing is where these elements originated. So take the time to utilize these opportunities and target the potential market you want to get to your online site. Making the effort will pay dividends, and placing your business so that you get more traffic is the whole point of getting your marketing strategy rolling.

M.L. Petersen asked:


I’ve always been impressed with those who could who could find ways of doing things other than the traditional ways. I’m referring to the promotion of an internet business or affiliate marketing business. No, I’m not going to discuss blogging, web 2, or article marketing, although they are excellent ways of marketing you online business. Some marketers are actually using offline marketing to promote their online business.

Two questions surface immediately.

1. How can offline advertising be as effective when online marketing can potentially reach many thousands more people than offline.

2. If offline promotions work, what do I do? How do I start. TV advertising reaches a lot of people. TV advertising is also very expensive. We probably won’t start our offline promotions with TV.

The first method of offline promotions and quite possibly continues to be the best is word of mouth. We still give a lot of credibility to what a friend says and tend to be more comfortable with a recommendation from someone we know.

Actually we are bombarded with hundreds of offline advertisements daily. If we watch TV we see ads, if we listen to the radio we hear advertisements. The news paper is full of ads as well as any magazines we read. If we park at a shopping mall and enter the mall there is a good chance we will be handed a business card by someone and then when we return to our car there may be a flier on the windshield. Driving home we see billboards calling our attention to a particular business asking us to visit their URL for more information. When we open our mail we see a postcard urging to us to visit a special site online. We open a envelope and find out how easy it is to restore our credit.

The reason we get bombarded like this is that ofline advertising still works.

Given the many forms of offline marketing, we will consider 4 ways we can effectively use offline promotions. Keep in mind that how you market and who you market too has a lot to do with the results obtained. You may not want to put advertising signs on your vehicle and park it at an old folks home.

1. The first way to consider promoting off line is with business cards. You will probably have business cards even if your aim is not necessarily off line promotions. A lot of information can be placed on a business. After listing the benefits of your promotion state that a free report can be obtained by visiting http:// www.mypromotion.org and that would lead to your splash page.

2. Fliers are another excellent and low cost way of promoting your affiliate program offline. It is probably best to stay with the standard 8 ½ X 11 colorful sheet. A lot of information can be placed on this size paper with room for some images. This may also be an opportunity to be creative. You want to attract enough attention for the recipients to look at it. If you intend to distribute the fliers to cars in a parking lot it is always best to find out if that is ok. Locate community bulletin boards in your area and place a flier there from time to time. With fliers you can keep the cost down by printing only the number you plan to use at that time.

3. Consider placing small ads in the local newspapers. The area I live in has several limited circulation news papers often directed to different interest groups. In some rural areas these free newspapers may be the only ones read. Using small classified ads it is important to find a way to track response. Different ads need to be test for effectiveness as a “good” ad can make a big difference. This holds true for all forms of advertising, test to determine which ad wording gives the best results.

4. Post cards are used by many offline marketers very effectively. A well designed post card sent to an address that could use the information will bring results. I know with printing costs, addressing and postage costs using post cards is more expensive than the other methods we have been discussing. Using post cards for your offline promotion you will need a mailing list. There are many list brokers available. Selecting a list is very important. Find out as much as you can. For instance, you would want to avoid sending to a list of people that did not have computers.

The above is only some of the ways offline promotions can assist your online marketing. You may not want to use all of these methods. Pick one or two that you enjoy doing and give you good results.

Jon Harrison asked:

Companies have and are increasingly moving their marketing budgets to internet marketing and search engine optimisation. The main reason for this is natural progression due to people using the internet more and more every year.

Due to the large increase of broadband users last year and the predicted increase over the next 5-10 years people are taking search engine optimisation and internet marketing more seriously and spending more money on it. The main cause of this is the competition between the big broadband suppliers driving down the price. With more people having fast internet access it allows them to spend more time on the internet going from site to site in minutes seeing dozens of sites. It is also proven that most of the users go through search engines to find their results so it is important to have your site visible there.

Offline marketing is becoming less effective due to several reasons. One of the reasons is the over use of telesales, this has happened over years which has meant that they are less effective now as people are less willing to listen to what the sales person has to offer. People are also purchasing more online so are not going to stores and shops, which means that no matter how much you advertise for a store offline it is losing sales to online websites.

The older more traditional techniques like using leaflets, newspaper advertisements, billboards etc are becoming less affecting due to; people not reading them and reading online newspapers, people not seeing the billboards due to not going near the shops and purchasing online and putting the leaflets straight in the bin with out reading them due to so many irrelevant ones.

As more and more sites go online and the more complex the search engines get, it is harder and harder to rank on the big search engines which also means more time and money has to be put into getting high rankings. However, this pays off as there are more users so you should see more sales for your money. Companies are realising this and concentrating on gaining and not losing trade to online competition.

Search engine optimisation has developed over the years in line with the development of the search engines. This means more research has to be done by the search engine optimisation consultants to allow them to provide the best results for their clients. This can only be done by people investing more money into it and this would only be provided if their where customers to purchase goods and services to make it worth while. So this shows that people are moving their marketing priorities to online.

Some companies split their budget in different ways for their internet marketing and one way is to pay search engine optimisation consultants to deal with it for you. This is affective when using the correct company and you will see results but the problem is there are a lot of con artists also offering the service. The other option is to employ an in house search engine optimisation consultant which will run things from inside the company. A lot of companies have chosen to do this as this allows them to keep control. The problem with this is that the in house consultant may soon get out of date with their techniques if they don’t get enough time to do their research.