Oli Osorhan asked:


1. Answering Machine – This one is easy for offline marketing, just be sure to include your URL, dot.com in your answering machine messages!

2. Address Labels  – Again easy all your outgoing mail for everything use your address labels for more offline marketing of your business and website!

3. Business Cards – Definitely use them, get in the habit of carrying them with you and pass them out “It Works”, you can even get you cards done on cd-roms!

4. Company vehicles – We all see vehicles with company names and telephone numbers on them driving our streets and motorways. This is a great idea as it gives potential customers the chance while out and about to learn about the company and also learn about how to contact them should they need the service or product they offer at some stage in the future. I often wonder why more websites aren’t promoted in this way by simply adding the company website URL also, you definitely should do this as part of your Offline Marketing!

5.  Flyers – Post flyers on free local bulletin boards (grocery stores, discount chain stores, shopping malls, laundromats, dry cleaners, etc.) print a flyer on bright yellow paper detailing your web address and your company. BE SURE to include your email address, URL as well as your telephone number! Tack the flyer to bulletin boards all over your town. Keep a supply in your car for handy offline marketing!

6.  Freebies & Giveaways – This method is a personal favorite of mine. It involves purchasing and distributing items such as pencils, pens, t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, calendars, key-chains, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets and the like. All these items will have your URL, Logo, or Email address located somewhere on them helping to market offline and attract people to your website.

7.  Christmas Cards – Use your Christmas cards to all your customers also for offline marketing with all your info URL, email and phone numbers!

8.  Checks & Coupons – Again use all your information when using coupons and have your company checks printed with this information!

9. Web decals – are a new, inexpensive and fun way to use offline marketing and attract attention to your website. People absolutely love them, and they are very simple to use. Web decals are made of high quality vinyl and printed with state of the art digital equipment. Display your website address and more in bold white or black & white letters. People stick them everywhere. In your car windows, store, office and home windows, any place with glass!

10. Word of Mouth – easiest and a very viral form of offline marketing, your happy customers and friends just pass it on!

11. Fax cover sheets – (many people forget this one for offline marketing!)

12. Personal brochures – about you and your company!

13. Printed Material – Print your URL (Web site address) everywhere you print your business name. Including business cards, fliers, signage, ads, product tags, labels, craft show directories (in shows you may be attending) and anywhere else your business name is printed!

14. Newspapers, classifieds and related magazines – The print media which includes newspapers, journals and magazines is another avenue where your can have your URL exposed for everyone to see. It’s best first to start advertising your products, services and URL in local newspapers and then if successful continue onto regional and national publications. If you can’t afford the common graphical advertisement as seen throughout newspapers and journals related to your industry don’t worry as most of these publications have classified ad sections. Classified ads allow you to reach a targeted audience very cheaply with a simple short message and of course your URL is included in there somewhere too again a great source of offline marketing for your business!

15. Press releases – Press releases using them for offline marketing and promotion. Press releases or news releases as they’re sometimes known are newsworthy stories about your business that you send to various sections of the media. These sections of the media must be related to your industry for you to have any chance of success. Newsworthy stories are stories which readers of the media publications you submit to might be interested in.

If the journalist reads it and likes it he or she may publish it or some of its contents in his or her publication, if this happens you’re on to a winner because the public in general are much more responsive to a news story than a plain old hyped up advertisement. This could mean they’ll enquire about or even purchase your products or services.

Using press releases for offline marketing of your website uses the same principals, if it’s newsworthy release it. Newsworthy events for websites include website launches, website re launches and new online services among other items. Also don’t forget online press releases!

16. I. ID-It Plates – These Elegant mini-Billboards promote YOU 365 days a year, enhance the appearance of your vehicles, last for years and most important, give you literally Millions of Impressions  and affordable offline marketing over their lifetime.

Conclusion – Even if your business only exits in the virtual world you must realize ALL your customers live and always will live in the physical world and therefore can be reached much better from the physical world. The moral of the story is never ever forget about the offline marketing and promotion of your website. Your success or failure could depend on it!

http:www.moneybizhome.com/marketing_articles

 

Lucien Bechard asked:


There is a lot of buzz going around the network marketing industry lately about online vs. offline marketing and which concept is better. The top leaders from each industry have been strongly stating their case as to why their concept is better. Both sides have strong and valid points that make it very tough to decide which one is better. But what if you didn’t have to choose a side? What if you could become involved with both of them?

Before we delve into this further let’s take more of a look into both industries.

Offline marketing & Direct Selling companies have been around since the beginning of time. It all started back in the day with people going door to door to pitch and sell their products. Companies such as Amway, and Mary Kay created a massive boom in the industry using the techniques of door to door selling. People in the 80’s and 90’s started learning the concepts of residual income and became really excited about the income potential this could bring to their lives. They started jumping on the bandwagon and began pitching their products and companies to everyone they came in contact with. There were a select few that made a tremendous amount of income from the direct selling craze, but most people ended up with nothing. A lot of people not only lost a lot of money, but they also had their dreams shattered along with it.

That’s when people started having a negative taste in their mouth about the direct selling industry. Terms such as “pyramid scheme” and “scam” began to surface.

The trends started to shift in the late 90’s. People started to become turned off to the concept of direct selling. They didn’t like bothering their friends and family. They weren’t interested in going to seminars and buying products they didn’t need. The direct selling industry now had a bad rap.

But here’s the key thing to remember. The concept and idea of residual income still stayed strong. Residual income wasn’t the “pyramid scheme” and it wasn’t a “scam.” Despite what people thought about the direct selling industry, no one could ever say anything negative about residual income. People still desired to have the lifestyle that residual income produced. They just didn’t like the way they had to go about achieving it.

Residual income never has and never will be a negative concept. The way people go about achieving residual income has become what’s negative. It’s a solid concept that most people still desire to have.

Now let’s flash forward to Internet boom. Ever since the Internet craze has hit the industry people have become inundated with business opportunities everywhere they go. People are being pulled in every different direction and they don’t know which way to turn.

The social media craze is causing such a stir throughout the industry. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are taking over the Internet. If you go on any one of those sites, you will see that they are just one big “pitch fest.” Everyone is selling something, no matter if they are involved in online or offline marketing. They have a message they want to tell and they want you to hear it.

Everywhere people go on these sites they are being sold on business opportunities to “work from home,” “no meetings involved,” “no bothering friends and family,” and “no lotions or pills to sell.” 90% of the work will be done for them they are told. Terms like “pre-launch,” “get rich quick,” ‘join now,” ‘reserve your spot” have taken the industry by storm. Every time people log into their email, they get spammed by every Internet marketer on the planet telling them how great their business is.

So here’s where the crazy cycle has begins. Offline & Direct Marketers vs. Online Marketers. The tug of war has become heated.

Offline marketers believe in the old school network marketing principles of “making a list of friends and family,” “contacting them,” “showing them their opportunity,” and then “following through.” They believe in the human touch approach. They still hold motivational seminars, dream building sessions, strategy meetings, and cold call sessions like they did in the 80’s and 90’s.

They do network a little bit on the social media sites but most people don’t know what they are doing. They aren’t receiving any training from their up lines on how to brand themselves and market their business online. Also, most of the top offline companies have restrictions about their distributors using online marketing methods to promote their business. The distributors hands are tied.

Here’s where the struggle is taking place with offline companies and why they are losing most of their distributors to online companies. Most of these companies are on the verge of being wiped out because they are still stuck in the olden days of running a business. They are not with the times. Their philosophies of running a business are sound, they even have strong moral principles, but they are being buried by the Internet. Internet marketers are stealing these distributors away in droves and the people that are left are stunned when their down lines are wiped out.

Online marketers have a laser targeted focus on playing to the emotions of offline marketers. Their goal is to target all offline marketers and play off of the negative emotions they are facing with their current business. “The grass is greener on the other side” is what they portray.

With online marketing everything is automated with very little human touch. Online marketers just want people to enter their information into their “capture” page and then proceed to blast peoples email addresses with auto-responder messages hoping to play the law of averages. They know that if they can get their message to enough people, the law of averages will end up working in their favor.

“The money is in the list!” That holds true in both online marketing and offline marketing. It’s all about “the list.”

After reading this and seeing both sides of the fence, neither side seems appealing does it?

That’s because they aren’t working together! There is no “Synergy” working against each other.

That’s why you should incorporate both online and offline marketing methods into your businesses.

First of all, human contact is still the most important element in both online and offline marketing. Human contact is the key to having long term and lasting success in the network marketing industry. People want to do business with other people, not with a computer.

Online marketers can only hide behind the Internet for so long before their businesses will crumble. If online marketers want to become true leaders and have huge businesses, they have to incorporate human touch into their business.

If online marketers want to truly become successful, they need to still fill their minds with positive information through motivational cd’s and seminars, dream building sessions, and strategic planning sessions with other mentors.

Offline marketers have been teaching these principles for years and they are even more relevant in today’s world. Today more than ever, people want to be in business with someone they can trust. People still need guidance and mentorship from other leaders. Online marketers can learn a lot from offline marketers on how they build a business. The principles offline marketers use to build a business are sound and are still the basis by which a business should be built.

Let’s talk about what offline marketers need to do to get with the times before it’s too late. There’s no denying that the Internet has changed how business is being done. The social media giants are not going away and neither is online marketing. It’s only going to get bigger. Offline marketers need to start learning how to brand themselves and their businesses on the Internet if they want to succeed in today’s world. If offline marketers don’t learn how to market their businesses and brand themselves using the major social media outlets, they are going to get eaten alive very quickly.

There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity that’s come with the social media boom, but there’s a very limited amount of time people have left to learn how to capitalize on it.

If people get the right training they need now and learn how to use the Internet to build and market their business, they will become very wealthy.

It’s important to catch and ride the Internet and Social Media wave now before it’s too late! If you incorporate human touch in the process you will be a top leader that everyone turns to.

If people learn to combine the personal human touch, strong moral principles and philosophies of offline marketing, along with the momentum of the social media giants and the power of online marketing, they will become a part of history.

To learn how to effectively combine both online and offline marketing strategies to create “The Perfect Synergy” visit