Cathy Lindsay asked:


Utilizing these few ways of advertising offline can be very beneficial in creating more visitors to your website.  If you don’t all ready use this strategy, consider implementing it into your business.  There are many potential customers out there just waiting to visit your site.  They just don’t know it yet. 

Passing out fliers can be very effective and also very expensive to have printed.  Creating  and printing them yourself can be a tremendous cost saver.  Make sure that your fliers will capture someone’s attention and keep them reading. You want them to stay interested. You may all ready know someone who needs a little extra cash that could pass them out for you if you don’t have the time.  Maybe even a trustworthy teenager in your neighborhood.  (There are places that will pay you ten cents or so a flier.  Just to give you an idea of how to pay someone.)  A mall parking lot is a good place to go and place them on cars.  Think of all the cars that are in a parking lot that size.  People do this often and it works.  

Business cards can also be very effective.  Match them to your fliers as best you can.  Pass them out everywhere you go.  Be aware of all the people that you come in contact with on a daily basis.  Such as the gas station, grocery store, the place you get coffee in the morning, etc…  How many of these people do you talk to?  Look for the opportunity to hand them a card and tell them to read it when they get time.  You can usually find a way in even the littlest conversations.

Postcards are another method that you can use.  Again, create your own and save money.  These are a little more difficult because they have to be mailed, which means that you need names and addresses to do this.  One way to get them is right out of the phone book. There are many people who all ready use this strategy.  For bulk shipping rates check your local postal service. 

Let’s talk about good, old fashioned word of mouth.  This is the first type of marketing ever used and is still going strong. 

Did you know that for years GNC’s only form of advertising was word of mouth?  They grew to be one of the most popular vitamin chains without any other form of marketing.  (They started using other means within the last eight years.) For a business to grow like this with only word of mouth is amazing.  This is probably the most powerful type of marketing in the world.

Think brilliance when you are creating your marketing products. You want to capture someone’s attention so intensely that they must read it in its entirety.  What would capture your attention?  If the person that is reading your flier/card doesn’t need the product or service that you are offering, there’s always a chance that they know someone who does.  If they liked what they saw they will pass it on, and then that person will pass it on, and so forth.  It will start a chain reaction that won’t stop.  You will be smiling all the way to the bank wondering why you hadn’t tried this before.

Felix Burke asked:

Traditional marketing methods are still a viable resource to engage customers, and you can use them to drive buyers to your online products as well!

Traditional marketing includes newspapers, magazines, catalogues, fliers, direct mail, business cards, radio and TV ads, and specialty products, such as pens with your logo. These communications have been successful since the printing press, and now they can enhance your online marketing. Here’s how.

Think of each of the traditional communications as your pre-sell for your online presence. Imagine that you have a vitamin product, particularly helpful for eye health. Place an ad, perhaps in a health magazine, that extols the benefits of the product and sends the buyers to your pitch page online for testimonials and to purchase. You have just used traditional marketing-the magazine–to direct buyers to an online purchase.

Here’s another great example. Imagine you are a CPA in business for yourself, and you’ve recently joined the Chamber Of Commerce. Attending one of their “Business After Hours” functions, you give out several of your business cards, and point out that more information about your services is available at your website. When a prospect visits your website, all your accreditations, education, awards, community service, family profile, and available services are front and center. Your site is easily navigable, and with each click, you are building credibility with the visitor. Although your product is your service, and that is done in person, traditional marketing-your business card–drives people to your website to pre-sell them, and predispose them to select you for a CPA.

Here’s yet one more example, to get your marketing juices flowing. Imagine you run a small local bakery which specializes in ten different kinds of pralines, shipped all over the U.S. Twelve weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, your brochures are sent to a large mailing list of former and prospective customers. Your brochure is beautifully appetizing, but it can’t hope to cover all the pertinent information for shipped orders, so customers are directed online. At your website, every kind of praline is pictured, and testimonials abound by satisfied customers from Maine to Oregon. You don’t take phone orders anymore, as every available worker is packing pralines, so all orders are done via the website. And how did your customers find you? Traditional marketing in the form of your brochure brought them to you.

Don’t abandon offline marketing in your online efforts, for you may well find that the sum of the two is mathematically even more profitable than either one alone!

Ben Curtis asked:


Traditional marketing methods are still a viable resource to engage customers, and you can use them to drive buyers to your online products as well!

Traditional marketing includes newspapers, magazines, catalogues, fliers, direct mail, business cards, radio and TV ads, and specialty products, such as pens with your logo.  These communications have been successful since the printing press, and now they can enhance your online marketing.   Here’s how.

Think of each of the traditional communications as your pre-sell for your online presence.  Imagine that you have a vitamin product, particularly helpful for eye health.  Place an ad, perhaps in a health magazine,  that extols the benefits of the product and sends the buyers to your pitch page online for testimonials and to purchase.  You have just used traditional marketing—the magazine– to direct buyers to an online purchase.

Here’s another great example.  Imagine you are a CPA in business for yourself, and you’ve recently joined the Chamber Of Commerce.  Attending one of their “Business After Hours” functions, you give out several of your business cards, and point out that more information about your services is available at your website.  When a prospect visits your website, all your accreditations, education, awards, community service, family profile, and available services are front and center.  Your site is easily navigable, and with each click, you are building credibility with the visitor.  Although your product is your service, and that is done in person, traditional marketing—your business card– drives people to your website to pre-sell them, and predispose them to select you for a CPA.

Here’s yet one more example, to get your marketing juices flowing.   Imagine you run a small local bakery which specializes in ten different kinds of pralines, shipped all over the U.S.   Twelve weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, your brochures are sent to a large mailing list of former and prospective customers.  Your brochure is beautifully appetizing, but it can’t hope to cover all the pertinent information for shipped orders, so customers are directed online.   At your website, every kind of praline is pictured, and testimonials abound by satisfied customers from Maine to Oregon.   You don’t take phone orders anymore, as every available worker is packing pralines, so all orders are done via the website.   And how did your customers find you?  Traditional marketing in the form of your brochure brought them to you.

Don’t abandon offline marketing in your online efforts, for you may well find that the sum of the two is mathematically even more profitable than either one alone!