If you own and operate an online business, it would be quite myopic to exclusively focus on online marketing methods to promote your enterprise.  Granted that the World Wide Web is home to some amazing and cost-effective ways that can help spread the word about your business, the World Wide Web remains as just one avenue for you to exploit.  There is a more promising avenue that has been neglected since the advent of the internet.

 

This is the offline market.

 

Below are 5 simple but highly effective offline marketing methods that you can implement for your online business.

 

Distributing items that prominently display your URL.  Coffee mugs, caps, shirts, and even bumper stickers.  Surely, you’ve seen such items that displayed a particular URL, right?  Can you remember how intrigued you were when you encountered them?  Perhaps you may still remember the URL you saw back then?  Such is the power of this method.

 

Distributing media kits for the press people.  Press people are always on the lookout for things to write about.  Make things easy for them by distributing press kits that consist of: an expertly written press release about your company or about an event that affects your company, a profile of your business, a list of prominent clients/customers, a list of awards received, your complete product line, and other similar details.

 

Conducting seminars, symposiums and workshops.  What better way to promote your website – something that is often viewed with the negativity caused by the prevalent anonymity on the internet – than by providing the public with the face of your business: yours.  By making yourself visible and displaying your expertise in events that call for the same, such as seminars, symposiums and workshops related to the field you are concentrating on, you’ll be able to build your name in the industry, and consequently, you will be able to build the brand of your business.

 

Advertise in your dailies and magazines.  Yes, it will cost some money, but advertising on print publications is not as expensive as it may initially seem to most folks.  You don’t need full page ads or double-paged spreads.  You won’t even need a quarter of a page.  You will need an eighth of a page at the most.  Based on experience, the best type of print ad that you can run is a simple display of your website’s URL.  Imagine white font on black background and you’ll see how such an ad will stand out.  Because of the dearth in details, people will be intrigued and they will log online to check out your site to see what it’s about.

 

Sponsor charity events.  Most of these events will prominently display their sponsors’ logos on the advertising materials they will use.  Instead of your business’ logo, ask that your website’s URL be displayed instead.  The exposure your link will receive via this method can potentially be immense.  Imagine a charitable event on a national, if not a global, scale, and you will begin to imagine the sheer potency of this technique in action.

Don’t confine yourself to the online world.  Expand your horizons!  Think outside of the box!  Advertise your online business in the real world!

 

Go offline!

 

How many times have you heard veteran internet marketers mutter those suggestions?  They are, in fact, correct in their assessment.  Though there are 50 million people online at any given time, the fact remains that the internet only has a 37% *********** rate, meaning, the World Wide Web remains a big mystery to majority of the people in the planet.

 

Simply put, the internet may seem like a big place, but it is quite miniscule compared to the offline world.  The offline audience is a hungrier market that has yet to become numb to the marketing tactics of online businessmen.  They are likelier to provide a higher conversion rate for your online business.

When marketing offline, your efforts should take heed of these 3 very critical points:

 

You must realize that the entire world is not your audience.  Just because there are 6.5 billion people on Earth doesn’t mean each and every one of them is a potential customer.  The product or service you are planning to sell definitely targets a particular market.  Pinpoint that market so that your marketing efforts will focus on the same.  Advertising to a broad audience is much akin to blind marketing, producing poor results with wayward efforts and wasted resources.

 

You must be able to determine where you can find the members of your target audience.  Once you have pinpointed your target audience, you must do some research to know where to find them.  This will help you pinpoint advertisement avenues that will provide the most visibility for your offline marketing campaign.  Narrowing down the focus of your marketing efforts will also keep your advertising costs more manageable.  It’s useless advertising in a nationally circulated newspaper, for example, when you’re just targeting residents in the greater Los Angeles area.  The former will be needlessly more expensive.

 

You must be able to find sufficient motivation for people to go online and check out your website.  Most of the people you will be able to reach aren’t well versed when it comes to the internet.  They may be familiar with the basics, but the fact that you have failed to reach them online means that they spend most of their time in the real world.  The challenge that confronts offline marketers, hence, is this: how can they motivate people to go online to check out their websites?  Provide an engaging, if not exciting, catch with your offline ads.  Sponsor a contest.  Promise some freebies.  Make some guarantees.  Do what you must to win their attention, their interest, and their conviction to actually boot up their PCs and log online to check out your business.