Why You Need To Integrate Your Online And Offline Marketing

December 8, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Business

Sharon Odom Fling asked:


There are many businesses that seem to have split in half. They have their traditional brick and mortar location, which relies on their traditional advertising and marketing strategies. Then, they have their online location, which operates based on an entirely different set of assumptions and strategies.

The fact that this has happened is understandable. The newer technology of the internet can seem radically different from traditional ways of doing business. Adopting new technology can invariably lead to some level of disconnect with other aspects of an endeavor and its routines.

Some people have gone so far as to intentionally create this division. They see their storefront as a means of doing business with one set of clients, and their website as a means of reaching another.

That approach, however, falls far short of being successful, and should be abandoned as soon as possible, whether it was intentionally implemented or was an accidental outgrowth of the way things “unfolded.” That’s because the distinction between those two groups of customers is becoming increasingly artificial.

The same person who may walk by a storefront this afternoon may very well be surfing the internet tonight. More and more people are relying on the internet to find information and places to spend their money on the products they need.

Demographically, those who use the internet do tend to be a little younger and tech savvy than those who don’t, but the overlap between “net customers” and “walk ins” is growing so rapidly the division no longer makes a great deal of sense.

As such, it is important for companies to understand that they can and should integrate their online and offline marketing strategies to work with one another in a mutually reinforcing way. There are specific tricks on both sides of the equation, of course, but in the bigger picture, marketing is marketing and one’s overall strategy should reflect that fact.

Does your business have on online presence? If so, is it successfully integrated with your other marketing strategies? Do the two elements feed off one another and work together to improve your bottom line?

If you are like many business operators, you probably answered “no” to those questions. If that is the case, it is time to consult with knowledgeable guides who understand marketing in both the traditional and online senses and who can help you devise a plan to put both aspects of your sales efforts on the same page.

Integrating online and offline marketing isn’t necessarily a complicated proposition. In fact, it can be relatively easy. It’s also effective. By combining the two elements into one seamless strategy, a business can obtain results that dwarf previous fragmented efforts.



Wonderful Offline Marketing Strategies

September 19, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Advertising

charen smith asked:


With the online world becoming ubiquitous, we forget about the potential of offline marketing as a powerful tool to help us promote our business. Even if you’re an online printing company for example, you can still make offline marketing work for you. Here are some classic offline marketing ideas that can help even an online printer to generate leads:

1-      Put up posters and give out flyers to every store, post office, grocery, bank, school and library, or anywhere else you can think of. Be sure to be on the lookout for community bulletin boards. Just make sure that you include your website and email address in your contact information.

2-      Include order forms and tear-out reply slips in your print brochures and color catalogs. Put your online printing website address so they can browse your list in the internet. Be sure to tell them about your easy-order-process using your website.

3-      Talk to local businesses if you can post flyers in their windows. Leave your business cards with local business owners, especially near the cash register.

4-      If you’re in business, you do travel. Before you check out, be sure to leave your collaterals either with the front desk or business center. What one business owner did was to leave a few of his product samples with the housekeeper as a form of tip.

5-      Another marketer gave out small care packages and gave them out at exhibits and events, along with his flyers, business cards, order forms and a reply envelope.

6-      An online printer made bags of goodies and attached his business card to seal it. Every time he attended an event or a seminar, or when he talked to other people, he gave out the bags so they would remember him even after the conversation.

7-      What Avon did was to host house parties to introduce their products to their target clients. There were snacks and games during the party, and the guests were given discounts on their first orders. The prizes during the games were items from the Avon product list.

8-      Design flyers and insert them in the local newspaper, newsletter and magazines.

9-      Do a fundraiser. Communicate with local organizations and community groups. Offer them a certain percentage from the sale.

10-     Go to the YellowPages and put an ad under your group.

11-     Hire teenagers and students to deliver your flyers and catalogs door-to-door on weekends or after class.

Finally, be sure to call your target clients and introduce your products and services. You can offer special discounts and free items if they go to your shop or make their first order. 

For comments and inquiries about the article visit Online Printing and Online Printer

Wonderful Offline Marketing Strategies

With the online world becoming ubiquitous, we forget about the potential of offline marketing as a powerful tool to help us promote our business. Even if you’re an online printing company for example, you can still make offline marketing work for you. Here are some classic offline marketing ideas that can help even an online printer to generate leads:

1-      Put up posters and give out flyers to every store, post office, grocery, bank, school and library, or anywhere else you can think of. Be sure to be on the lookout for community bulletin boards. Just make sure that you include your website and email address in your contact information.

2-      Include order forms and tear-out reply slips in your print brochures and color catalogs. Put your online printing website address so they can browse your list in the internet. Be sure to tell them about your easy-order-process using your website.

3-      Talk to local businesses if you can post flyers in their windows. Leave your business cards with local business owners, especially near the cash register.

4-      If you’re in business, you do travel. Before you check out, be sure to leave your collaterals either with the front desk or business center. What one business owner did was to leave a few of his product samples with the housekeeper as a form of tip.

5-      Another marketer gave out small care packages and gave them out at exhibits and events, along with his flyers, business cards, order forms and a reply envelope.

6-      An online printer made bags of goodies and attached his business card to seal it. Every time he attended an event or a seminar, or when he talked to other people, he gave out the bags so they would remember him even after the conversation.

7-      What Avon did was to host house parties to introduce their products to their target clients. There were snacks and games during the party, and the guests were given discounts on their first orders. The prizes during the games were items from the Avon product list.

8-      Design flyers and insert them in the local newspaper, newsletter and magazines.

9-      Do a fundraiser. Communicate with local organizations and community groups. Offer them a certain percentage from the sale.

10-     Go to the YellowPages and put an ad under your group.

11-     Hire teenagers and students to deliver your flyers and catalogs door-to-door on weekends or after class.

Finally, be sure to call your target clients and introduce your products and services. You can offer special discounts and free items if they go to your shop or make their first order. 



Online Vs Offline Marketing Strategies: Which is Best for Your Success?

September 14, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Brick And Mortar

Zack Miller asked:


Network marketing and MLM businesses have been around for decades. The pioneers of the network marketing industry were Amway and Avon. They are mostly responsible for all of the offline marketing strategies that are still used today. They had to because the internet was not invented yet. Most if not all network marketing, MLM, home based businesses, affiliate marketing and direct marketing businesses have an online presence today. However, most of them are still using offline marketing strategies, even in light of the internet. So the question is, which is better, offline marketing or online marketing?

Offline Marketing

Most businesses have the, “if it is not broken don’t fix it”, motto and continue to use offline marketing as their main form of marketing. The first and most popular offline marketing strategy consists of getting your friends and family involved. This strategy is most successfully achieved through hotel meetings, conference calls and home parties. With this strategy, your market is a local one. Also you have to go out and find your prospects. The second most popular is buying leads from leads companies. This strategy involves calling complete strangers and using your phone sales skills to get prospects to know like and trust you instantly, in order to join your business. This strategy involves hours of phone time and is all about numbers. Once again, you are going out and finding prospects. The third, and most popular, is telling everyone that you see and come in contact with about your business. This strategy runs on the, you never know who might be interested and it’s all about the numbers game. Once again you’re going out and finding prospects. Other forms of offline marketing strategies involve: business cards, postcards, flyers, car wraps and more. These are the main offline marketing strategies that most companies and entrepreneurs implement in their business. The two main problems with offline marketing is saturation and you have to find the prospects.

Online Marketing

Very few network marketing and MLM companies and distributors market their businesses online. Most business owners that use offline strategies say that online marketing strategies will not work with their business model. Or they say that online marketing is to in personal. However Online marketing is the best way to put your

business, products, services and brand in front of the biggest audience in the world. That audience is called the Web. The Web has a market of over 1.5 billion people in 100 English speaking countries. It can be accessed from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. You can work your business in your underwear at home or on a beach in a tropical paradise and still reach the world. With online marketing strategies, such as article marketing, video marketing, social media marketing and more, prospects find you. Also once you put the content online, if done right, it will drive tons of traffic and leads to your site forever. With these types of strategies you are able to flood the marketing with your content. This in turn will brand you as the expert, not your company.

I, myself have used both strategies offline and online at one point in my career. Through the trial and error, I prefer and will always prefer online marketing strategies. My reasons are simple. You can reach a larger market from anywhere. All you need is a cell phone and laptop. You can avoid the saturation effect that offline marketing usually creates. Another reason is with the content you put online. It will drive traffic back to your site forever. Do the work right once and it continues to pay you. The last reason is, I don’t have to go and find people. People find me through the content I put out there and they instantly know, like and trust me because of it.

Which do you prefer online or offline marketing and why?



Home Based Business – Offline Marketing Strategies

September 12, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Home Business

MarketingStrategyStreenSign

Jeff Casmer asked:

The Internet has become the largest medium of communication; and has presented a lot of business opportunities.

Online home based business owners tend to limit themselves to online marketing methods. Nevertheless, there is a huge potential to promote your home based business through some cost effective offline marketing strategies.

So what are the most effective offline marketing strategies for your home based business?

1. Word of mouth in your circle of influence Word of mouth is one of the best free advertising channels. We all have people we interact with on a daily basis, and these are potential customers. Make a list of all the people you know or interact with and how can you best tell them about your internet business. Be passionate about your internet business and always be prepared to tell someone about it when an opportunity to do so presents itself!

2. Mail-out newsletters and flyers Mail-out newsletter or flyers can be effective if you target it to a specific ‘group’. You could create one to distribute to local day care centers just as an example – and in your newsletter or flyer, highlight the benefits of an online business to the targeted group, for example earning money at home for stay at home moms or dads. Posting your home based business URL on bulletin boards can also be effective.

3. Use and give away free branded ‘stuff’ You can promote your business by having your URL on all your stationery, all written communication and other items you can give away for free. If you want to get a lot of people to know about your home based business, you will need to come up with some creative ways of promoting your URL. You can be limited only by your imagination. Have your business cards with your home based business URL. Give them out to people you meet, leave them about where you can, such as in your local coffee shop.

4. Newspapers and magazines Local newspapers are good for advertising your online business. Most local papers have ‘home business opportunities’ section, so you run a regular classified advert. In addition, contact your local newspaper or business-oriented magazine and let the business editor know you have a new business and web site and what you offer. Local newspapers are frequently interested in featuring local business people and their accomplishments. This is free advertising and should always be used. You can also contact your local magazine and offer to write a monthly or weekly guest column for them, and include your ‘author bio’ and home based business URL.

5. Joint ventures with offline business You can get into a joint venture partnership with an offline business which sells a complementary product or service to your home based business. If you can identify a partner that best fit your business, this is an important offline marketing strategy that can help you succeed in your home based business by enabling you to reach potential customers that you could not reach before. As an example, if you have a website selling fitness/health products or tips, you could prepare a leaflet and make a deal with an offline local fitness/health shop where they giveaway your leaflet to their shoppers with each purchase. The offline marketing strategies strategies outlined above can help you grow your home based business.

Simple Offline Marketing Strategies To Boost Website Traffic

May 23, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Home Business

Jeff Flow asked:


When you begin your Internet business many people will tell you that in order to get your website noticed, you must get your site optimized for the search engines. They stress that this is the most important thing to consider. However, as soon as you get your site optimized, Google changes its search engine and you lose your page rank.

Instead of focusing solely on optimizing your website for the search engines consider using several simple offline strategies to get your site noticed.

Some of the most successful people on the Internet use simple strategies to get people to visit their website that don’t involve strategies that solely depend on the Internet. One study reveals to us most people go to an Internet address (URL) after having read it in a newspaper or magazine, been given it by a friend or colleague, or having heard it being mentioned by someone speaking at a meeting or on TV. In other words, it seems that significant numbers of people who get to your web site will do so having heard the URL somewhere outside the Internet.

You don’t have to be ranked high in the search engines to get people to visit your website site. Here are two simple ways that you can market your website offline.

1. Write articles for use in regular publications – newspapers, magazines and so on. Always include your URL in the article and you’ll get millions of people to notice your web site address. 2. Speak at every opportunity. Make presentations to business clubs, chambers of commerce, local societies – you name it, you should speak at it. Every time you speak, announce or your web site address. Although these are the two principal ways of gaining offline publicity for your web site, don’t neglect your business stationery, posters, car stickers and so on. The more your web site address is visible outside the web, the more visitors you will get regardless of how kind the search engines are to you.

The most important thing to remember is that the more links that are out there, the more traffic you will get. Add these simple offline strategies to your marketing arsenal. Keep working hard and smart. God loves you.