Lee Roper asked:


So you’re out of town visiting a new city, and you go online to search for the hottest nightclub in the city. You finally think you have found it. The website is absolutely amazing. Lots of lights, a modern spin on the site, images of people crammed onto a dance floor, and even a limo outside the front door. Your write down the address, hop in the taxi and pull up to a hole in the wall when the driver tells you “That’ll be twelve bucks.” There is one small bar, the hanging neon sign is about to give out, and you can count the number of occupants on one hand.

This is an extreme example, but the last thing you want your online marketing to do is paint inconsistent picture from your offline marketing. Consistent marketing doesn’t mean that the colour on the walls is the same as the website background, and the logo on the front door is the same that’s at the top of the web page. If you want a high-end upscale site, then reflect the same offline. If you can’t quite get your offline location to match your amazing new flashy site, then tone down the e-marketing just a bit.

The first step in creating a consistent e-marketing presence is to know your industry. You don’t want your online presence to reflect that you don’t even know your own industry. Chances are, the feel of a nursing home site, is going to differ greatly from the new trendy lofts that just went up downtown. If you business caters to families, don’t design your online present to target individuals 18-24. Keep in mind that consumers already have their own idea of what image your industry should convey. You don’t want to veer too far off of that path unless you are prepared to take a huge change with your marketing strategy.

A great way measure your online marketing accuracy is by knowing your competition. Research the web presence that your competitors have already created. How is it working out for them? You may also want to look at competitors in other parts of the country. Look at main stream competitors as well as those in your class. How does their web presence differ? While you never want to create a site that looks identical or too close to a competitor the information that you gather from numerous competitors can be combined to create a top of the line, consistent marketing presence, both online and hopefully offline.

Also remember that online marketing can also be applied to search engine marketing (SEM). You want your site to be visible through the proper searches. Spending a lot of time and money on search engine marketing is only a waste if your site isn’t coming up with searches consistent to your industry. SEM can also be researched by searching for other businesses within your industry.

Make sure that when you’re combining your online and offline presence that you do stand out from the crowd. Chances are there is a sea of businesses within your industry with both a strong online and offline presence. But also make sure that when designing your site, you do not alienate yourself for being “too far out there”.

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?

Leon asked:

During the new year holidays, I stumbled upon an interesting post written by Andrew Cavanagh in the Warrior Forum. The post is about how to make money by selling your online marketing skills to businesses right in you local city. This post went completely insane with thousands of views almost immediately and all kinds of positive comments.

Andrew who has over 25 years of experience in developing small businesses also written a 50-page report called “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”. and sales. When I saw his new report, I grabbed it immediately not because of its introductory low price ($19.99) but the idea of selling our online marketing skills or services offline.

The idea of offline marketing is consistent with my thinking. Like I mentioned in my website before, most online marketers are glue to their PC all the time but there are a few smart ones who also spend their time doing networking offline. Because these people know that there are gold mines in the offline world. But, the question is… how do you promote and sell your online marketing skills offline?

If you’ve experience in building a small business before, perhaps you know that the average business owner is very busy just trying to keep his business running. He doesn’t have the time to take a long hard objective look at the way he could improve his marketing strategy. But he is also acutely aware that anything that can improve his net profits will help to keep his business more stable and put real cash in his pocket! Most small business owners are well aware that they can always find time for someone who’s genuinely interested in helping them to improve their businesses and they’re willing to pay for it.

Now if you’ve some basic online marketing skills and are willing to walk into a business and just have a casual conversation about how they can improve their sales using the Internet, a good percentage of them will listen. Of course, besides having some basic online marketing skills, you also need to learn how to talk to these business owners and understand their NEEDS. That’s why I find the report “Offline Gold For Online Marketers” so valuable because it outlines step-by-step how to approach small business owners so they want to listen to you and how to sell your services to them.

Here are some tips on where to find those small business owners and how to communicate with them…

I’m sure you’ve heard about Business Networking International (BNI). If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s basically a business and professional networking organization whose purpose is to provide a structured environment for the development and exchange of qualified business referrals. It’s the largest networking organisation of its kind in the world. I’m sure you can find them in your city.

They hold regular meeting for their members and if you know someone there, you can ask him/her to invite to join their meeting (for free). It’s a great avenue for you to get to know other entrepreneurs from different fields. Make sure you bring a lot of business cards if you attend one of their gatherings.

Just get to know people and have a casual conversation with them. My favorite technique to communicate with small business owners is to always remember to ask questions! For example, let’s say he/she asks you first, “what do you do for a living?”. My normal answer for that question is… “I have a home-based Internet business. How about you?”. Always remember to end your answer with a question. You need to get to know about your potential client and a great way to do this is to talk less and listen more (ie. ask more questions).

Ask them if their businesses currently have a website? Most of them don’t. For those who have websites, they have no idea what is online marketing and they have never made any sale from their websites. You must always in a position to gather information and seek the opportunity to talk about your services. Remember not to talk too much about yourself. Focus on your potential client. it’s enough to say that you have a home-based internet business and you also help small business owners to improve their businesses through online marketing. Ask them this question: “Do you think your business will do better if you have a website?”. Then LISTEN!

I hope this article has given you some great ideas on how to sell your online marketing skills offline. Click here to find out more about “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”.

Article Submitter asked:


If Business is to profit, then Marketing is to business. Since, without marketing, business is not possible whether it is done in any form. Even traditional business had some marketing tactics, be it delivery unto buyer place or flexibility in payment terms. Ultimately, what can turn on more business is often considered as marketing and its implementation after analysis of the situations from time to time can be termed as strategy. I often found, when you say strategy, people nod their head but when it comes to know what is strategy they loose the color of their face.

Strategy is a factor which construes marketing and marketing runs on strategy. What RCC beams are to a building  in the same manner strategy is for marketing .if one claims to be doing marketing without strategy then he may be fooling himself and more to others as without strategy in any manner , marketing is not possible.

The very next thing which comes is how to make strategies for marketing the product?

Before that, let us take some pain to understand what exactly is strategy. Strategy is nothing but understanding the basics of positioning a product, features and potential of product, strength and weakness of products, timely review of planning’s etc and then analyzing it to conclude with some parameters for selling the same product with respect to different zones and geographical areas, this result into strategy. Isn’t it very simple. If one makes simple strategy, he makes simple way to success in business.

After Strategy, What Next?

Then comes the real marketing play. Again, it is followed by another question how to and what can be the modes of marketing.

Lets us see which mode is required, when marketing modes option comes to be chosen for business:

Whether Online Marketing?

Whether Offline Marketing?

Before, discussing about advantages and dis-advantages as well as requirement of online marketing, let’s see the modes and strategies of offline marketing.

a. Direct Marketing

b. Telemarketing

c. Advertisement in TV

d. Campaign based advertisement in Radio.

e. Advertisement in public places, public transportation

f. Participation in Exhibitions & Trade Shows

g. Door to Door Marketing

h. Promotional campaigns

i. Discounts and offers

j. Referral Marketing

k. Public Relations

l. Print Media

M. sponsoring some events, sports etc.

The list can have much more to it, but the aforesaid are considered to be the prominent amongst any other options possible or available for any person.

So, after doing, still one requires any other mode of marketing, before we make a hasty decision, what if some online marketing options are just explored:

a. Contacting and Responding through Mail

B. Advertisement in Google, Yahoo

C. Advertisement through Ad brite

D. Advertisement in Blogs

E. Advertisement in most popular sites and portals

f. Article Marketing

g. Affiliate Marketing

h. Online Viral Marketing

i. Email Marketing

j. Activities in Forum & Social bookmarking

K. Linking with quality sites

l. Banner Exchange

m. Search Engine Optimization via Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Many more to be added, even in this sphere alone.

After referring to all, do you feel one is required and sufficient and if one is, then which one .Then I must answer that absolutely NOT, one cannot be a substitute for other, but both are required.

Because, Offline, marketing is very well known potential mode of marketing and will always be required but at the same only offline marketing will not do justice to your marketing, still don’t believe, then just check the truth as stated below:

a) Round the globe more than 50% business is carried out and communicated through mails which is online mode.

b) Corporates, SMEs, MNC all are dependant upon mail for communication.

c) Young generation is net savvy.

d) People are dependant upon websites to fulfill their basic necessities be it

1) jobs, 

2) accommodation,

3) buying and  selling

4) marriage

5) chatting

6) communication

7) outsourcing work

filing tax returns

9) gathering any information etc

10) on an average more than 50% business man and involved in international trade use B2b Portals to effect the business .

If this is the some eye opening facts , can still one keep away from online marketing ………….Now You Decide !