Joseph Ratliff asked:


We live in a world of borders, don’t we?

There is a border between the USA and Canada…between the USA and Mexico…and so forth. Yet we continue as a society to visit both of those countries all the time.

So let’s apply this to today’s lesson…

There is a border between an online business and an offline business. This exists because of a variety of factors like the types of products sold, the people who sell them, and other factors.

But should there be a border at all?

Let’s share an example…

An online membership site sells its memberships on the typical “Free, upgrade to silver or platinum membership” model. Upfront, this membership offers a free 50 page report on a niche industry to generate leads through an opt – in page. This membership site offers this report plus the “free” membership with limited benefits.

Then it sells it’s upgraded memberships with all the bells and whistles like business packages specific to the niche industry, audio’s that give the “golden nuggets” of info, and maybe even video to “take you by the hand” and walk you through business improvement techniques.

To market this…the membership site owner might use article marketing, Pay Per Click, forum marketing, etc…

All the online marketing techniques we are familiar with.

But there is a better way, and I suggest you add this methodology to your online marketing model today. Notice I did not say to stop marketing online at all, as all of the aforementioned techniques work great when done correctly.

But the most productive way to market your online business is… offline!

That’s right, offline marketing. Direct mail, newspaper editorial – style advertisements, word of mouth offline, face to face networking, public speaking, print newsletters, etc…

I cannot go into detail about how to use each one of these techniques in this one post…but look for future posts to cover these topics.

But one question that is probably rattling inside your head is…

“Why do these techniques work better than online marketing?”

Well…that answer is multi – part to which I will present three ideas here:

1. Typically, online business owners view the Internet as the end – all of marketing their online business…and it simply isn’t. It is only one media used to market a business.

2. Audience. One example…the majority that read the newspaper do so with a different mindset. They are not the typical freebie – seeking, distracted, multi – tasking (when surfing the ‘net), individual that is using the internet. Instead, they are more focused on what is in front of them.

3. Distraction. I mentioned this in part 2 of my answer, but in detail…there are a number of distractions that present themselves on the Internet that simply are not present when someone is reading the mail, the newspaper, attending a face to face conference (congrats to those online marketers that figured that one out) etc…

There are certainly more reasons in support of offline marketing for your online business. I would encourage you to leave a comment to this post one way or another.

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. 

Jason Wolf asked:


Promote Your Internet Business Offline!

Yes you heard me correctly. Promote your internet business offline. Usually you hear how you can take your offline business and bring it online, but I’m going to show you how to do the opposite. Why promote offline? There are a lot of reasons. Increase sales, reach more people, and grow your websites bottom line. Big businesses are marketing offline and you should be too. Your probably on a small marketing budget just like I am. That’s why I’m going to show you how to effectively market your online business offline with minimal cost.

Offline marketing is more expensive than online marketing, but it can be very effective to tie online and offline marketing together. There are a couple of different ways to tie-in offline marketing. What I’m going to cover here is using postcards and/or brochures to increase your sales. I personally use postcards to help promote my website and to sell my products.

Mailing Postcards work great if you have one or two products that you’re promoting. Any more than that and you should be mailing brochures, which I’ll talk about a little later. I like postcards because they are cheap to mail. It costs 23 cents to mail a postcard 1st class. Online marketers will realize that this is a cheap sales lead.

If you have more than one or two products to promote, you will want to use a 2-sided sales sheet or a small catalog. These will cost your 41 cents to mail, plus you’ll need an envelope. Your marketing price will at least double, but it can still be effective. Especially if you’re selling higher priced items.

Where will you get prospects for your mailing? The first place, I suggest you market to, are your existing customers. People who have purchased from you before will more than likely purchase from you again. As long as your selling products they need or want. Example a mail order company can sell mail order programs for their front end products. Then they can mail back end products, like mailing lists, labels, and other items that the customer will need to mail out their program.

After you market to your existing customers and you have a good sales piece working for you. Then is the time to get a mailing list. I recommend you test a mailing list before you do a mass mailing. Order 500 to 1000 names. If you make a profit from your mailing, chances are you have a winner on your hands and it’s time to order 5000 names. Send that mailing out and get ready to process some orders! Don’t stop there. Continue to market on and off line and you’ll have a great marketing mix. One more thing I’d like to mention about mailing lists. Don’t waste your money on cheap mailing lists. It’s Plain and simple. You will not get the results you need. Make sure the names are fresh 30-90 days old. Stay away from companies that offer you free names with your order. Like buy one get 2 free or companies that offer free names if it’s not deliverable. The free names will probably be just as bad as the rest of them.

When you write your direct mail pieces. Make sure you use proven formulas. Get a good book or report on writing direct mail pieces. You can find advertisements in business opportunity magazines that offer programs for free or a few dollars. You can answer a few of those ads. You’ll get some good and bad examples mailed to you. You’ll be able to tell the difference. Pay close attention to the ones that grab your attention. Those are the good ones. The poorly written and the poor copy pieces end up in the trash and probably won’t hold your attention. You’d be surprised at what some people mail.

A mixture of online and offline marketing is a more rounded approach to marketing. Using these two methods for your business can work very effectively.

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.

armando williams asked:

start making money online

online money making oppurtunity

profit monster

The internet has revolutionized the world just like how the industrial age changed the way people work and co-exist. The world has become a much smaller place where anyone from anywhere around the world that has access to the internet can communicate with each other, anytime.

So how does this affect the way we make money? The difference is like riding a bicycle to work and taking a cab there. Business can now have a global audience compared to how far word of mouth can take you. So let’s compare the differences.

Creating a network Offline Like I mentioned earlier, offline business is how far word of mouth can take you. That can mean through your personal network or through advertising (TV, radio, mass media). But let’s assume you’re a person who doesn’t want to invest so much in advertising through the mass media (it’s quite costly anyway) and want to create your own personal network. And let’s also assume that you want to create a huge business to bring in more money.

Through my networking experience, let me tell you how it’s going to be. You will have your own list (how many depends on how many contacts you still have on you) and the chances that someone is going to even take a second look at what you’re doing would be one out of every 5. I did say just take a second look. If you’re serious in what you’re doing, probably a handful of people would be as excited as you are doing what you’re doing out of every hundred people.

Let’s face it. The network marketing boom has come and gone a long time ago. People have heard of network marketing opportunities, both the good and the bad. But since the industry has been out there for so long, more of the bad has been heard. “It’s a pyramid” “they’ll just keep taking money from you” “it won’t work” “I don’t know many people” “I don’t have time” “I’m not interested”. Do any of them sound vaguely familiar? People out there are fearful of new opportunities especially ones they’ve heard many things about.

Now let’s talk about the calls you have to make and how often you have to make them. Basically, you need to pick up that phone and talk to EVERY SINGLE person on your list in order to get a few people into your organization. Hey don’t expect your family to be joining you in an instant. Fellow network marketers should understand what I’m saying, yes? Calls you make means extra numbers behind the dollar sign on your phone bill, especially if you are going to use your mobile phone.

So what happens when your list runs out? You will either have to get more referrals or you get out there and find more potential network marketers! That means you have to literally talk to strangers whether you like it or not. You can’t tell me that everyone out there would talk to complete strangers anytime and anywhere. I have met several people who absolutely WILL NOT talk to any strangers or make any cold calls. (At this point, I’d like to recommend a book written by Florence Litthauer entitled “Personality Plus”) So I guess network marketing is not for everyone.

Online To create a network online, it would need four VERY IMPORTANT things. A computer, an internet connection, an email account and you. As compared to offline network marketing, internet marketing needs a fraction of your time for commitment with minimal effort. Introducing people to your online business does not mean you have to be physically there all the time. Think about it. If you’re in Singapore and you have a prospect in the US, you would have to forgo your sleep in order to talk to this person. But with the internet by your side, the world can connect anytime, from anywhere.

Now lets talk about the effort you have to put in. But first let me ask you this question. Do you chat with your friends on messenger? Do you check your mail? Do you surf the net from time to time? If the answer is yes then that is how much effort you need to put in! Just as much as you’re doing now or maybe just a bit more. (It IS a business you’re doing by the way) The word is LEVERAGE. With the same amount of effort you put in doing your offline business, you can potentially get a hundred or even a thousand times the number of prospects you can get!

HOWEVER, the numbers game still applies. In an online business, for every 100 clicks that you get to your page, ONE will opt in. And out of 100 opt-ins, ONE will join the business that you’re doing and out of the 100 people who join, 24 will do it as seriously as you (that is if you’re doing it seriously). Don’t expect a huge sum of money to be falling on your lap with whatever business because if that happens, it probably is not a legitimate business.

But don’t forget that with an online business, you are leveraging your time and effort with almost the same amount of results. I was running a traditional offline business for about 8 months and the most I received was a couple of a hundred dollars. With an online business, I received five times the amount of money within a month! And it was all legitimate. I was always looking for ways to earn fast money and I guess I found the best that the internet can offer!

Chris Burns asked:


There are probably more than one hundred principles of direct marketing, ferreted down from marketing gurus and internet marketing experts all over the world. Different sorts of experiences lead to different conclusions, and inevitably, different advice. This article is designed to tell you there is a difference between advice and principle, whereas advice may be applied to isolated incidents and regions, the latter can be transposed into almost any situation of direct marketing. I have siphoned away 3, not because they are the best, but because they can be universally applied – so wait no longer, read on land earn direct marketing principles that work.

I will start in reverse order of importance. The first (or the last one for those that have been paying attention), is the copy. Be it fax, mail, internet or offline marketing, what you write is essentially the difference that either helps you close a deal or remain wondering what happened. Compelling copy can be considered to be the life blood of your direct marketing efforts. If you are not talking to them on the phone or shaking their hand in real life, what they read from you must be good enough to influence a purchasing decision. Remember, you are already at a disadvantage – you can’t see their reactions or hear their worries first hand. A mailer or brochure can’t talk back so you have to seal the deal the minute they read the first few lines.

The copy must be simple – you may be marketing to the lowest common denominator, so Shakespearean prose has no place in sales copy. It must be from the heart and sincere, use real life experiences and testimonials to breathe life to the product. The copy must keep a single question in mind – the ‘what’s in it for the consumer?’ The offer must be IRRESISTABLE, so concentrate on how you word your offer, write and rewrite and read it to yourself, over and over again until it’s just right.

Secondly, whatever you do, ensure that what you put out there must have what marketers call ‘an action device’. This can be a reply cut-out, an order form or even a point of contact. Make it easy for them to initiate a response, don’t leave them to guess where and who. Look at sales copy for websites, there is always almost a link somewhere at the end of the website. Point them in the right direction – closer and closer to buying the product.

This is the last and most important point. You may have the best, most sellable copy in the world. You could be selling a fantastic product. Your carrier could be striking, a design fit for the Louvre. But sent to the wrong market, all this would be pointless. The contacts that you have built up or have acquired must be highly detailed and highly targeted. This means that each and every name will be much more likely to consider the product – ‘needs identification’ can only occur through a high quality list. It is of crucial importance to match the product to the prospect, eliminating as much doubt as possible from the purchasing decision.

So now that you have learn direct marketing principles that work, you can apply it to any situation, for any product and for any market you wish to enter!

Adrian Bold asked:

Do you spend a considerable amount of your marketing budget on traditional offline marketing approaches such as radio, television and newspaper advertising? You could be significantly losing out.

Like it or not, the coming of Internet Marketing has sounded the death-knell for traditional methods of marketing and associated advertising. Newspapers are rapidly shedding staff; even the UK’s Channel 4 Television can no longer survive without merging with another channel due to the drop in advertising revenue it had previously relied upon.

So why is offline marketing dying off?

Compare the traditional direct mail marketing technique with online email marketing approaches. Take a sales letter and mail it out to 10,000 people. Add up the cost of stationery and postage, even with discounts for mass postage, you need a good budget. Now compose an email, add your database of 10,000 customers and email it directly to their inbox in less than 10 seconds. The cost is nothing and you essentially require no budget.

Furthermore, recent research indicates that direct mail only generates a 2% response rate; email marketing generates 5 times as much. Offline Marketing cannot compete with these results.

Is it a surprise that traditional offline marketing methods are dying off? Their share of the market shrinking, revenue receding as the online marketing sector grows and takes over the lion’s share of the market?

If we contrast the range of offline marketing, we easily reveal an important weakness in the traditional approach. Offline marketing is limited by geographic location. Newspaper circulation or television/radio broadcasting range limits the effectiveness of the offline marketing campaign. Online marketing campaigns are geographically limitless. If you wish, you can advertise your product or service to millions of people across the entire world.

Broadcast and print advertising has always been expensive, and in their dying days, they still won’t compete with the Internet on cost. Online marketing offers targeted marketing, rather than blanket marketing at a fraction of the cost.

That neatly brings us onto the ability to target your exact customer. Offline advertising can only attempt to do this by hoping enough men are watching football, or women are watching Desperate Housewives. With the online alternative, you can target the very customers that are already looking for your products or services. Again, offline marketing cannot compete with this level of accuracy in finding customers and bringing them to your website.

Using Internet Marketing rapidly reduces the time between a potential customer seeing your marketing and responding to it. Online marketing promotes immediate reaction, generating immediate revenue. Your customer sees your ad. The customer reads your ad, they like what they read, they check the price, and it’s good. They click to add the product to the shopping cart; they fill in their details and click to pay. Within three clicks or so, you’ve made a sale. Traditional marketing methods simply cannot produce these rapid results, or the volume of increased business that they are capable of producing.

Whilst some people will cling on to offline marketing, suspicious of the Internet’s success, their competitors using online marketing are increasing their sales by the hour.

TheEvilGenius asked:


In the Internet Marketing community, we are constantly exposed to strategies and tactics to market your product/service online and drive traffic to your web site. I don’t mean to dismiss the value of any of these methods.  In fact we use most of them ourselves.

But, it almost makes you wonder… “How did people ever market before the Internet?” 

That question served as my jumping off point in developing this list. You see, it seems everybody is talking about how to increase your online marketing, but nobody ever talks about what you can do to increase your offline marketing with little or no funds.

So here it is: 7 Tried and true tactics for marketing on the cheap. Online or Off

Tip 1: Make yourself newsworthy



Getting a mention of your company in the right medium can do wonders for your career and your business. How much better do you think a book does when Oprah adds it to her book club?  For that fact, would there even be a Dr. Phil? I can only hope not.

The trick to this one is to make yourself interesting in some way.  Gary Vanderchuck from winelibrary.tv is the perfect example. He’d be the first to tell you that selling wine is not the most newsworthy of topics.  So how did he do it? His over-the-top personality and antics. Selling wine is not entertaining.  Getting Conan Obrien to eat grass and **** rocks on national TV to “prepare his palette” is.

Tip 2: Leveraging other peoples work and money

The Best Story Ever: David pwn3s Goliath – A startup I worked at called eRoom Technology used this tactic against Lotus, a painfully well funded corporation at the time.  eRoom had the better product, but Lotus had the marketing bucks.

Lotus was having a press conference on their new virtual collaboration package at a big industry event in Vegas. They paid handsomely to have all the top reporters flown in and lavished them will luxury perks and gifts. They had slick presentations, great location… the whole nine. eRoom’s stroke of genius was to buy the 4 giant banners that were located directly behind the speakers head (remember this was a an industry conference where they accept advertising sponsors). The next step was to have 100 beanie babies, wearing a tiny eRoom t-shirts, placed on each reporters chair immediately before the conference was to start.

The take away: Every last reporter talked about the eRoom coup as part of their Lotus article. Lotus paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the press conference, eRoom spent less than $5k. Brilliant.

The concept of the Mall is another the perfect example of this tactic in action.  Smaller stores move into a space with bigger “anchor” stores in hopes of enticing walk-by traffic that are headed to the anchor store.  Ever see what happens to a strip-mall when all the anchors leave? Not pretty.

As you can see, this rule does not have to be limited to physical location.  Find a synergistic company (preferably outside your industry, but serving same market) and find a way to piggyback on what they are doing anyway. Could be their location, could be their advertising program, could be their branding, could be their research. Find that angle and work it.

Tip 3: The Identity Kit and Ruthless Branding

The marketing maxim that a person needs to see something 6-7 times before it registers still holds true after all these years. But remember, just because you are on the internet does not mean that it does not apply everywhere.

Create an identity kit including business cards, letterhead, envelopes, fax templates, email signatures, folders. Make sure everything includes your logo, business name, and tagline if you have one. A nifty trick is to also use your logo as your profile picture for message boards and social media sites. A crucially important step is to make sure you are consistent offline and online. Same logo, same fonts, same color palette. When this works well, it will look like your company is EVERYWHERE. Better yet, it’s dirt cheap.

Tip 4: Keep your Customers Happy

 

This should be a no-brainer, but I see it happen time and time again with web-based businesses.  All of the emphasis is put on generating traffic and new leads, while current customers are left to wither and rot.  The truth is that keeping a customer is 5-7 times cheaper (that’s 700% kids) than acquiring a new one. Moreover, the probably of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% whereas to a new prospect it is 5-10% at best. 

What you need to do is put in a customer retention program if one does not already exist.  Communicate with them just as often as new prospects, and give away as much to them as you would to entice a new prospect. Just because it is cheaper to obtain a customer on the internet, does not make that customer worth less. 

Tip 5: Maximize referrals

The IM community is actually starting to make some great progress on this front. However, the problem I am still seeing is that the referrals are still taking place on the prospect side, not the customer side.  Again this ties into rule #4 Keep your customer happy.  For example, you offer a free eBook download and encourage that person to refer 5 friends for an additional bonus.  Until that first person buys something from you they are not a customer, they are still a prospect. 

The critical difference is: When a prospect refers another prospect, you still have to start from square one with the new lead.  When a customer refers a prospect, you have a 50% (yes FIFTY) percent higher chance of making a new sale. 

The take away: Spend AT LEAST as much time creating a referral program for current customers as you do for new leads. 

Tip 6: Form a Joint Venture

The term JV and JV Deal get thrown around a lot on the internet.  In most cases it actually refers to an affiliate program and not a true joint venture. A true Joint Venture is when both you and a partner pony up something to reach a common goal.

For example, say you sell investment real estate. You find that 99% of your customers need to have their property managed after the purchase. What’s the JV no brainer? You guessed it, a property manager. In this case you could form a JV with a property manager to split costs on advertising, office space, technology, or anything else that helps you reach a shared goal. 

Tip 7: Donate your time or stuff

Chances are that you are interested in something outside the internet or business world.  Why not find a way to explore a hobby while helping others and creating some good will towards your business.  The key emphasis on this is subtlety. You don’t want to be doing this only to push your business. Hopefully you should get something out of helping people in-and-of itself.  The goodwill is just a bonus.  Albeit a very strong one. 

A great example I saw recently was a realtor who bought a large passenger van and posted a giant picture of his noggin complete with logo, name, and phone number. He had originally bought the van for his customers use when they bought or sold a house with him (Was perfect for moving locally or when new buyers needed to pick up big things like a fridge, dryer, etc)  . This was a great idea itself.  What made it brilliant is when he read a newspaper article that a free after school program was shutting down because they no longer had the budget to ferry the kids from the school to the rec. center.  So what did he do?  He donated his van between the hours of 3-5 to the center. They did the driving and paid for the gas. As you can imagine he became an instant Rockstar in the community. 

Follow up: I spoke to him a year later. His already successful business was up 400% and he was able to cancel all other lead generation marketing. Genius.

To Download a copy of this article in .pdf format, please visit Evil Genius TV.

Kaye Z. Marks asked:


There’s no reason for you to consider your offline and online marketing completely separate entities.

There are those companies out there who think that to achieve success online you need to use a completely online approach to your marketing and anything else will be counter productive. You’ll also find those who avoid the internet like the plague and think you don’t need to have any part of their business online at any time.

To avoid one or the other is to lose a good potential for additional business. Both approaches target different people, and you are able to gain support from both types of people if you know how to best combine these two forms of separate marketing.

Who says you can’t have ads online that direct people to your physical location? I’ve seen plenty of ads online that are for completely offline businesses. Now, you can still often find a website for them that gives people additional information about the business, but still directs them to the actual store.

This is easily accomplished, especially since it is rather cheap to set up a website that can provide people with extra details about your company.

Offline companies taking advantage of online approaches happens far more often than the online companies doing the same. Instead they try to avoid printing anything for their advertising if they can help it, but the offline forms of marketing are often going to work well with the same people who spend a lot of their shopping time on the web.

Try some greeting card printing that you can use to send people your web address along with a request to give you a chance. The great thing about this is that because an online business is so easy to gain access to, you’ll have a much better chance of gaining a person’s attention, and getting them to immediately log onto your website.

Because of that ability to immediately try out your website, your greeting card printing will be particularly successful, even more so than if you had a normal offline business that people needed to drive to in order to check out.

And this is just one way of taking advantage of offline marketing to boost up your business. Brochures can be just as effective for an online company as they would be for an offline one. If you avoid anything but internet advertising you’re losing access to some very long standing and great styles of marketing.

No company should ever block themselves off from effective styles of marketing no matter what kind of business they use. Take a look at the entire marketing field and decide on what will work best for your company.

You don’t want to fail to capitalize on a great style of marketing simply because you didn’t think it would work with your company.

temp_168807 asked:

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.