Michael Fleischner asked:


Whether you are an Internet marketer or generalist, turning prospects into buyers is a top priority. Many marketers are continually testing the success of various media and integrated campaigns. One of the most frequently asked questions is the effectiveness of “off-line marketing” as it related to driving traffic and conversions on your website of landing page.

With so many difference across products, services, industries, and price points, its hard to develop a simple yes or no answer when considering whether or not direct mail will drive online traffic for you. The key is to develop a compelling direct mail piece, choosing the right list, and creating an offer that resonates with your target market. Also, consider the following:

1. Package planning is essential for making your mail a success. Before you begin, plan your direct mail package. Will it include a letter, sell sheet, coupon, and business reply envelope? Perhaps you’ll be using a postcard. How big? How small? What creative direction will you take?

2. Effective envelope creative motivates consumers to open your piece. Your offer is no good unless it is seen by your target market. Spend a lot of time on your envelope, giving consumers a reason to open it and learn more about your offer. Create a swipe file of other direct marketing pieces you’ve personally received and opened. What was it about these offers that compelled you to take the next step?

3. Alternative formats can help you qualify for lower postage rates. Manage your budget carefully as large mail campaigns can have a high cost and negatively impact your ROI. One great avenue for lowering costs and increasing response rates is by experimenting with alternative direct mail formats. Learn more at the USPS website.

4. Value-added postcards can help mail get attention. To avoid the issues associated with unopened mail, test a postcard or two. Although much simpler than a direct mail promotion using an envelope and multiple response mechanisms, post cards can be great for driving people online at a low cost. Be sure to have a compelling reason for them to visit your website and a method for tracking results. Defining specific URLs to consumers, to help them locate a special offer, is a great way to track activity.

5. Crate a clear call to action. Too often direct marketers create a compelling piece, even a great offer, but make it difficult for prospects to answer. Overcome this issue by providing prospects with multiple ordering methods. These various methods can include the ability to order online, call a toll free number, and fax an order form. Consider the pros and cons of various ordering methods, and when you do, keep the consumer in mind. You want your buyers to have a positive experience so they order from you again and again.

So perhaps you’re still wondering if direct mail can help you achieve your online goals. Begin with a simple goal that is easily defined and measurable. Choose a preferred direct mail technique and test it. You may find that the best way to find consumers online is to drive them with your direct marketing campaign!

M.L. Petersen asked:


I’ve always been impressed with those who could who could find ways of doing things other than the traditional ways. I’m referring to the promotion of an internet business or affiliate marketing business. No, I’m not going to discuss blogging, web 2, or article marketing, although they are excellent ways of marketing you online business. Some marketers are actually using offline marketing to promote their online business.

Two questions surface immediately.

1. How can offline advertising be as effective when online marketing can potentially reach many thousands more people than offline.

2. If offline promotions work, what do I do? How do I start. TV advertising reaches a lot of people. TV advertising is also very expensive. We probably won’t start our offline promotions with TV.

The first method of offline promotions and quite possibly continues to be the best is word of mouth. We still give a lot of credibility to what a friend says and tend to be more comfortable with a recommendation from someone we know.

Actually we are bombarded with hundreds of offline advertisements daily. If we watch TV we see ads, if we listen to the radio we hear advertisements. The news paper is full of ads as well as any magazines we read. If we park at a shopping mall and enter the mall there is a good chance we will be handed a business card by someone and then when we return to our car there may be a flier on the windshield. Driving home we see billboards calling our attention to a particular business asking us to visit their URL for more information. When we open our mail we see a postcard urging to us to visit a special site online. We open a envelope and find out how easy it is to restore our credit.

The reason we get bombarded like this is that ofline advertising still works.

Given the many forms of offline marketing, we will consider 4 ways we can effectively use offline promotions. Keep in mind that how you market and who you market too has a lot to do with the results obtained. You may not want to put advertising signs on your vehicle and park it at an old folks home.

1. The first way to consider promoting off line is with business cards. You will probably have business cards even if your aim is not necessarily off line promotions. A lot of information can be placed on a business. After listing the benefits of your promotion state that a free report can be obtained by visiting http:// www.mypromotion.org and that would lead to your splash page.

2. Fliers are another excellent and low cost way of promoting your affiliate program offline. It is probably best to stay with the standard 8 ½ X 11 colorful sheet. A lot of information can be placed on this size paper with room for some images. This may also be an opportunity to be creative. You want to attract enough attention for the recipients to look at it. If you intend to distribute the fliers to cars in a parking lot it is always best to find out if that is ok. Locate community bulletin boards in your area and place a flier there from time to time. With fliers you can keep the cost down by printing only the number you plan to use at that time.

3. Consider placing small ads in the local newspapers. The area I live in has several limited circulation news papers often directed to different interest groups. In some rural areas these free newspapers may be the only ones read. Using small classified ads it is important to find a way to track response. Different ads need to be test for effectiveness as a “good” ad can make a big difference. This holds true for all forms of advertising, test to determine which ad wording gives the best results.

4. Post cards are used by many offline marketers very effectively. A well designed post card sent to an address that could use the information will bring results. I know with printing costs, addressing and postage costs using post cards is more expensive than the other methods we have been discussing. Using post cards for your offline promotion you will need a mailing list. There are many list brokers available. Selecting a list is very important. Find out as much as you can. For instance, you would want to avoid sending to a list of people that did not have computers.

The above is only some of the ways offline promotions can assist your online marketing. You may not want to use all of these methods. Pick one or two that you enjoy doing and give you good results.

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.

Alicia Forest asked:


Taking my struggling consulting business online and following the business model I now do turned everything around for me, financially and otherwise. So when I started hearing from my mentors that I might want to add some offline marketing tactics back into the mix, I was hesitant to say the least.

But then I started studying and learning more about some specific direct mail strategies, and recognizing the power they have, I started wondering in maybe I wasn’t missing an important piece of the puzzle to take my business up another notch.

Then I started seeing some amazing results from my colleagues who were using direct mail in addition to their online marketing efforts – things as simple as a postcard – and I decided I needed to get into this game myself. (I’ll keep you posted on my own results in a future article.)

How do you get started adding direct mail marketing to your mix? Here are 5 simple steps:

1. Start collecting physical addresses

You may have the addresses of those clients and customers who have purchased from you already, which is a great start. But you also want to start collecting snail mail addresses from those people who sign up for your list. This way, when you’re ready to send a physical mailing out, you’ll have all the information you need. AND, as email deliverability gets muddier, you’ll always have this other option of reaching your audience.

2. Plan a campaign

I always tell my clients to plan an online promotion campaign when they are ready to market a specific product, program or service, instead of sending out a single announcement. The campaign I recommend typically includes a minimum of three emails.

Same goes for an offline mailing. You need to plan a campaign, with more than one mailing, in order to truly get and discern a return on your investment.

3. Go cheap the first time

Something I learned when I was the PR director for a university was NOT to do an expensive mailing until we had cleaned our list. Peoples’ addresses change for a variety of reasons and you may not always have the most up-to-date ones when you’re ready to send your mailing.

So, here’s a tip to clean your list before you start investing in some higher-end mailers. Send a postcard that has your return address on it to your current list. Then update your list via the returned postcards you get. Then make sure you have your return address on every mailing you do to keep your list as up-to-date as possible.

4. Keep it simple

Do a postcard, which gets read right away, with a simple, direct, compelling message and an immediate call to action, with graphics that don’t distract but support your message.

5. Track your mailings

The easiest way to do this is to send your readers to a simple website address (URL) that you only use for the purposes of that mailing. All you have to do is redirect that URL to your existing web page (where your offer resides) using the tracking link feature in your shopping cart. That way you can tell how many people typed in the URL and how many people took advantage of your offer. This is how you measure your return on your investment.

Getting started with adding direct mail to your marketing mix isn’t difficult. And by combining your online strategies with offline ones, you’ll be gaining a lot more clients and customers and bringing in a lot more income.