Oli Osorhan asked:


1. Answering Machine – This one is easy for offline marketing, just be sure to include your URL, dot.com in your answering machine messages!

2. Address Labels  – Again easy all your outgoing mail for everything use your address labels for more offline marketing of your business and website!

3. Business Cards – Definitely use them, get in the habit of carrying them with you and pass them out “It Works”, you can even get you cards done on cd-roms!

4. Company vehicles – We all see vehicles with company names and telephone numbers on them driving our streets and motorways. This is a great idea as it gives potential customers the chance while out and about to learn about the company and also learn about how to contact them should they need the service or product they offer at some stage in the future. I often wonder why more websites aren’t promoted in this way by simply adding the company website URL also, you definitely should do this as part of your Offline Marketing!

5.  Flyers – Post flyers on free local bulletin boards (grocery stores, discount chain stores, shopping malls, laundromats, dry cleaners, etc.) print a flyer on bright yellow paper detailing your web address and your company. BE SURE to include your email address, URL as well as your telephone number! Tack the flyer to bulletin boards all over your town. Keep a supply in your car for handy offline marketing!

6.  Freebies & Giveaways – This method is a personal favorite of mine. It involves purchasing and distributing items such as pencils, pens, t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, calendars, key-chains, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets and the like. All these items will have your URL, Logo, or Email address located somewhere on them helping to market offline and attract people to your website.

7.  Christmas Cards – Use your Christmas cards to all your customers also for offline marketing with all your info URL, email and phone numbers!

8.  Checks & Coupons – Again use all your information when using coupons and have your company checks printed with this information!

9. Web decals – are a new, inexpensive and fun way to use offline marketing and attract attention to your website. People absolutely love them, and they are very simple to use. Web decals are made of high quality vinyl and printed with state of the art digital equipment. Display your website address and more in bold white or black & white letters. People stick them everywhere. In your car windows, store, office and home windows, any place with glass!

10. Word of Mouth – easiest and a very viral form of offline marketing, your happy customers and friends just pass it on!

11. Fax cover sheets – (many people forget this one for offline marketing!)

12. Personal brochures – about you and your company!

13. Printed Material – Print your URL (Web site address) everywhere you print your business name. Including business cards, fliers, signage, ads, product tags, labels, craft show directories (in shows you may be attending) and anywhere else your business name is printed!

14. Newspapers, classifieds and related magazines – The print media which includes newspapers, journals and magazines is another avenue where your can have your URL exposed for everyone to see. It’s best first to start advertising your products, services and URL in local newspapers and then if successful continue onto regional and national publications. If you can’t afford the common graphical advertisement as seen throughout newspapers and journals related to your industry don’t worry as most of these publications have classified ad sections. Classified ads allow you to reach a targeted audience very cheaply with a simple short message and of course your URL is included in there somewhere too again a great source of offline marketing for your business!

15. Press releases – Press releases using them for offline marketing and promotion. Press releases or news releases as they’re sometimes known are newsworthy stories about your business that you send to various sections of the media. These sections of the media must be related to your industry for you to have any chance of success. Newsworthy stories are stories which readers of the media publications you submit to might be interested in.

If the journalist reads it and likes it he or she may publish it or some of its contents in his or her publication, if this happens you’re on to a winner because the public in general are much more responsive to a news story than a plain old hyped up advertisement. This could mean they’ll enquire about or even purchase your products or services.

Using press releases for offline marketing of your website uses the same principals, if it’s newsworthy release it. Newsworthy events for websites include website launches, website re launches and new online services among other items. Also don’t forget online press releases!

16. I. ID-It Plates – These Elegant mini-Billboards promote YOU 365 days a year, enhance the appearance of your vehicles, last for years and most important, give you literally Millions of Impressions  and affordable offline marketing over their lifetime.

Conclusion – Even if your business only exits in the virtual world you must realize ALL your customers live and always will live in the physical world and therefore can be reached much better from the physical world. The moral of the story is never ever forget about the offline marketing and promotion of your website. Your success or failure could depend on it!

http:www.moneybizhome.com/marketing_articles

 

temp_168807 asked:

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.

Felix Burke asked:

Traditional marketing methods are still a viable resource to engage customers, and you can use them to drive buyers to your online products as well!

Traditional marketing includes newspapers, magazines, catalogues, fliers, direct mail, business cards, radio and TV ads, and specialty products, such as pens with your logo. These communications have been successful since the printing press, and now they can enhance your online marketing. Here’s how.

Think of each of the traditional communications as your pre-sell for your online presence. Imagine that you have a vitamin product, particularly helpful for eye health. Place an ad, perhaps in a health magazine, that extols the benefits of the product and sends the buyers to your pitch page online for testimonials and to purchase. You have just used traditional marketing-the magazine–to direct buyers to an online purchase.

Here’s another great example. Imagine you are a CPA in business for yourself, and you’ve recently joined the Chamber Of Commerce. Attending one of their “Business After Hours” functions, you give out several of your business cards, and point out that more information about your services is available at your website. When a prospect visits your website, all your accreditations, education, awards, community service, family profile, and available services are front and center. Your site is easily navigable, and with each click, you are building credibility with the visitor. Although your product is your service, and that is done in person, traditional marketing-your business card–drives people to your website to pre-sell them, and predispose them to select you for a CPA.

Here’s yet one more example, to get your marketing juices flowing. Imagine you run a small local bakery which specializes in ten different kinds of pralines, shipped all over the U.S. Twelve weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, your brochures are sent to a large mailing list of former and prospective customers. Your brochure is beautifully appetizing, but it can’t hope to cover all the pertinent information for shipped orders, so customers are directed online. At your website, every kind of praline is pictured, and testimonials abound by satisfied customers from Maine to Oregon. You don’t take phone orders anymore, as every available worker is packing pralines, so all orders are done via the website. And how did your customers find you? Traditional marketing in the form of your brochure brought them to you.

Don’t abandon offline marketing in your online efforts, for you may well find that the sum of the two is mathematically even more profitable than either one alone!