Promote Your Internet Business Offline!
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.
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.
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?
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?
