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.

Garry Macdonald asked:


It’s not one or the other, it has to be both!

Why integrating online and offline marketing is essential for marketing success . . .

All brand managers unanimously agree that marketing is a must. But while they are constantly trying to overcome media clutter and find innovative advertising devices, they often commit a simple yet serious crime. If print, TVC, radio, OOH belongs to the realm of offline marketing, PPC, social media marketing, blogs, forums and articles form a distinct part of online marketing. What many people fail to realize is that a marriage of online and offline marketing plans is likely to produce far more effective results than either one alone.

This is at the core of the concept of 360 degree marketing that basically prioritizes multiple media marketing over one or two media. In other words, it may be better to put your eggs in many baskets when you are trying to reach out to the maximum number of consumers.

For brick and mortar businesses, the first obvious step to marketing online is to create an online identity in the form of a professionally designed, search engine optimized website. Not only does this help you reach out to far greater virtual visitors than possible with a physical store or office, it also is a more cost effective way to advertise services. Since most offline marketing media entail prohibitively expensive costs, it is best to use as little media space as possible to grab eyeballs and generate basic awareness. The offline advertisement must then contain a link to your website or more specifically, a specially created web landing page, where the audience can get greater details to satisfy the curiosity created by the offline ad.

Another very important aspect of online marketing is to not limit your presence to a website. There are multiple low-cost, pay for results models offered by various sites and affiliate marketers that can help spread the word about your business on the World Wide Web.

Going from offline to online methods is therefore relatively easy and economical. The reverse, however, is much harder making it very difficult for exclusive internet businesses to have a presence in the non-virtual world. This is particularly magnified in the case of pan-continent businesses where it is just not possible to have an offline presence without having targeted geographies. For such businesses, full exploitation of all possible internet marketing methods is a far safer bet.

Another great benefit of online marketing is the ability to evaluate various media comparatively to a very fine detail and then re-plan allocation of funds to the more ROI effective methods. There is a far more ambiguous link between advertising and sales in offline marketing methods.

In conclusion, online marketing is more suited to smaller companies that are starting up or have limited funds. With time though most businesses need to find a way to make their online and offline marketing models work in tandem for maximum benefits.

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.

Victor Dawson asked:


Right from the time the Internet stepped into our lives, online marketing has been bandied around as a magic mantra– the wonder key to fortune. And all for good reason. An array of websites, ranging from magazines to live theatre performances are available to an audience ranging across a variety of profiles on the information superhighway.

But you have got to realize this-people and firms who have actually earned a fortune, a killing quickly (I won’t say overnight), have relied not only on online marketing efforts but also on their offline promotions. In fact, it ’s strange but true– many of them do not have an online presence at all.

Websites are springing up on the world wide web every moment of our existence. There are businesses and money-making programs at evry other nook and corner– millions of web addresses are competing for the attention of the eyeballs. Indeed, it is a plus, it definitely helps if your business is on the Net.

The Internet has brought in several turnkey methods into the way we go about operating our businesses. There are many who are yearning to have their place, their corner, on the Internet. But they do not know how to break into the huge net. They are waiting for someone to guide them by the hand. Reach out to this audience.

And once you resolve to tap this goldmine of a market, remember– You are preparing to bypass all that fierce competition on the Internet flashing a plethora of businesses, each one being as good or as bad as the other!

So, remember- those business flyers, postcards and letters may sound a bit old-fashioned, but ineffective they certainly are not. For the ads on paper get an attention that is comparatively less divided, as compared to those on the Internet, wherein you have ads rushing in from all sides.