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Offline marketing
Offline marketing
The Benefits of Online Marketing
Apr 7th
Marketing is the vertebrae of any business and an integrated and streamlined promotion plan is a sure-shot mechanism for achieving distinguished success in your entrepreneurial venture. Imagine a scenario where you have built one of the most progressive and formidable businesses without marketing it coherently.
You may know that you have a good money making scheme at hand, but this alone will not suffice. The potential patrons of your business are the ones who need exposure to your products and services. Marketing helps in creating an identity for your brand and establishing the credibility of your product.
In a cutting-edge competitive era where businesses are clamoring for space and attention, an effective marketing plan gives an impetus to your business while offering it tremendous awareness. Today’s milieu is seeped with new ideologies and trends for marketing enterprises. The idea is to change the mechanisms of traditional marketing to include more dynamic, personalized and innovative forces. Web marketing has burgeoned into a startling conduit of progressive promotion and offers your brand the leverage that few other mediums can give it. Here is how online marketing scores in comparison to conventional offline marketing.
Online marketing obviously presents an entrepreneur with a more expansive and eclectic potential customer base that is not constrained by physical parameters. It cuts across several aspects to encompass a wider base of a focused audience. The brand is offered a global exposure and the chance to do business anywhere in the world without being physically present. The segmentation of customers is also simplified in online marketing owing to increasingly efficient tools of pegging customer requirements and preferences. It is not limited by space and time constraints like its offline counterpart. You have more tools and features to play with in online marketing and it harbors greater creativity and innovation to put across your message in an informative yet entertaining manner. The message can be informal and more elaborate in online marketing as it is not bogged down by constraints that drape an offline marketing plan.
Online marketing is notches ahead of traditional streams of offline marketing in terms of being cost-effective while offering better results. In offline promotions you have to spend on expensive printing material and brochures to reach out to your audience in a professional manner. There are also newspaper advertisements, billboards and exorbitant television slots depending on the type of business you are involved in. In comparison an online business can target a large volume of customers at frugal costs. The price of maintaining a website and generating leads through mass mailers and auto-responders is negligible.
Creative Offline Website Marketing Techniques
Apr 6th
Although the vast majority of website traffic is the direct result of search engines, there are many offline marketing techniques that can be used to draw customers to your website. The examples listed below are but a few ways in which you can market your online presence to an offline audience in an inexpensive manner. Some of the examples listed below even can be implemented at no extra cost!
Some of these ideas are fairly common, but some are rather unique and I personally have only ever seen them employed once, twice, or at most 3 times.
But why would I want to do this? I already deal with these people offline.
Most businesses are not open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Most websites, however, are available on a 24/7/365 basis.
Many people, especially those with busy lifestyles, tend to use the Internet during non-business hours. To give a few examples: business owners will often check their emails and visit suppliers’ websites later in the evening; and consumers looking to make a high-value purchase, such as a car or house, will often research their purchases online in advance well into the wee hours of the night.
Some of these techniques will also generate new clients as well; the possibility exists that you will attract a client whom you have had no prior dealings with.
If you employ some of the offline marketing techniques listed below, it could very well be your site and company that they deal with first!
Include your website and email address on your business cards and other print marketing material. While this may seem rather obvious, most businesses do not elect to do so, and it usually ends up costing them potential revenue and profits as a result. Let people know you have a method where you can be reached and information on your company’s products and services can be found at any time.
Use your company vehicle as a “billboard”. Automotive decals are a relatively inexpensive way to advertise your company’s services. Depending on what you want, decals can cost anywhere from approx. $20-$200 CDN, and will last until you choose to remove them from your car or truck. The best part is that every time you want to reach a new target market for your advertisement, all you have to do is drive!
Note: there are more expensive decals available, but these are usually combinations of text and artwork. The text portions of the decals tend to be minimal in cost, as they are the simpler elements.
Ask potential offline advertising suppliers for an “ad study”. Some advertising suppliers have a method whereby they will offer the advertiser a sample advertisement or placement as a form of an “effectiveness” study. In exchange, the advertiser agrees to reveal the full results of his/her marketing campaign to the supplier. This isn’t something that very many companies do, but the few that do are generally suppliers worth dealing with.
Incorporate your website into face-to-face conversations and telephone calls. Your customer may be looking for a specific product or service which may be outlined on your website. Guide your customer to that page and let them read the information over, being prepared to answer and ask any questions that may arise from said information.
More Ideas
Press releases. If you have a new product or service, create a “media” section for your website that outlines its details and promote the hyperlink via press release to various mass media.
PR Web is an great resource for mass-broadcasting a press release to thousands of newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and similar media managers—and it’s free!
Promotional clothing. If your business has “uniforms” or “staff shirts”, then including your website hyperlink on these items is a great way to promote your business at no extra charge.
Microsoft takes this concept one step further; every time a user successfully completes their OEM System Builder exam, they ship the user a free Microsoft t-shirt via UPS with nothing except for the Microsoft OEM website URL on the back.
Another creative use of this concept is provided by ADAM Web Design client Regional Shows, who used their online logo on the jersey of a kids’ baseball team as a form of sponsorship.
Other promotional items. Pens, mouse pads, coffee mugs, baseball caps, and other such promotional items are great places to include a company website hyperlink.
Outdoor signage/signboards. Catch the attention of people who are driving by your place of business with your website URL along with your company name, phone, fax, and common email (if any). They may be driving by and not have time to stop in and visit your business, but they may visit your website when they have the time to do so to gather more information.
Note: be sure to check with your local municipality to ensure that outdoor signage is in compliance with its by-laws. Some cities and towns do not allow exterior property signage.
A Tattoo. A tattoo? As strange as this may seem, this is something that can be very effective. Body modifications have the unique property of being able to attract the human eye to them, and a website URL tends to stick in one’s mind as being a rather unique idea for a tattoo. A friend of mine, when she ran a small personal site, used to promote it in exactly this manner.
These ideas should give you a starting point for future offline advertising creativity, as well as give you some ways to see a return on your website investment with very little time, effort or money. Good luck!
Traditional Marketing – Offline Marketing Methods and the Advantages & Disadvantages – Part 2
Apr 6th
Free/Cheap Offline Marketing Methods
Word of mouth – referrals by friends, family members, colleagues, etc.
Handouts -flyers, newsletters, brochures, business cards, etc.
Branding – putting your website URL on clothes, household necessities, your car, etc.
Telecommunication – talking to clients over the phone
Direct mail – deliver handouts, thank you letters, important documents, etc.
Paid Offline Marketing Methods
TV advertising – commercials, infomercials, etc.
Radio advertising – mainly done through talk shows (specified for local areas such as cities or towns)
Billboards -supersize your ad on freeways and high traffic areas
Print Media – newspapers, journals, and magazines.
Joint ventures – partner up with other offline businesses
Press releases -newsworthy stories about your business that are sent to the media
A Quick Outlook
With the power of the internet and the fact that several businesses are now moving online, some people are probably wondering, “Why even bother with traditional marketing anymore?” Well that’s the question I’m about to answer as I show you the advantages & disadvantages of traditional marketing and tips on how to overcome the downsides.
Advantages of Traditional Marketing
Faster Results
Many forms of internet marketing, such as search engine optimization and banner ads, can take several weeks before any real results start to happen. You are just not going to get that top 5 website ranking from SEO overnight or within the first month even. Furthermore, banner ads are reportedly becoming less effective now-a-days and can also take some time to produce sufficient outcome. Traditional marketing however, can produce much faster and more effective results with well-placed ads that are suitable to a particular audience. You can expect a stronger impact in lesser time with traditional marketing.
Durability
The truth is many websites are deleted, moved, or abandoned all the time and search engine results also change periodically. Advertising offline has no uncertainties in that nature in any way. You can give someone your business card and that same reference can be good 10 or 20 years later. The same bears true for flyers and posters, although handouts have a slightly lower life expectancy than business cards. The point is that a business is more durable offline than it is online.
Trust
This might be the number one advantage of offline marketing. Trust is a huge factor of any business, regardless of how it is promoted. Many people are more comfortable with buying products from offline ads than on the internet. The reason is that you get to see the people or company you are interested in buying from and get to know them a little before you actually purchase. More times than not, many online ads and websites don’t provide that same trust aspect. The lingering of endless scam sites over the internet just makes that problem even worse. So most certainly, trust is more established in traditional marketing than on the internet.
Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing
Cost & Expenses
Marketing in print media or live broadcasting, such as TV and radio advertising, is not cheap at all. The bigger the geographical area you want to embrace and the more popular the company you advertise with, the more money you will be spending. What makes it more dreadful is that if you don’t place and promote the ad well enough then you can find your self on the bad end of the cost/reward ratio and actually lose money.
Advice: It’s always better to use the marketing methods that are within your budget and begin to use the more expensive ones once you start acquiring more sales for your business. So if you can’t afford the high costs of print media as well as TV and radio advertising, then stick to the free & low cost methods for now, like handouts and word of mouth.
Availability
Time constraint is probably the biggest traditional marketing disadvantage. Online websites function 24/7 while many offline businesses usually operate in between 6-12 hours a day and only 5 days a week. If you were to do the math and calculate the difference in time between the two you would get an approximate answer of 2 whole days and an additional 12-18 hours a day which is equal to about 4 1/2 days total a week lost to online websites. That’s A LOT of time that could be used to gain more potential customers and make more sales.
Besides having less time to market an offline business, you are also presented with the problem of customers being able to contact you when they want. Most offline businesses don’t provide email which means that customers have to wait to the next business day that you are open or have to leave a voicemail on your phone and wait until you contact them back. To many people, this can be very annoying.
Advice: While you can’t do anything about the internet operating 24/7, you should make it your best effort to be available as much as possible, even at night. That’s why it’s VERY important to have an email and phone number provided in your contact information so that you can get back to your clients right away or the very next morning.
Personnel
Most offline businesses require some kind of work force to maintain them while the internet provides enough tools and support for individuals to usually preserve their business on their own online. Not to mention the added stress and responsibility of having to keep an eye on your workers’ attendance and overall performance. The wider the demographic area you are trying to cover, the more of a need there is to have personnel. This means that more money comes out of your business revenue and into the pockets of your employees.
Advice: If you want more people to buy your product or service over a larger region, then you are going to need a much bigger personnel to help sustain your business. It is better to focus more on recognition and sales before a wider distribution comes into play.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are many offline marketing methods that you can use to successfully promote your business off the internet. Along with the advantages and disadvantages of traditional marketing in general, it’s clear to see why you should incorporate offline marketing in your business.
