Off-Line Marketing Techniques for your Online Business
When it comes to promoting your blog, things like social media, comment marketing or article marketing naturally come to mind. While these are tried and true ways to promote an online business, you may not have considered the fact that off-line marketing can often be as effective, if not more effective, than on-line marketing.
Why off-line marketing is important
Why is that? Why does off-line marketing often have a bigger impact on your online business? There are several reasons:
Off-line marketing is portable. If you run a small ad in a weekly flyer, a reader can rip the ad out and take it with him. A banner ad on a website is there only while the reader is on the site the ad is located.
Off-line marketing is personal. Personal marketing techniques – from passing out business cards to putting up a flyer at the library – tend to connect with people on a different level than online marketing techniques. In the offline world, people know there’s a real individual behind that business card. Online, there’s just a computer.
Off-line marketing is proven. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of the marketing potential on the Internet. In the long term, it’s likely that most marketing efforts will include, if not exclusively, Internet efforts. Still, off-line techniques have been studied, in some cases, for decades. We know what works off-line, and we know what doesn’t.
Getting started
There are colleges and business schools that offer four year degrees in marketing. I can’t give you all of the advice those programs could offer here on my little blog. I can, however, suggest some basic ways you can get started in your off-line marketing efforts:
Business cards. This is the easiest way to recruit visitors to your website off-line. Hand out business cards everywhere – on the bus, at the diner, even in your kids’ school on parents’ night.
Community news. Most newspapers and public television stations offer free “community news” announcements. Create a special offer or even host an event to tell people about your business.
Networking. I’m not talking Facebook or Twitter here, I’m talking about old-school networking. Connect with your friends, co-workers and former employers. Give them the scoop on what you’re up to with your business, and recruit them as word-of-mouth marketers.
No, you won’t get as much traffic from off-line marketing, but the traffic you do get is more likely to be ready to convert.
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I’m surprised to see the Cow talk about this buddy as I wrote two articles about offline marketing last week and how I saw HUGE potential in them. I wrote an article talking about the potential and did a video with some examples of what you can do to even drive sales for your website! Don’t want to spam here, but I feel your article is a nice addition to what I wrote and I think what I wrote is a nice addition to what you wrote so I’ll shamelessly mention my two posts
http://www.frogstr.com/offline-marketing-i-see-huge-potential
http://www.frogstr.com/drive-sales-with-offline-marketing-going-crazy
Nice article and you know I couldn’t agree more with you…As I’m a believer of offline marketing!
Well the type of offline advertising I used was pens from national pen company. I run a gaming website. The pen has my website. I cannot really track it but my traffic is going up.
I like these tips for marketing your blog offline. I believe if you send letters out then put your website somewhere in the letter. One of the ways I marketed my blog was I put a video of my wedding on my blog and then told all my friends to go to my blog to watch it. Good old regular networking.
Now my blog has over 300 subscribers (almost) so I must be doing a pretty good job.
Thanks for the tips though i think you need to give more tips
Some great tips, would love to see more examples of off-line promotion. Do you think this sort of thing (business cards etc) suits websites that sell a product more than blogs? It just seems that networking about “this blog I write” is a harder sell than “this product you can purchase at http://www.etc“. Any tips of the best way to approach off-line marketing for a blog specifically?
Nice tips. We want more =)
I network offline with a group of fellow bloggers in my area. We have had some real world meetings and are trying to organize larger gatherings to share beer and talk shop and network.
The problem with off-line marketing is the fact that it’s difficult to track, especially if you’re sending them to a website.
With that said, they’re a decent source of traffic for some of my friends who gave out flyers.
As for me, I don’t do much off-line marketing (because I’ve still got a lot of online ones that I haven’t fully exploited), but I do mention my websites to the people around me.
I think Off-Line Marketing is underrated…
Well, google is really solved a problem for tracking your traffic. with tools from google analytics, you can track very single piece of information. Just another tip.
It is Amazing how profitable Offline is! No I do not have Million dollar lauches but I can not believe how little the average Business Owner does not know about Marketing. I have told 2 very wealthy people who launched products that I love about affiliate programs….guess what? They never heard of it! We have close relationships now…you better believe it. Also, I want to say…offline newsletters or CDs are like ATMs.
I love off line, I put a sign with my website on the back of my car and I get lots of direct hits which I assume many of them are coming from that sign, I also think posting flyers in some prominent places maybe something to try out.
AAARRGGGHHH!!
I can’t believe I didn’t jump on this earlier. THIS IS WHAT I DO!!!!
Thanks for the article. You’ve inspired me to include an “off-line marketing” section of our site to give our customers some good ideas as well as emphasize the importance of off-line marketing.
We’ve been creating the BEST and most effective off-line marketing tool anyone could possibly use for their business! We’ve been creating really cool business cards that look like REAl U.S. currency with your message on the reverse side. People use these as “drop cards”, “sizzle cards”, and some have actually replaced their traditional business cards with our dollar cards.
Thanks again!
Best Regards,
John
http://www.DollarCardMarketing.com
Exposure is exposure… online or off… don’t overlook those supermarket bulletin boards either, you’d be amazed at how many people check those out! As far as tracking, there’s always Google Analytics and/or use redirect addresses for your offline ads… possibilities are endless
someone said off line marketing is difficult to track(especially if your sending them to an online web site) . I don’t agree. I think you can track any marketing . You do your marketing off line with things like special offers. to qualify for the special offer, you must purchase online at my web site(but you must state where you found out about my web site.) this is a great way to see where your best marketing is happening.
Example, you put an ad in 12 different magazines and want to know which mag is getting the best response. you can offer a special gift for making the purchase at your web site, but only can qualify ,if they mention they saw your ad in hunters magazine.
I network offline with a group of fellow bloggers in my area. We have had some real world meetings and are trying to organize larger gatherings to share beer and talk shop and network.