Marketing - Offline
Ads Online | Ads 0ffLine | Social Media
In the Beginning No-One Knows Your There
You might have to attract users to you site via offline marketing. Many online companies have had to originally attract business this way. In 1999 Amazon. com spent $80 million dollars on offline advertising. There were far fewer web sites and users then and television and billboards were two of the main sources to relay the message. Even now when they are one of the best known online companies, Amazon still spent over $9 million dollars on offline advertising for a year recently.
Obviously very few companies have Amazon's advertising budget. But the lesson to be learned from Amazon is that you still need offline marketing in order to attract users to your site.
Television and billboards might be too expensive. I think that advising on TV outside of prime time might cost a lot less but those 2am ads always seem to have an air of desperation and more often than not obvious low production values, maybe they still might draw customers, I am not sure. If you have a very small budget save it for items that probably have a better marketing value and will give a better impression.
Almost all Businesses Need a Site
Even though you are an small off-line business with local customers and have no intention of selling your product online in almost all cases it is still better to have a web site. Why, because most businesses have one, that may not sound like a good enough reason (a bit like following the herd) but you also need one because potential clients and customers expect you to have one, even though it might not really relate to your businesses purpose. Often before I go to a local business I look for their web site. I am always surprised if they do not have one.
The first step in offline (and online) marketing is to create an excellent product, service or information and impeccable customer service. Word of mouth is probably one of the best ways of attracting customers, especially for small businesses.
Printed Materials
You need to get your web address on all printed materials
- Business Cards - attend networking events and handout your cards, give them to customers / clients, you never know when they might pass them on.
- Brochures - high quality brochures that indicate that more information can be found online.
- Letterhead and Envelopes
- All company emails - create a signature it needs to include the company name, url, email, and physical address if there is one.
- Flyers
- Postcards
- Advertisements in local magazines and newspapers
- Bumper Stickers
- T-Shirts
Email Marketing / Permission Marketing
At check-out ask your customers/clients to give their email address in-order to receive additional information, new-letters, sales-bargans, events etc. Also include an email permission form on your site. With Permission Marketing the emails are only sent to those who are already interested in the product. These emails are far more likely to be read and are often acted upon.