How To Effectively Use Offline Advertising To Build Your Online Business

By Jeff Schuman
Posted Monday, October 4, 2004

First of all let me say that having spent the past 20 years working closely with small businesses I know exactly what works when it comes to offline advertising.

What I have found today is that that online businesses have a built in advantage when it comes to promoting their business offline. You already have a website and autoresponder in place to lead your prospect to. When you combine that fact along with the traditional capture methods of telephone and snail mail there is no reason any online business can't use offline methods to build their businesses and sell their products and services.

A lot of online based businesses forget about offline advertising. I know I have. It is important to combine offline and online advertising together in your marketing campaign. This will give you a more well rounded approach to promoting as well as attract potential prospects and customers you might not otherwise get.

In all your offline advertising you want to include your web site address, e-mail or autoresponder addresses, and your phone number and mailing address. This gives you the appearance of a real bonafide business.

Another thing is to start selling products for manufacturers who offer co-op advertising for promoting their products. You can read a little more about this technique in an article I wrote titled "Why Are You Wasting Free Advertising Money?" (http://sites-plus.com/articles/article2.html)

Finally you need to view offline marketing as a long term commitment. I've seen businesses over and over run and ad, not get the response they were looking for and quit.

This will not work offline. Or online for that matter. You need to establish a budget and stick to it. That doesn't mean that you can't change the ad copy if your response is marginal. It just means if you are going to run classified ads for example that you run them for a period of time and allow them to do their job.

Here are 10 offline marketing ideas. Use as many of these as possible to move your business forward.

- Classified Newspaper Ads- Place classified ads in newspapers. Local newspapers often have great advertising rates that you can take advantage of to promote your business. Here's a great source for running classified ads. (http://www.nationwideadvertising.com)

- Put up flyers. They could be in computer stores, libraries, restaurants, car windshields, or anywhere you shop that allows flyers.

- Direct mail. A nice direct mail piece when done consistently over a period of time can bring tremendous exposure for your business. The biggest benefit of direct mail is it allows you to reach thousands of people at a bulk mail rate. You could not do this if you had to mail each piece individually.

- Buy time on local cable T.V. It is surprisingly affordable and if you commit to a block of advertising you can develop Top Of Mind Awareness. TOMA is being there when they want or need you. If you are an affiliate or in an MLM consider doing group advertising and spreading the cost out over several of you. You can have leads routed into one phone number and divied out to all advertisers or have each ad display a different phone number.

- Pass out your CD-ROM or diskette business cards at special events. It could be at trade shows, seminars, fairs, etc.

- Get 250 free business cards here and leave them everywhere you go. (http://www.vistaprint.com)

- Hold a free offline class and teach people how to use their computer or how to use the internet. You could have your web site on display as an example.

- Give away promotional items such as free mouse pads. Put your advertising on the mouse pads and give them away at computer or internet events.

- Advertise in card decks. The card deck you advertise in should be targeted toward internet users.

You would also want to target your offline advertising to groups of people that will actually be interested in your product or service. If you're selling business books, you will want to market to business owners.

In conclusion, if you have a business that's only based online using offline advertising to make money online is a great idea because so many people today go online to get information about products and services they are interested in.

About the Author
Jeff Schuman is a 20 year veteran of sales and marketing and has made over $35 million dollars in sales in that time. His Team-Schuman.Com website contains the Top 5 work at home websites, make money fast websites, make money articles, a free classified ad service and more. Vist it today here: (http://www.Team-Schuman.com)