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Home::Newsletters
Izzy Brewer
Author : izzy brewer
How To Promote Your Online Business Offline.
There are a number of great ways to promote your online business
offline. Combining offline advertising with your online presence
will create momentum and increase your profits. There are a
number of ways to promote your business offline.
Generate traffic. Produce sales. Increase profits.
Those words are gold to every business with a Web site. But an
overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs don't ever reach their
goals of gold.
This is mainly because there seems to be an unwritten code of
Web advertising. It states you can only be successful on the
Internet if you are using online advertising methods like search
engines, banner ads and buying online ad space. True, this
should be a factor in any company's marketing efforts but
there's an old rule of advertising you should
Consider... offline.
There are three main offline-advertising mediums worth
investing in to drive people to your site. Print, television and
radio ads are fairly inexpensive and have the power to promote
your dot com presence effectively.
It's cheaper and more effective than you think.
Print
Newspaper advertising
Newspaper advertising is an easy way to get your message in
front of a large audience. When placing these kind of ads you
want to put them in the business opportunities or work at home
section of the classifieds. If you are only going to run them
one day a week focus on the Sunday edition as this normally has
the highest circulation. If possible run the ad consistently as
this will build some familiarity with the readers and will lead
to better response. Be sure to find out the circulation and
compare the cost with the circulation to find the best deals. I
would also suggest you "test" a few different ads and keep track
of the results of each. Here are some examples of ads I have run
recently:
STOP reading classified ads make money from them instead... If
they're making money you can too:
For example:-
We recently signed up to the affiliate program at
http://www.cashloopholes.co.uk, They pay 50% commissions on
their product. In the national exchange and mart it costs just
£80 for a one week advert in the business opportunities section.
There were other betting guides in there and they have been for
a long time so I knew they were making money. This one
guarantees to win, 100% of the time. None of the others can do
that so we was one step ahead already by promoting such an
exceptional product.
The ad read
FREE MONEY LOOPHOLE
If You Could GUARANTEE, With Absolute Certainty, The Outcome of
an Event BEFORE You Placed a Bet... How Much Money Would You
Invest?
HTTP://WWW.CASHLOOPHOLES.CO.UK
As it's in the business opportunity section this ad immediately
captures the attention of the reader, it's intriguing and causes
the reader to want to know more
We placed the ad for 4 weeks and we set up an ad tracking
service so we knew how well we were doing with it.
In all we received Approximately 500 hits a day and made on
average about 10 sales a day. Do the maths and you will see how
profitable offline advertising can be.
During the 4 week tester period we also had 46 people sign up
as an affiliate under us earning us 15% of whatever sales they
made.
I am not saying this is the only or best product to sell, This
is what we first used when we first started advertising off-line
and it paid of extremely well for us. We have increased the ad
size now costing £290 a week but the increase in traffic makes
up for the extra cost 10 fold. Its always good to start small
and cheaply first though. Always test the market before
ploughing all your advertising budget on it.
Lastly I would recommend trying at least three different papers
with three different ad copies and expand from there as your
budget allows.
Direct Mailing
put yourself in the shoes of your direct mail recipients. Avoid
direct mail deadly mistakes or your materials will end up in the
trash too.
Before you even begin to put your direct mail campaign together,
you've got to know who your target market is. Are they women?
Parents? Young? Old? Understand what motivates them. What are
their likes and dislikes?
Write as if you're talking to them. And even use terms these
types of people would use.
But all the fancy graphics and the most beautifully created
sentences in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't
carefully select the people on your mailing list. If you're
selling adult diapers, you want to target senior citizens...not
23-year-olds.
Tighten your mailing list as much as possible to be sure it's
tailored to your needs. It's tough to make people believe they
need your product and even harder to convince them they need it
now. But if you've researched your list, you have a higher
chance of hitting potential customers instead of the trash can.
You've made your list and checked it twice, so-to-speak. It's
the perfect list. Now it's time to write. Define your objectives
before you start writing. Stay focused and hit the points of
your objective. If you get off track, your reader is going to
stop reading.
Spend a lot of time on your headline. Just remember how you feel
when reading mail that comes to you. After you read that
headline, do you keep reading? The headline can make or break
your direct mail campaign.
Does price really matter? Not unless you know what you're
getting for that price. Hook your reader with all of the product
benefits. By the time they get to the end, they should be
saying, "I can't live without that!"
And then you let them in on the price. Even if the price is
extremely low, you have to tell potential customers about the
product first.
Disclosing this price shouldn't put people into shock. Is your
product priced according to the market? If you're selling a new
teddy bear, it should be priced within reason. Not many people
will pay $90 for a tiny teddy bear, right? Truth is, a lot of
direct mail goes unanswered because the products are
unreasonably priced.
Success! Your potential customer read all the way through your
mailing. Now what?
Did you tell the reader what you want them to do? You can't sell
if you don't tell.
Your readers need a call to action. Tell them to send in the
card, call you, etc. Then tell them again.
Once your direct mail is ready to go, test several smaller
mailings before sending out a huge chunk. Test each of these
mailings by changing a few items when you send them out.
Have two or more sales letters you test against each other. By
testing, you will find out which of those mailings are bringing
in more responses and - hopefully - more orders.
Stick with the clear winners. Remember the saying, "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it."
Direct mail is a waste of money for a lot of people. But it
doesn't have to be for you. Understanding direct mail deadly
mistakes -- and avoiding them -- will lead you to sales success!
Flyers
The next offline advertising method I am going to talk about in
this article is a simple flyer. These are a great way to get
your website in front of a wide audience. Make 1000 copies and
dedicate yourself to handing out all of them in the next 7 days.
Here are just a couple of places to hand these out: around your
neighbourhood or a large neighbourhood nearby, place stacks at
local restaurants, dry cleaners or other places of business, or
go to your local college campuses and find areas you can place
your flyers.
Novelty advertising
There are loads of novelty ways to advertise. Use your
imagination and be original.
Depending on the product you could have your web address
printed on t-shirts and give them away to tourists. If you make
them bright enough they will wear them with big smiles on
they're faces all day advertising your website
Try printing on mouse mats, pens, balls or any other novelty
item. It doesn't even always have to be related to your product
to get good results although a related gimmick can work wonders.
Million Dollar Bills are another great way to advertise
offline. If you haven't heard about these before you can check
them out at "http://www.milliondollarsource.com." These can be
used a number of different ways including as an attention
getter, door opener, response generator, networking device, or
simply to get a smile out of the recipient. I would recommend
ordering a minimum of 2000 and handing them out as quickly as
possible. You can even hire someone to hand them out for you if
you are short on time. As strange as this may sound to some of
you this method works great and is worth the cost.
Statement inserts
Even huge corporation's send statement inserts. You're going to
send a statement to your customers anyway, why not throw in some
advertisements for yourself?
This can also be done when paying bill, you think all them
people sat at there desks all day don't want nothing better from
life.
You get all the advantages of direct mail without paying extra
for a separate mailing. Take a look at these numbers:
Complete direct mail packages run between $200 and $600 per
thousand. In contrast, statement inserts are only $6 to $15 per
thousand. A huge savings for you.
You can also use statement inserts to test a new product. If
your product doesn't generate much interest, you can easily
change your advertising angle. But if you've pumped all your ad
dollars into commercials, print ads and a solo direct mail
campaign without results, changing direction is much harder and
more costly.
Now the bad news. You get your statement and there's an insert
for a high-ticket item inside. Chances are, you're not going to
shell out the big bucks for something knew when you've just
received this blow to your billfold in the same envelope.
That's why your statement insert should advertise a reasonably
priced item. Save your top-dollar items for your high
advertising dollars. Those big prices won't pull in a lot of
orders off a statement insert.
Be sure to watch the weight of your mailing too. You can pack a
lot in a 34 cent mailing. But anything over one ounce will cost
you more in postage.
You should also consider using a large statement insert.
Packing your mailing full of smaller inserts may seem more
logical but research indicates larger inserts have higher
response rates. Three panel is most popular, followed by two
panel.
If you choose to send out a single panel, pack it with
information. Deliver the offer, product, copy and audience to
pick up the slack in size and details.
Order forms must be easy to fill out as well.
Keeping your customers waiting for several months, even weeks
will reduce your chances of that customer becoming a repeat
buyer.
Consider having a customer service department solely devoted to
your featured product. If someone doesn't receive their order or
has other complaints, you need a staff that will handle those
concerns immediately. Handled correctly, a good CSR can turn an
irate person into a satisfied customer. And that customer will
tell a friend about how you solved their problem.
Get the most out of postage rates and your ad dollars with
statement inserts. Who knows? Your customers might even start
looking forward to receiving your bill!
Radio
A 30- or 60-second radio spot is quite a bargain. Rates vary
depending on your area's population. Even still, you can
negotiate a cheaper price and receive a better rate if you buy a
bulk amount of commercials.
One of the many advantages of radio is that you can target your
audience. Specific age groups and lifestyles are all defined by
the station's format. Ratings also help determine this
information and can help you choose the best station and time
slot for your company's commercial.
The key components of your radio commercial include your name,
address, telephone number and selling message. But be sure to
ask listeners to visit your site. Repeat your URL at least twice
and, again, tell them what they'll gain by visiting.
Television
Get ready to shatter the myths about television commercials. You
don't have to be a major corporation or have tons of disposable
ad dollars to hit the airwaves.
Buying airtime on your local television station is actually
very affordable. But for an even lower rate, check the cable TV
companies in your area. Airtime is significantly lower than
broadcast television ad rates.
You also have the added benefit of reaching a specific target
audience. If you sell sporting goods, your ad can run on
SportsSouth and ESPN for the best possible prospects. Your cable
operator can even gear the commercials to a zip code or local
community.
Infomercials aren't too far behind commercials as a low-cost,
traffic-building tool. Even a 15-minute infomercial can explain
your products/services and promote your Web site at the same
time.
Just like with print, make sure your URL is prominently
displayed in your commercial and/or infomercial. Keep in mind,
not everybody has a big screen TV at home and this can make a
huge difference to a potential customer with a 19" screen.
Conclusion
New technology forces us to adapt to new advertising means. But
sometimes old school techniques are overlooked when, in fact,
they can actually help propel business into the money-making
wave of the future.
Don't just do it once and be happy with your results, if
something works keep repeating it and as you make money put more
money into your venture.
Best of luck to you all.
Recommended affiliate programs to join for advertising offline
http://www.cashloopholes.co.uk
This is the program we started out on and it is still one of our
best performers today.. There is a huge market for this type of
stuff as gambling is a massive industry. This product guarantees
100% risk free bets so you can see how appealing it is to the
right audience.
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