We find a lot of website owners will put together a site and then think that they can advertise to the whole world, which they can. However, many people fail to realize that there is a local market in their area that they will also want to market to. That is done through offline marketing strategies. In this document you will learn multiple ways to market a website offline. There are many offline marketing strategies that will have an impact on the overall performance and success of your website.
Recently, big-name online companies have been revisiting offline marketing and jumping into the public to increase market share and promote brand awareness. Big companies like eBay have noticed the advantages of offline marketing with their ?song-and-dance? television commercials, Amazon.com with its radio spots, and online recruiting firms such as Monster.com with its strategically placed print ads. All of these companies have attained such a significant share of their market target and online audience, that spreading their name offline is the next feasible option. Doing so allowed these companies to further solidify their brand and increase awareness as well as confidence in the companies. Moving marketing dollars from online marketing techniques to the development of offline marketing techniques will be a worth while step to pursue for businesses with an established market and the willingness to put up the capital.
Moving from the low-risk nature of online marketing to risky, high-cost offline marketing is a big step for any business to include in their repertoire or for any Web department to even begin drawing up such plans. Beginning with identifying effective marketing mediums, selecting the right distribution channels, creating advertisements, working with outside assistance, and tracking results are the most basic steps in building an offline marketing plan?but most of all it begins with knowing your target market.
Table of Contents:
1. Business Cards 8. Newspapers/Classified Ads
2. Vehicle Advertising 9. Sponsor Community Events
3. Word of Mouth (Networking) 10. Billboards
4. Flyers 11. Radio Ads
5. Direct Mail (Newsletters) 12. Television Ads
6. Magazines 13. Movie Theater Ads
7. Trade Shows
Laying the ground work
Before you start your offline marketing strategies that we are going to discuss there are certain things that need to be consistent through out your marketing. One important step you need to start off on is have a unified message or theme. A unified message and/or theme would include a company logo. A company logo is important when we are trying to establish domain name awareness and recognition. We also want to use our domain name to display professionalism to our customers by having our domain name in the logo. There are several sites on line that will create a professional logo for your company such as https://secure.submitsolution.com/logos/?cid=11. If you are familiar with such programs such as photo shop or paint shop pro, you might consider spending some time and doing this yourself.
We also want to establish a slogan. A slogan should be a kind of catch phrase. This slogan should help define who you are and what you are about in your business. Some examples of slogans would include. Nike?. Just do it. Also Home Depot?. You can do it we can help.
When we implement these types of things you will also need an attention getter. When we advertise to our potential customers, we need to have something that will capture their attention. This is done by the use of a ?Hook? or a ?call to action?, telling our customers to do something. For example, ?what are you waiting for, let?s go shopping? is a good call to action. Or, ?are you tired of searching the web for _______, you have come to the right place?. These are excellent examples of how to use a hook to get your customers into your site.
Through all of this having an effective domain name is a must!! The domain name becomes the central focus of the advertising that you are involved in. It is what we want our visitors and audience to remember.
Business Cards
One of the cheapest, easiest and simplest ways to advertise offline is through business cards. They are relatively cheap and easy but can be extremely effective in getting your name out there. There are many ways acquire business cards. If you have some time you can dedicate and if you have experience with a computer program such as Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, or Paint Shop Pro, you can make these cards yourself. There are however many recourses online that you can use as well. One of the recourses we have found to be extremely useful is a site you can use called www.vistaprint.com . Vista Print is a website that gives you the business cards for FREE. The only thing you would be responsible for is the shipping. When you pull up the site, on the right hand side of the page you will click on the link that says free business cards. When you click that you will then be able to choose from the many different templates that they offer to find the one that would best suit the look and feel for your website or business.
There are several different things that you business card needs to have on it for it to serve its complete purpose. One of the first things that you will need to have on your business card will be your domain name or web address. This should appear at the top of the business card where it can be recognized easily. Your business card should also include a phone number and a person of contact. Remember our purpose is to give potential customers all the vital information they need to get to your website and place orders with ease.
Vehicle Advertising
Branding your name in customers minds is important in any advertising but especially in Vehicle advertising. Most of you have probably seen cars driving around town with stickers or magnets on their cars advertising their particular businesses. This is a great way to brand your domain name right on your vehicle. This is done again through a sticker or a car magnet. Some companies may even paint the car with logo or company information. Make sure to choose a logo that meshes well with the look and feel of your company, what you sell, and the logo found on your website. When using your vehicle as an advertising tool, make sure your domain name is large and visible, so anyone glancing at it can see it and remember it. This is important to the success of this type of a marketing tool. Most drivers don?t like to take their eyes off the road for very long to try to figure out what your domain name is. Also when doing this, make sure you get your phone number on the advertisement also. Most people can not access the internet from their car so by offering a phone number, they can call while it is fresh in their mind if they are interested.
Word to Mouth (Networking)
Word to mouth advertising is one of the most effective ways to advertise. Often times word to mouth advertising is extremely effective because the site or promotion is usually referred to a potential customer by a friend, colleague, or current customer. People tend to trust someone they know more so than somebody they have never met or a company that is trying to advertise to them. Try to encourage your customers and people you know to get the word out about the product or services that you offer. This can be done by offering incentives, coupons, or discounts to those current customers who refer a friend, family member, or colleague to your website.
To get started with Word to Mouth Advertising make sure you tell people you know about your business and what you are selling. So when you are standing in line at the grocery store, or while you are getting your hair cut, make sure the people you are around know what you are doing and know what your domain name is.
Flyers
Using flyers are another great and inexpensive ways to conduct your offline marketing. Flyers, although they are super cheap to produce, they are also super effective?Flyers are one of the oldest forms of marketing.
Your flyers probably won?t make you famous, but they will get you noticed. One important result of flyers is that they give your customer something to look at when they are waiting in a cafe or lobby.
Another benefit is that flyers are tangible, an attribute that most low-techies appreciate. One can tear off the phone number slips at the bottom and take them with them.
Flyers also provide the opportunity for human interaction, another thing some low-techies are partial to. Hand potential customers flyers on the street and they can ask you questions directly. That gives you as the business owner an opportunity to sell them on your product or service, right then and there.
When designing the layout of your flyer, put a bold, black headline at the top that shouts your most important benefit. Use light colored paper. Dark colors tend to make your text difficult to read. Use 14 point type or larger to ensure people don?t have to squint to read your flyer. Also make sure you include the groundwork that we have already laid, such as, domain name, slogan and phone number.
Flyers should be handed out locally and need to be placed in strategic locations such as supermarkets, shopping malls, social clubs, and business centers. Where you put your flyers depends on what your business specializes in. For example, if I had a website selling hunting gear, some good places for me to hand out flyers would include hunting expos or other wildlife venues that are relevant to the products that I am selling. It would not make any sense for me to go to a bridal shop and put my hunting gear flyer on the cars in the parking lot. Flyers can be extremely effective if they are dispersed strategically.
Using flyers to advertise your business is another great and inexpensive ways to conduct your offline marketing. Flyers are very cheap and easy to produce. Use www.mycreativeshop.com and click on their take a free tour link to get some ideas.
Direct Mail (Newsletters)
This is another traditional offline Marketing strategy. When talking about Newsletters, we are talking about an actual printed piece of paper that will be mailed out to potential and existing customers. Newsletters are a great way to capture a local audience. Essential ingredients to the success of a newsletter are promotions. Make sure to give incentives to potential and existing customers to come to the site, give them a reason to go there. A great recourse to putting together a newsletter is www.directmail.com this site will help you put together a newsletter and even has options to help you in sending them out.
There is a big difference between and online newsletter or and Ezine, and an offline newsletter. Ezines are great way to target existing customers that have already purchased from your site. Ezines are often sent out via email, where as direct mail newsletters are a great way to target customers that may not check their emails, or to grab their attention via direct mail as well. As we do with Ezines, with direct mail we also want to offer a coupon and/or discount offer as an incentive to get the recipients of the mail to visit the site.
Sponsoring Community Events
When was the last time you noticed a local company sponsoring a local event? It is a fairly common offline marketing technique. One thing that is recommended is to try sending a message to the community. By sponsoring targeted events, you can send the message that your business is behind certain community-related issues. This can have a significant impact on the way the public perceives your company. For example, if you have a company that produced products to help kids become better basketball players, you might want to sponsor a little league basketball event. The public will take it as a sign that your company really cares about children learning how to play basketball. If you play it right, you may even be able to get some exposure from the local media about your participation and your company?s commitment to the event in your area. Every time the little league tournament is advertised, (on players jersey?s, in newspapers) your companies name will be affiliated with that event. The next time parents want products to make their kids better basketball players, they are going to think of your company.
Something else to consider when discussing the advantages of sponsoring community events is the fact that it helps us to accomplish certain things. When all is said and done, your primary motivation for sponsoring a community event should be that it?s the right thing to do. It points out your interest and dedication to the local economy and community.
Look for ways to sponsor some kind of event locally there that is relevant to the products or services you offer. Remember it wouldn?t make any sense to sponsor a little league basketball tournament if you were selling women?s perfume, so make sure that as you look for community events to be involved in, they are relevant to the products that you are selling.
Shwag
Clothes, pens etc.
Summary
Depending on the type of product that you are selling, these marketing topics can and will be effective. Local Markets are one of the biggest markets in the marketing world, and for online businesses it is also one of the more overlooked markets around. Our goal is to give you as many different options of offline marketing as possible so you can review all of them and choose the best marketing strategies and make the most effective marketing decisions to insure the success of your online business.
Remember not all offline marketing strategies may be feasible for your company to do at this time, start with the strategies that your budget will support and work towards the others as your business grows.
Source: http://www.prospering.com/blog/ecommerce/?p=1846
madonna super bowl halftime kelly clarkson super bowl giants super bowl 2012 half time show halftime show 2012 kelly clarkson super bowl 2012 giants
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন