Offline marketing

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Offline Marketing

A list of some offline marketing ideas.

After a beginning webmaster has set up a complete site and invested time in learning about online marketing techniques like PPC and SEO, sometimes they decide that to extend their marketing efforts to the offline world. Most of the time these webmasters quickly find out that offline marketing is a lot more difficult.

The main reason is because that there are no economies of scale with offline marketing. With online marketing, it costs the same amount of money to send an e-mail to 1,000 as opposed to just one (assumin you do email in-house). And it costs the same amount of money to host a website that 5,000 people visit as opposed to 5 people. But with offline marketing, a greater reach will cost you proportionally more money. Because online marketing is scalable you can begin with a very small budget. You can literally start off with a $5 marketing budget with PPC. Because offline marketing is not scalable, the minimum amount you can spend for offline marketing can still be expensive. Just look at the advertising rates of any magazine.

Some webmasters have tried to experiment with traditional offline marketing channels only to find out that they have spent a lot of money without getting much of a benefit. Because of this, many webmasters try to come up with good ideas for doing things themselves and using "sweat equity" to subsidize their lack of marketing budget. Here are a few of the ways that webmasters try to build their sites offline.

Business Cards - There are companies that can print business cards for low cost - or even free. They can also be printed at home inexpensively. Many people like to carry them with them and hand them out to people they meet. Some people have been known to leave a stack in public to let people pick one up if they need it or stick them in books at Barnes and Noble. I don't think this is a scalable strategy but it is a good way to cultivate one-to-one relationships.
Bumper Stickers and car advertising - Bumper sticker and car decals seem a little cheesy but they are inexpensive and almost zero-effort ways to get the word out. Some people have reservations about messing up their cars though.
Custom made hat or t-shirt - A custom hat or T-shirt won't reach a ton of people but it falls into that category of things that don't cost too much money or take too much effort so you should just do them.
Seminars - A classic example of offline marketing is to give seminars. This is done very often with financial advisors and mortgage brokers looking to educate the public while at the same time trying to cross-sell their services. This is not a technique used very often for purely online businesses and is probably best used for business that have a strong offline and online component. This strategy can be a very high-return strategy but can also take a decent amount of money and effort.
Direct Mail - Direct mail is the old, timeless way of getting your word out. But this is again probably best used for business that have a strong offline presence simply because e-mail marketing is preferable to direct mail. Direct mail is a high-risk and expensive technique that you need to research before you try. There are tons of books on Amazon about the best ways to do a direct mail campaign.
Radio Talk Shows - If you are very knowledgeable in your field and work in an industry with broad appeal then it is possible that you can get a spot on a local radio show if they have a segment that is relevant to what you do. I'm not sure how you would go about getting this kind of gig and I'm sure it is not easy but this is a good example of a zero-cost way of reaching a good number of people.
Newspapers and press releases - If you have a very unique concept then you could contact newspapers to see if they would do a story about you. Instead of contacting the newspapers directly, which they may not appreciate, issuing a press release and looking for other media to pick up the story is a cheap way to get some print advertising.
Association Newsletters - There are local chapters of associations in different industries that offer printed newsletters that they mail to their members. If you find these associations you could offer to write an article for them to publish, possibly on a regular basis, as long as there is a mention of your web site. You could even let them publish an article you have already written in the past (just make sure it is still relevant). This way it wouldn't take any extra time or money to get your word out. Normally, I don't recommend "licensing" any of your content to anyone but this would be an exception.

Conclusion

Although most webmasters dream about going offline to expand their reach I think the benefits of online marketing (scalability, lower cost, and risk) are what webmasters should concentrate on. Many webmasters are disillusioned about offline marketing and some of them feel that having a printed message will somehow legitimize their website and raise their web site into the upper echelon of web sites. I think offline marketing has potential for the right webmasters but I think most webmasters should ignore it until they have exhausted all of their online marketing efforts. They also need to have a solid offline marketing plan that is based on a sound strategy where the projected numbers make sense.

Also, just because traffic from offline visitors doesn’t lend itself to easy tracking doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to at least try to track your return on investment. You could set up custom landing pages to track visitors coming from offline marketing. You also should try to quantify what the cost-per-click is from offline sources. For example, the cost per click for a bumper sticker may be: 2 visitors a day for 5 days a week, which would be 520 visitors a year - or 1,560 visitors over 3 years. If the cost of the bumper sticker is $15 then this comes out to less than 1 cent per visitor. Worth it? Definitely.