10 Online Marketing Tips for Offline Businesses

You’ve most likely engaged in some online promotion tactics for your business. Social networking, internet marketing, and online business strategies are all the rage. In college, entrepreneurship can often be easier with the internet as a tool, but if your core audience is offline (or you just want to find another way to reach out), bulking up your offline marketing and PR arsenal is the way to go. Follow these guidelines to use in your offline marketing strategy that borrow from online tactics and techniques.

1. Build your brand with a community. Online, this step is easy using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. But offline, this gets a little tricky. If you’re company serves a niche market, try building a “club”-like team around your product that will attract people to give your offerings more value. Hold meetings and gatherings that are informal, not “sales-y,” ways to get your customers talking about their problems and desires–as they relate to your industry, of course?
2. Hold seminars. Online seminars are standard practice for many companies, and there’s been talk that video is the wave of the future. Hit the ground running by hosting a free informational seminar in your area for people interested in what you sell. Once again, don’t make it promotional, just cover some key issues and their solutions customers in your niche have, and you’ll more than likely get quite a few callbacks, RFPs, and interest in your company.
3. Write letters. Email used to be so novel, many people were excited to receive it, no matter what it was. Now, most businesspeople receive too much email a day for it to mean much. On the contrary, snail mail sparks an interest in people now because genuine, hand-written letters are almost extinct. Try writing to customers to build up referrals, resales, and up-sales, and try writing to new prospects to REALLY stand out!
4. Borrow design practices. So often have I seen businesses that look wonderful online, but fail to make an impact offline. If Google, Facebook, and Digg were stores you could walk into downtown, what would they look like (probably like Apple…). Having a great design online is mandatory now, whether your site is Web 2.0 or vintage–so why not offline as well. Get rid of that crappy old sign and upgrade–it’ll go a long way.
5. Offer free products. Just about every online company I know offers some sort of “free” information. White papers, reports, whatever. Instead of offering a demo of your product and including a brochure, offer your customers something of true value. Sometimes this can get more expensive when working with tangible products, so start by offering the same “online” material in a different way–print out your white papers and reports and package them to look nice. Your customers can then get a taste for what you offer in a tangible way.
6. Find a way for customers to connect. I used to build websites and then run away. I was scared, in a way, that I did something wrong and needed to hide. Now, I stick around to the point of annoyance in order to assess that I’ve done my job well and they’re 100% satisfied. Online, this is easy. If someone doesn’t like my book, they can email me, comment on it at Amazon, or just un-friend me on Facebook (that would be excessively harsh, though–who DOES that?!?) Give your customers every opportunity to contact you after the project/sale is complete–and then some. Send follow-up letters, phone calls, etc. until you know they’re happy. Then get them to tell their friends.
7. Don’t spam. No one likes it online, no one likes it offline. I’m not just talking about mail-spam and the like–don’t put up signs in the ghetto for your high-rent beauty salon in the Heights (unless they’re your target demographic). Put your marketing in the right place, and no more. Part of any great strategy is knowing how to save–make less money do more. If you need to market your message, and want to do it with email marketing, use a reputable email marketing company. A friend of mine wrote a getresponse review, and I’ve got a small business web hosts review page as well.
8. Constantly update. On the surface, you may sell the same old product. But find new ways to market it to new demographics, and upgrade your systems as needed to maximize revenues. Online, adding content and contributing to communities grows blogs, so offline, being active in your own community will help grow your business as well.
9. Be frugal. Especially if you are a college entrepreneur, this tip is crucial. In my experience, the success of the internet came because of the ease and how inexpensive it is to share information, and I believe that concept can transfer to offline businesses as well. Use smaller, better-targeted mailing lists and one sign in the busiest part of town rather than two smaller signs in quieter areas.
10. Find mentors. I have a list of blogs I read every day, and quite a few online businesses I follow and borrow from frequently. Seek out the professionals in your industry and your area and latch on to them for support, guidance, and coaching. You don’t need to sit down with them very often–if at all–to learn from them. Follow what they’re doing, and copy what works.

I hope you’ll help me add to this list as time goes by–online business began as an electronic version of offline business, but the reciprocal effects do not need to be one-sided–you can learn a lot about offline business by following their counterparts online.

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