If You Are Successful Selling Online, Have You Taken that Offline Yet?

June 5th, 2008 by Lazy Owner

The internet is dotted with many stories which relate to brick-and-mortar companies going online and it is time to reverse the trend. If you have a successful online business, it might be worthwhile to consider the traditional method of offline campaigns which have the following advantages:

1) Allows you to target an audience which are not very frequent internet users and thus might not be familiar with your competition. This is almost like a ‘virgin’ group of users when it comes to selling your products.

2) Offline campaigning is not commonly used (as of now) by online retailers so it is a less crowded space to get in.

3) A direct mail campaign can help you strengthen your online marketing and increase the ‘Opportunities to See’ (OTS) count of your target audience.

4) Helps get unique eyeballs to your web site as they are likely to use the URL on the mailer rather than come in from a reference site.

Direct mailing is the most obvious way to take your marketing offline but do keep in mind that it is not a cheap method and you might need to have to recalibrate your marketing budget to fit in this requirement. some other methods of offline marketing can include:

1) Advertisements in trade journals/magazines. This is budget dependant but tends to have a high level of ’stickiness’ if the advertisement delivers a relevant message or service offering.

2) Direct mailers are excellent which you have a ‘mail back’ feature or an online offer in place. Not only does it help you track the success rate of direct mail, it also helps you serve those users who might want to rely on the good old postal system.

3) Events/shows/sponsorships. Nothing beats like meeting the customer in person. Trade shows might have lost some of their sheen in the recent years but niche shows still manage to get enough footfalls to make them viable. A case study worth considering is Google….you cannot miss it in any of the marketing shows around the world (well, they do have an endless marketing budget but that is not the point I am trying to make here!).

4) Think Global. Act Local. This might as well be my favorite maxim when it comes to marketing since there are a handful of ideas which can be localized to get results. Mailers in local languages, advertising in local dailies rather than national ones have better ‘reachability’ in the area you are targeting.

5) Real word-of-mouth publicity also works wonders in the offline world. there is nothing that will keep me away from a shoes-accessories web site when I get to hear from one of my friends. Getting real world champions gives an online entity a real face and in many cases celebrity endorsements also work.

Some inherent pitfalls with offline marketing can be overcome with greater budget allocation, creative thinking and smart management. Offline campaigns are not as DIY as online ones and take longer to implement as well. Combining an online campaign with offline processes also needs very good management and you might want to consult some experts in that area before going ahead with it.