Are Online Marketers Missing The Boat?
By Sharon Fling

 I was chatting with someone the other day about my favorite
subject -- online promotion of local business -- and he said
something that made my ears perk up. 

"What about the other way -- Internet companies using
offline promotions to grow their enterprises and drive
traffic to their sites? Why aren't more internet marketers
doing THAT?"

I had to admit I didn't know. Since much of my target
audience is offline, there's no way I can limit myself to
online marketing only. But what about the vast majority of
online businesses? Are they doing the same thing brick-and-
mortars are doing -- but in reverse?  Are they ignoring the
offline world the way that some local businesses ignore the
Internet?

It reminded me of an exchange I had a few months ago with
Martin Avis, of Biz Ezine (http://www.bize-zine.com).

Martin's opinion was that local marketing should
be of great interest to all kinds of marketers as well as
web site designers and consultants.

"For that reason," Martin said, "I believe that you can
market to any online marketer who has an element of local
business in their portfolio. And at the moment, that is any
online marketer with an ounce of common sense!"

Well. When you put it that way, Martin...

I tucked this nugget away and carried on, still focused on
reaching those elusive small business owners in the outside
world.

But when the subject came up again last week, it got me to
thinking. How many online marketers are maximizing
advertising dollars by integrating online and offline
promotions?

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody is online 16
hours a day, visiting websites, reading ezines and hanging
out on discussion boards. In fact, a lot of people still
don't have computers. Gasp! Can you imagine?

It's not a coincidence that some of the most successful
online businesses were promoted largely via traditional
media advertising such as newspapers, radio, and TV.

Even Amazon, the king of books online sales, is doing offline
promotions such as catalogs and print ads. And how many
hundreds of AOL CDs have you received in the mail? Google,
eBay, Match.com, Monster.com, Yahoo! -- they all do some
form of offline advertising and promotion.

Now, you may not have "Yahoo!" money, but there are plenty
of CHEAP ways of driving offline traffic to your online
site.

As a matter of fact, they are much like the methods
you'd use to drive offline traffic to your local site: your
URL everywhere, word-of-mouth, press releases, free
publicity from being mentioned in a local newspaper or TV
news program, license plate frames, postcards (which can be
handed out like business cards at local events and trade
shows), promotional items, networking, small print ads that
include your URL .... the list is ENDLESS.

Bottom line: the more people you expose to your product or
service, the more business you will get. If you want to
reach the maximum number of people, you must promote your
business both online AND offline. There are too many people
that are in only ONE of those places. Can you really afford
to ignore so many potential prospects and customers? 

 
Sharon Fling is the author of "How To Promote Your Local Business On the Internet", and creator of GeoLocal.com, the web's largest resource for using the Internet to promote small local business online. Visit www.geolocal.com and subscribe to GeoLocal's free Tip of the Week.