The goal of any business should be to reach the most amount of people possible with the right message at the right time and for the right reason. Many people with online companies are missing out completely when all they do is networking, search engine optimization, and some scattered direct mail to small amounts of people.
The majority of consumable dollars, by a very wide margin, are spent offline. The majority of people are spending more than 20 hours per week watching television. The majority of people also spend more than 10 hours per week listening to the radio.
Have you ever heard of companies like eBay, Travelocity, Priceline, or Monster? Sure you have. You may think that the online environment is where you've heard about them. Sorry, you and everyone else are aware of these names due to offline advertising and marketing.
Even though your business is much smaller than these, you need to look into and take advantage of offline opportunities. It does not matter what category of business you are in.. you could be in network marketing, business services, giftware, or whatever. Your company can and should benefit from using offline surface exposure media.
Before embarking on any campaign, the business owner needs to know, understand, and specifically define the primary demographic group which comprises their customer profile. Without this, there cannot be an effective plan, which is a necessity for success. The fact is that less than 10% of all contacts a company makes will ever respond. So you could mail out your postcards to 100 select people and you'll get, on average, less than 10 responses. So how about reaching 150,000 people each week with a radio flight? Or over 400,000 people with an ad in a major daily newspaper.
Think about it. The opportunities are endless and the business potential is limitless. You need to make that commitment to grow your company. Offline advertising for online companies needs to be considered by you and all others in online business. The possibilities are there for the taking.
(c) 2004 Michele Borowsky
Michele Borowsky is a 20+ year executive veteran in a Media Exposure Management firm and the author of "The Mother of All Marketing for Business Owners."
http://motherofallmarketing.com
She can be reached at 602-404-2657 or by emailing: support@motherofallmarketing.com