Offline Gold for Online Marketers – How to Sell your Online Marketing Skills

admin    SEO Marketing     Gold, Marketers, Marketing, Offline, Online, Sell, Skills

Offline Gold for Online Marketers – How to Sell your Online Marketing Skills

During the new year holidays, I stumbled upon an interesting post written by Andrew Cavanagh in the Warrior Forum. The post is about how to make money by selling your online marketing skills to businesses right in you local city. This post went completely insane with thousands of views almost immediately and all kinds of positive comments.

Andrew who has over 25 years of experience in developing small businesses also written a 50-page report called “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”. and sales. When I saw his new report, I grabbed it immediately not because of its introductory low price (.99) but the idea of selling our online marketing skills or services offline.

The idea of offline marketing is consistent with my thinking. Like I mentioned in my website before, most online marketers are glue to their PC all the time but there are a few smart ones who also spend their time doing networking offline. Because these people know that there are gold mines in the offline world. But, the question is… how do you promote and sell your online marketing skills offline?

If you’ve experience in building a small business before, perhaps you know that the average business owner is very busy just trying to keep his business running. He doesn’t have the time to take a long hard objective look at the way he could improve his marketing strategy. But he is also acutely aware that anything that can improve his net profits will help to keep his business more stable and put real cash in his pocket! Most small business owners are well aware that they can always find time for someone who’s genuinely interested in helping them to improve their businesses and they’re willing to pay for it.

Now if you’ve some basic online marketing skills and are willing to walk into a business and just have a casual conversation about how they can improve their sales using the Internet, a good percentage of them will listen. Of course, besides having some basic online marketing skills, you also need to learn how to talk to these business owners and understand their NEEDS. That’s why I find the report “Offline Gold For Online Marketers” so valuable because it outlines step-by-step how to approach small business owners so they want to listen to you and how to sell your services to them.

Here are some tips on where to find those small business owners and how to communicate with them…

I’m sure you’ve heard about Business Networking International (BNI). If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s basically a business and professional networking organization whose purpose is to provide a structured environment for the development and exchange of qualified business referrals. It’s the largest networking organisation of its kind in the world. I’m sure you can find them in your city.

They hold regular meeting for their members and if you know someone there, you can ask him/her to invite to join their meeting (for free). It’s a great avenue for you to get to know other entrepreneurs from different fields. Make sure you bring a lot of business cards if you attend one of their gatherings.

Just get to know people and have a casual conversation with them. My favorite technique to communicate with small business owners is to always remember to ask questions! For example, let’s say he/she asks you first, “what do you do for a living?”. My normal answer for that question is… “I have a home-based Internet business. How about you?”. Always remember to end your answer with a question. You need to get to know about your potential client and a great way to do this is to talk less and listen more (ie. ask more questions).

Ask them if their businesses currently have a website? Most of them don’t. For those who have websites, they have no idea what is online marketing and they have never made any sale from their websites. You must always in a position to gather information and seek the opportunity to talk about your services. Remember not to talk too much about yourself. Focus on your potential client. it’s enough to say that you have a home-based internet business and you also help small business owners to improve their businesses through online marketing. Ask them this question: “Do you think your business will do better if you have a website?”. Then LISTEN!

I hope this article has given you some great ideas on how to sell your online marketing skills offline. Click here to find out more about “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”.

Social Media Marketing is Attracting Offline Interest

admin    Social Media     Attracting, interest, Marketing, Media, Offline, Social

Social Media Marketing is Attracting Offline Interest

As social media marketing continues to grow in popularity online it has managed to capture the attention of the offline community as well. In many boardrooms, more serious consideration is being given to social marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy.

The phenomenal success this type of internet advertising has achieved is hard to argue or ignore.

Current marketing strategies still find ‘conventional’ advertising approaches being utilized such as television, radio and print. However with the cost efficient and highly effective channels online social media offers these ‘conventional’ offline methods are quickly becoming outdated. The only hurdle new online strategies seem to now face for offline application is good old fashion management skepticism.

Here is what likely can be expected in the not too distant future regarding the offline business community’s adaptation to online marketing strategies.

Offline Marketing Budgets at Present

At present time there is little evidence of any significant spending by the mainstream offline business community on any type of internet advertising. It is inevitable however that the recognition of the effectiveness and cost efficiencies of marketing online is soon forthcoming in this area.

Witnessing the recent failures of many long time business giants due in part to their own marketing inefficiencies will only serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the business community. The aftermath of the recent economic downturn will only result in accelerating the shift of marketing strategies to the more effective and efficient avenues available online.

Increase in Online Spending

As offline businesses begin to shift their advertising spending towards the internet social marketing will get much attention due to the viral nature of this particular method.

Marketing online differs from traditional methods insofar as the consumer seeks out information on their own as opposed to having it presented to them. With that said the need for content, and lots of it, exists and must be supplied by the marketer to fill this need. This is crucial for the relationship building that is required to make this type of online marketing approach work.

Online Specialist Will Be Hired

Whether its video, audio, or text the supplied content will inform, entertain, and provoke thought in an effort to capture the attention and loyalty of the online viewer.

Sooner rather than later specialist for content development will have to be added to the staffs of offline businesses involved in online social marketing.

Ad copy and other messages created will be designed to catch viewers attention, initiate and maintain interest, develop trust and loyalty, and make product offers. This type of internet advertising is based more upon ‘relationship marketing’ as opposed to the ‘hard selling techniques’ associated with conventional offline marketing.

The Need for Public Relations will Diminish

Now that more emphasis is placed on searching the internet for breaking news there will be less need for conventional public relation tactics to ‘create awareness.’ The content developed and supplied to the internet will more than fill this gap resulting in cost savings and increased communication efficiencies.

Online Marketing Research will be Emphasized

By utilizing the give and take capabilities of web 2.0 marketing techniques the ability to get valued customer feedback can easily be accomplished. This cost effective and highly efficient means of collecting valuable input online will be a very significant benefit for research and development.

As a result offline efforts to collect similar data will be de-emphasized and regarded now as more cumbersome due to the cost and efforts required.

Social media marketing, as it stands today, continues to demonstrate new efficiencies that increase the effectiveness of communicating with the online consumer. Its popularity and acceptance can no longer be dismissed as a short term phase but rather needs to be recognized for what it is, the evolution of consumer marketing. This will result in a greater acceptance towards using online social media as a permanent fixture in a company’s overall marketing strategy.

Bridging Offline and Online Marketing and Making it Work For Your Business

admin    SEO Marketing     Bridging, Business, Making, Marketing, Offline, Online, Work

Bridging Offline and Online Marketing and Making it Work For Your Business

Marketing is the key behind all the success of popular products. Competitive marketing skills are really important in putting a certain product in the frontline. These marketing skills may be a combination of online and offline promotions.

It was undeniable before that there was a huge boundary between the offline and online marketing. However, these boundaries no longer exist. As a matter of fact, many of the savvy directors in the field of marketing are now taking advantage of crossing both the offline and online marketing. With practices such as search engine optimization and search engine marketing, marketing executives can spread their reach without increasing spend.

Businesses, small or large, have to have effective marketing mediums whether it is offline or online marketing. Returns on the marketing investments are better if both of the said mediums are to be used. This is where marketing through the Internet takes place. Internet marketing is being utilized in marketing strategies and work hand in hand in promoting a particular business.

The very first thing to consider in marketing, especially online, is identifying the objectives. One must still identify the target audience, understand the market, and deliver the message. The Internet allows you to have real time research data that can be used in deciding the next course of action.

Once identified, the customer needs to have somewhere to go to do business with the company. This is where websites come in to play. Some of the businesses and brands are located strictly offline with brick and mortar locations. This stifles the company’s global marketability. Since most people today search online and are willing to test the water with different brands online companies have to go even further by developing more sophisticated sites. Some businesses operate strictly online with Internet positioned brands such as the Harper Collins’ www.fireandwater.com and www.handbag.co.uk which are set jointly by Boots. As a result, a more competitive space makes companies more aware of the brand equity risks that can possibly lead to developing new brands online.

Though the Internet has been undeniably very helpful in the world of marketing, it sometimes weakens existing marketing efforts due to its poor designs. Also, poor online business process can cripple the success of a business online.

Once a proper website is developed, it is important to point all marketing toward your new online facility. This can be achieved through offline efforts such as direct marketing or tele-marketing as well as online marketing such as pay-per-click or search engine optimization of the company’s website. A combined effort has a greater chance of success.

Say your company sends out postcards that directs the prospect to your website. Your website saves you time and money by educating the prospect on your company and its market offering. The website also encourages the prospect to sign up for a free gift or for information. Then the prospect is in the database of potential customers that you can send information and promotions through email periodically. From there you can analyze the rate of response and return as the prospects turn into customers.

On the other hand, say you have your business online. Someone searches in the search engines for what you offer. You have optimized your website and rank first for that keyword. The prospect then goes to your site and request someone contact them regarding your offering. You then have your sales representative contact them and educate them more on your offering. Afterwards, you send them a catalog in the mail which they use to go to your physical location to purchase.

In summary, a marketing medium, may it be an online or offline promotion or both, will definitely benefit your business as well as the needs of your customers. It is an advantage to leverage offline and online marketing efforts together. Consistency on the offline and online brand promotion is the key to gain the trust of the customers and to have a unified and clear business.

Chasing Leads: Offline Lead Tracking in SEM Campaigns, Pt. 1

admin    SEO Marketing     Campaigns, Chasing, Lead, Leads, Offline, Tracking

Chasing Leads: Offline Lead Tracking in SEM Campaigns, Pt. 1

Tracking the source of your leads is perhaps one of the single most important elements in your overall marketing campaign. It’s the method by which you’ll gauge budget, approach, revisions, and a host of other deciding factors. Whether your reps are instructed to inquire ‘how did you hear about us?’ or there are checkable boxes online, having a lead tracking system in place is a mighty tool and an asset to your business’ bottom line. The value of an SEO campaign in terms of lead tracking is tied up with the particular search engine marketing company you select. Based on the company’s abilities, it can take your existing SEM campaigns from lackluster to high performing marketing tools that are integrated, of course, into your overall initiative.

In most non e-commerce applications, the obvious goal of an SEO campaign is to generate both a high number of leads and also a greater quality of leads. Of course, the search engine marketing company running the campaign can sometimes be frustrated since its involvement with lead data ends as soon as someone sends a form or picks up the phone to call the client company. The big problem here is that a wealth of data is being lost that could help improve the SEM campaign, and it becomes harder to follow closed leads back to their original online source. Moreover, it’s nigh impossible to track the online source of customer calls. Without help from a search engine marketing company, the client company itself is often unable to compare leads from the web versus traditional sources. On its own, reliable lead tracking becomes a near impracticality despite its importance in reevaluating future initiatives. This is a shame since the data is readily available.

As anyone who has ever done a lead quality analysis, which hopefully you or your search engine marketing company has performed, you’ll know that all leads are not created equal. That is to say that leads from some sources will be a higher quality than other sources, making frequent, detailed lead tracking a necessity. What follows are three scenarios starting from most ideal – exceedingly rare – and trending to the most common, which is unfortunately, well…common.

Three Lead Tracking Scenarios

Scenario #1: Ideal – In a perfect lead tracking scenario, leads from the website are filtered through a sales management system, such as Salesforce, which has an easily integrative tool that takes leads from the website and automatically fills in the data, adding it to a data set. A custom phone number can also be created by your search engine marketing company and used for each individual campaign that you wish to track, so that the salesperson filling in the data on Salesforce can tell by incoming numbers where the lead was generated.

If someone interested in your services or products came by a pay-per-click ad, for example, he or she could be sent to a customized landing page with a designated phone number to call. If a visitor came in through an organic SEO channel, there are off-the-shelf programs that serve up a unique phone number that a typical visitor punching in the URL would not see. Taking it one more step further, there are systems that will allow you to tell with great granularity where each phone lead came from, down to the individual ad/keyword etc. level.. The phone call data from closed sales can thus offer the same wealth of integration that you can receive from online lead forms, for example. Indeed, you ca, track any metric that’s internally important, from which channel is bringing the highest quality leads and average dollar sale per web channel, all the way to a direct ROI correlation for each individual search engine marketing initiative (again, down to the individual keyphrase level, if desired).

Of course, only two obvious channels have been cited, SEO and PPC. You can, however, use the same philosophy effectively for any initiative, such as email marketing, banner advertising, or the like. Unfortunately, a majority of companies are not set up for this type of granularity, especially without guidance from an experienced web analytics or search engine marketing company. Rather, a number are set up to work with a proprietary CRM system that doesn’t lend itself well to web integration, leaving meaningful lead tracking by the wayside. Sometimes, companies still perform lead tracking using spreadsheets or other such simplistic methods. Often the people tasked with such initiatives are aware of the severe limitations of the current system but suffer from an inability to get buy-in to switch to something more high tech.

Transforming Your SEM Campaigns

This brings us to scenario #2, which is not 100% ideal, but still allows for significant lead tracking and data analysis. In the next installment, we’ll discover how both this scenario and scenario #3 can also be used to track sources and metrics with a high degree of success – if done properly. From ideal, we travel to workable, and finally to a common but unfortunate lead tracking scenario, which still presents some redeeming qualities for you and your search engine marketing company to work with.

(C) 2010 Medium Blue

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Effective Offline and Online Tips to Getting Massive Exposure Fast!

admin    Twitter Marketing     Effective, Exposure, Fast, Getting, Massive, Offline, Online, Tips

Effective Offline and Online Tips to Getting Massive Exposure Fast!

Getting massive exposure for your online or offline business is actually pretty easy with all tools that are available in the market today. Having a blog or website will do wonders for any type of business. The first thing that you have to remember before you start any marketing plan is that you have to define your target audience. Your marketing strategy should actually start from here because not all types of media outlets are being patronized by every age group. There are still those people that are still patronizing old school methods such as newspapers and magazines and there are some that have gone completely online. Asking the question, “Does my market patronize certain types of media?” if the answer is yes, then should determine what type of media they actually like to use and if they have access to that certain type of channel of communication.

Offline methods are very successful however; they require more work since you to have a list of local media outlets that are being patronized by a certain demographic. Create a list of media outlets, offline and online, in order to figure out what would best benefit your demographic. If you are targeting an older demographic then it would be that you use offline outlets of communication such as newspaper or magazines or even radio shows. Also, you need to visit the place or area were majority of your prospective client hang out. You need to figure out what places they go to and ask if you can place advertisements there. You can also create a list of publications that specialize in targeting a certain demographic such as an alumni newsletter, a church newsletter or even a library newsletter. You have to find their contact information and also their deadlines.

Online social media networks are also very important because millions of people have actually access to it and most of the time, they belong to a younger demographic. Having your own website or blog site is also very important because a lot of people now, are actually searching the web first before they actually buy something and before they purchase some sort of product and or services from someone. You need to make them feel that you are some sort of expert in the field or market that you want to target so that you will look more credible than you are. You will be able to this by posting on industry related websites or blog sites or you can post articles about a certain product online. Remember, facebook and Twitter are excellent social media accounts that you can use because they automatically increase the number of people that you actually reach with just one post.

Offline and online exposure can do wonders for your business if done correctly. Using both offline and online methods at the same time will give you the best results in exposure, building your list and promoting your products & services!

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How To Market A Product Online – Marketing Tips For Offline Businesses

admin    Twitter Marketing     Businesses, Market, Marketing, Offline, Online, Product, Tips

How To Market A Product Online – Marketing Tips For Offline Businesses

One of the most common questions from the offline business community concerns how to market a product online. It’s not that they don’t know how to do marketing – it’s just that they need new marketing strategies for dealing with the online market.

The biggest difference between the online and offline worlds is the size of the market – while many manufacturers will have offices in numerous countries, the online market is truly global – especially if you have translations available for your promotional materials and customer service available in many languages.

The second issue that must be part of your new marketing strategies is the physical size of the market – is your product easily shipped world-wide? Or is your packaging and packing going to need upgrading before shipping to another continent? And will your product still be competitively priced vis-a-vis local suppliers once the shipping charges are added on? If not, you’re better to focus your online promotions to promoting local, regional and national sales.

Depending on the value of your products, you may need to discuss payment options with your financial institution as well. While low and moderately priced items can easily be handled through credit cards or online services like PayPal, big-ticket items may require the use of wire transfers with or without escrow, so be certain to consult the necessary professionals first before developing your new marketing strategies – possible financial pitfalls like these require prudent solutions before your marketing strategy development process begins.

Assuming all is well with these and any related issues, however, a bit of time to study internet marketing practices currently in use will help a lot in learning how to market a product online. For instance, a blog is simple to set up and maintain, whereas a full-blown website will not only cost you money to develop but also may delay updates while you wait for updates to your site to be completed by your web design company. Conversely, a blog can be updated by any of your office or marketing staff almost instantly.

Since nowadays most offline businesses have a web presence you’ll be safe in assuming your competition does too, so that of and by itself won’t usually be enough to give you a competitive edge – you’ll need to use some of the new marketing strategies utilized by professional Internet marketers as well.

Business article marketing is coming into it’s own online, since most users – your customers included – go online looking for information. Instead of just posting relevant information on your blog, develop an article marketing strategy that gets the info out to the main article directories as well. If neither you nor your staff are familiar with business article marketing yet, go to a couple of the biggest article directories and read through some of the free marketing articles they publish to see how it’s done.

Web 2.0 sites can be well used by offline businesses too, especially advanced methods like incorporating your customer service into your Twitter marketing strategy. A site like Twitter lets your customers worldwide reach your customer service reps instantly to diffuse any potential issues, and giving them specials they can offer just as Twitter promotions can boost your Twitter sales rapidly while keeping your customer base that much happier.

Your offline business can benefit greatly from learning how to market a product online, but first study internet marketing trends and these marketing tips and incorporate them into your marketing strategy development. If you don’t have the time yourself, consider having one or more of your staff trained in the new marketing strategies – it could make a major difference to your bottom line!

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A new OFFLINE social media marketing idea

admin    Social Media     Idea, Marketing, Media, Offline, Social

A new OFFLINE social media marketing idea

While I was driving today I saw a van with Progressive Auto Insurance painted on it. It was probably a company owned van, but I was also reminded of the Geek Squad Beetles that I see every once in awhile and some other company painted cars. This got me thinking. I noticed that paintings or signs on cars often get noticed. People even look at other people’s car license plates. Basically, these cars get a lot of eyeballs.

The social media way of marketing offline

Applying my background in Social Media Marketing, I came up with a new marketing idea that is low cost but highly effective. This is how it works: A company creates a program, where they would advertise on the cars of people who commute long distances everyday. They can pay a couple hundred dollars to these people every month to do the exact same things they would be doing anyway. Heck, instead of paying money, this company could just offer to pay all their gas bills.

Social Media is about everyone being a publisher

I include this as social media marketing because the essence of social media is that everyone can be a publisher. Instead of having large budgets to publish on a billboard, everyone has their own little properties (such as blogs) and they can reach their own little niche by publishing or advertising on their little properties. I seriously think more companies should advertise on blogs because bloggers are easy to satisfy monetarily, and you seriously reach a large crowd who pay attention to you just because “Oh! This blogger found advertisers! I wonder how much is she getting paid. Maybe /month” “Oh, it’s the same company ad on this other blog too! They’re all over the place now!” 0 to make 1000 people think you are all over the place. Not a bad deal. So in this case, we’re taking the exact same principles but just applying it to an offline property, specifically one’s car, where we know already has a lot of eyeballs and follows where the customer goes.

A win-win situation in a bad economy

Especially in this economy, people are very stripped of cash and a lot of them would signup since it does not make their lives more inconvenient. Gas price is expected to rise again, so a program offering to pay for their gas is a win-win situation because the driver would not be concerned of driving longer distances, while the company would gain more exposure for that. If you have 200 of these cars driving around, with lets say about 0 per car per month. That’s ,000 a month, which is the price of many billboards. However, it’s convincing that each of these cars will be seen by AT LEAST 20 different people a day(I would say over 100 if the driver spends more than an hour a day commuting), so the total reach would become 20×30x200 = 120,000 per month. What’s even better is that these ads are guaranteed to be at where a lot of people are, since it’s the people themselves that are taking them there.

Potentials of getting some free press and word-of-mouth marketing

If your company is one of the first to do something like this, people will start to talk about you if they see the same promotion on 3-4 different cars while driving to work. The press might even cover you so there’s a lot of added benefits, making it even more cost effective. Even the 200 people who wear your ads will excitingly talk to their friends and their coworkers about it, creating WAY stronger effects than just a billboard ad. Also, what better way to make people’s day better than having them be cheerfully reminded of this everyday in the morning? If you know you are making money off just driving, it makes you feel better about commuting, or even when you are stuck in traffic. (Note: for environmental concerns, please still commute when you can. I am referring to people that are already driving that distance no matter what.)

Make it easy for people to opt out and rely on honor codes

In terms of practicality concerns, it would probably be difficult have people’s cars painted, because they need something that they can be easily opt out from. However, creating some sort of easily removed stickers and have a few on each side of the car should have the same effects with very low set up costs. Sure, there might be some dishonest people who turn in the gas receipts of their spouses car too etc etc, but even if that is the case, the price of having these mobile ads is still excellent. Obviously it shouldn’t go way out of hand, but that’s easy to detect. You could probably include in the contract that once someone is caught cheating, they need to return all the gas money that was every given to them because there is no way to verify how much did they cheat on. Fear of that and losing this good deal would probably stop most people from cheating. The point is that you are getting a crazy promotion deal with a fraction of what it would cost you otherwise, and it makes the driver happy too. If you refer back to my blogpost How to Impress Everyone by Just Driving Around, driving becomes ultra productive. You increase your level by learning from podcasts, and you get paid doing it!

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Web Marketing Vs Offline Marketing

admin    Website Marketing     Marketing, Offline

One of the most critical aspects of running a business is marketing. It encompasses every customer related task from creating awareness to customer satisfaction and retention. One may go as far as to say that a business cannot survive or even start up without it. In the current scenario, marketing has become a complex and sophisticated function, especially now that an increasing number of businesses choose to start up online. Now, along with the traditional offline marketing tools, there are a number of web marketing tools and methods available. These web marketing methods must be mastered for any level of success in online business.

The differences that separate web marketing from offline marketing are as below:

• Snail mail vs. email – Email marketing is low cost, efficient, instant and effective means of generating customers. Snail mail is slow, generally more expensive and is losing some of its efficacy with the influx of TV and Internet.

• Limited radius of impact vs. unlimited – The target audience is global in the case of web marketing with the Internet shrinking the world. The radius of offline marketing is limited by physical, political and time barriers.

• Web customers are looking for a product or service similar to yours – The beauty of being an online business is that people log on to look for a service or product that you can offer. Whereas, offline businesses have to rely more on push marketing than the pull effect.

• Long, complex process of making a sale vs. instant conversion – A few clicks of a mouse and the product is sold, in the case of web marketing. Offline marketing process is time and manpower heavy, from generating leads to making a sale.

• Fixed office hours vs. 24 hour store – An online business can sell its products 24 hours a day while an offline business will open and shut at particular hours.

• Advertising in print, TV and radio is expensive – While you can easily offer content, audio and video clips on the Internet for a very low cost.

• Pay for time spots vs. unlimited time and space – Ads in offline marketing mediums are for a limited time only and you pay for time slots and space. In an online marketing scenario, you would keep your ads up for a longer time and pay much less.

• Cost per incremental customer – This cost is very low for web marketing based concerns, whereas this cost is appreciable in case of offline marketing efforts.

• Targeted approach vs. blanket approach – The above reason leads offline marketing businesses to target and select carefully, eliminating a lot of potential customers, who may buy in the future if not the present. However, low incremental costs result in online businesses covering a broad spectrum of the market.

• Segmentation – Preferences are much easier to track for an online business and this means that segmentation is simpler. The web marketing effort has the information it needs to customize its pitch at once.

• Customer contact – Access to customer information is automatic in the case of online businesses and the web marketing process is simplified and made efficient. Databases and mailing lists are created in an instant. On the contrary, offline marketing efforts for the same require time, employees and money.

There are many benefits to both web marketing and offline marketing, and it is best to use a judicious mix of the two.