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Effective Offline Promotion
By Nowshade Kabir
Although, most of your traffic will still come from search engines
and various online promotions, a little effort using traditional
media might also bring a large number of visitors to your website.
Reasons, why you should take offline promotion of your website seriously
include: Internet is increasingly becoming a part of our daily life.
However, still a big segment of the society – especially, the
elderly – don’t spend that much of time online. Traditional
media is a good method of getting their attention.
If a person sees your printed advertisement with your URL in a
year-old magazine and gets interested in what you have to offer,
he will still be able to check out your website. Research shows
that at least four people browse through a printed magazine in its
life time. With planned media promotion, you can tap into particular
target market, which otherwise might not be that easy to do. For
example: if you sell car accessories through your website, a good
promotional channel would be a specific radio station that commuters
like to tune in.
Your offline promotion endeavor should combine advertisement, publicity
and promotional items. Advertising Once you identified the potential
target market that you would like to reach, you can try to communicate
with them using various advertising methods. Advertising is a paid
form of delivering message to broad range of prospective customers
through billboards, posters, print, broadcast media, etc. Each of
your advertising campaign should have a clear goal and carefully
crafted plan. Since advertising in some media forms is quite expensive,
without a well-defined plan you might waste your money for nothing.
Your advertising goal might include the followings: - Bring targeted
traffic to your website - Stimulate sales - Build brand recognition
of your website - Increase public awareness of your product and
services - Promote seasonal sales, clearance, etc. conducted through
your site. Once you established your advertising goal, you need
to clarify advertising budget, timing and media. You should set
your advertising budget based on your objective. In general, companies
set aside a percentage of their gross sales as promotional budget.
A new online business might choose to spend on advertising, amount
allocated in its business plan. Timing and scheduling are also crucial
factors in advertising.
Where should you advertise is a difficult decision, which should
base on a number of factors: Market reach What is the market segment
you would like to cover with your present campaign? Message Depending
on your goal, you have to choose the right message to communicate
with your prospective customers. The advertising media has to conform
to the selected message. Product and service that you offer through
your site B2B and B2C products and services are usually different
in nature and require different media to reach targeted market.
Budget The choice of media depends vastly on your budget consideration.
Major offline advertising mediums Newspapers Newspapers are very
popular media forms of advertising.
If you are not planning to reach out to the mass, classified sections
of local newspapers should be your first choice. Magazines Specialized
magazines are good for targeting particular interest group. If you
sell golf accessories through your site, you should definitely consider
advertising in one of the local golf magazines. However, ad spaces
in magazines are often quite expensive. Radio Radio advertising
is a good option, if your business is aimed at certain social group
like teenagers, housewives, drivers, etc. This is also a relatively
inexpensive way of delivering your message to a certain community
or locality.
Television If the products or services that you offer have mass
appeal, television is an excellent media of advertising. As the
audience of a TV station changes depending on the show aired there
is a limited possibility of target marketing. The ability to use
audio visual scenes helps delivering certain types of message to
the audience more clearly than any other media, which makes TV advertising
highly effective but quite costly. Yellow pages and other directories
You should definitely add your business along with your website
URL to as many printed directories as you can. Industry specific
directories are good advertising media for B2B businesses.
Outdoor Advertising Outdoor advertising with billboards, posters,
etc. are effective way of reaching out to a certain neighborhood.
Since the exposure rate of billboards is very high – people
often take the same route to work, it is a great medium to create
brand recognition. Transit advertising Advertising on various transports,
terminals, subway are known as transit advertising. Like billboards
with this type of advertising you can target a specific route or
area.
This can be a very effective way to get your message to blue-collar
workers, if that is your market segment. Direct Mail Excellent way
of delivering you message in the form of promotional letters, catalogs,
flyers, circulars, coupons, etc. to your prospective customers.
If you choose your mailing list correct, the exposure rate and the
response rate can be very high. Publicity Publicity is any form
of presentation of ideas, products, or services delivered by the
media themselves rather than as a paid advertisement.
If your website carries a really new message or unique and innovative
products or services, for you publicity will be definitely more
effective than advertising. People, often, trust news stories and
articles much more than they trust paid advertisements. Press release
Newspapers, magazines, TV and Radio are the main publicity conduits.
Press releases are the tool to get into these media. Whenever, you
do something with your online business, which you think is newsworthy
you should write a press release and send it off. The main idea
of a press release is to grab attention from a news editor so that
he writes a story on the subject.
That’s why follow the following rules while writing a press
release: -
- Keep it simple, clear and precise
- Be accurate in facts and figures
- The news highlights should be expressed in the first two paragraphs
- The press release should have an eye-catching headline
- Tell your story from different perspective
- The press release should have less than 200 words
- Mention your website URL at least in two different places Business
material and stationery All your business literatures, materials
and stationery should have similar consistent logotype and URL
address.
This is an extremely effective brand creation method within the
group of people those, who one way or another, interact with your
business. Promotional Items Give away items such as Pens, coffee
mugs, key chains, coasters, calendars, sticky notes, etc. should
have your company logo and web address. Apart from building brand
this also work as a daily reminder for users of these items.
About the author Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer
and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology,
he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade
and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions
to start and run online business.
You can contact him at nowshade@rusbiz.com
http://ezine.rusbiz.com
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