The trend in Online Marketing is….Offline Marketing?
More and more each day I see Internet marketers talking about offline marketing. From forum posts to newsletters to blogs, offline marketing is hot business. If you’re a Warrior forum member, you know that a lot of time and attention has been spent lately on using online marketing skills to help businesses locally. The dark shadows of the dot com bubble burst in the 90s have finally faded and business owners are realizing that they need to be online, even if they are in small metropolitan areas. Think about it this way….when you’re looking for information about something, where is the first place you look? If you’re like a lot of people, your answer is online. And the businesses in your local area need to be there as well.
Even if you don’t consider yourself to be an Internet marketing expert, you might as well be compared to others in your local community. Your ability to create a blog, run an autoresponder list, participate on forums and submit articles to directories is light years ahead of what business owners know about the web.
I live in a teeny tiny town, and was the “main event” at a chamber of commerce meet and greet because I knew how to create and maintain a blog. I got more business cards than I knew what to do with. Imagine what you could do if you live in a large metropolitan area.
How often have you looked to the local community to get writing work? This is a perfect time to try tapping into local markets. Smart business owners know that when the economy isn’t great it’s time to start cranking up the advertising. And you could be just the person to help them with that.
There are many different ways you could help offline businesses with their online presence, but here’s a simple start. For a fee, you could set up a blog and drive traffic so they’ll be ranked #1 for “Fresno Flower Shop” or something to that effect. Add an autoresponder opt in form, and a five part course on something related to the business. Charge a maintenance fee for monthly posts and then communicate with the client on monthly basis so you can coordinate with their current specials, coupons or promotions.
It will take some prep work, and some sales skills, but it’s a great way to branch out and think outside the laptop!
I’ve been thinking more and more about this lately. I once helped a friend make a website about his shed shop (using wordpress as a cms), I got him on google maps, in google local, a few squidoo lenses about his business and the local area, etc. Just easy things. And when he found himself in google for the local and very uncompetitive keywords and phrases… he thought I was a marketing GOD!
There is definitely a great business to be set up in every local town porting internet marketing skills to the offline businesses.
You don’t even have to be that good!
Oh yeah - I also put a bunch of pictures of his business on flickr. All with a link to his site in the description (even though flickr is nofollow), and I put that slideshow on his site. That was what had him most impressed!
LOL. I have had a lot of trouble explaining to my boss what an RSS feed is…
More and more business are realizing it’s important, but it seems like not very many understand the first thing about getting connected online.
In 5 or 10 years that will mean death to a business. We are already on the upward swing of that curve.
@Connie And thank goodness for that! Maybe soon I won’t get strange looks when I say that I write web content.
@Lewis Those are some great results! With all of your Squidoo experience, I’m sure that you can get some great search engine results for your customers if you decide to go that route.
I don’t really seek out people locally, but occasionally they’ll seek me out. I’m working on a website right now for someone who heard about some other stuff I’d done and contacted me. That happens a few times a year, so I could probably get a lot more business if I marketed to locals.
Am I going to? No. The thought of cold calling makes my skin crawl. I don’t really have time for meet and greets or distributing fliers/brochures. I think as long as someone is getting plenty of online work there isn’t much reason to go local.
I’m with you on that one! I couldn’t stand cold calling. That’s definitely one of the reasons that I like getting business by word of mouth. That one meeting will have me going for months.
You quickly mention sales skills which I sorely lacked when I started marketing and selling. My I recommend that anyone who wants to “close the deal” STUDY SPIN Selling and Questios Based Selling, the two best sales books that have made me a master seller.
You mention the fact that some people really don’t know the basics in the local community, and that is so true. The way I see it is this, if you have just the basic knowledge to know how to get something indexed and also know how to build links then you could very well start a profitable business in internet marketing.