When it comes to your online business, how much time do you give offline advertising?
The trouble with many internet-based businesses is that very little time or thought is spent considering the benefits of advertising in the real world, as well as the digital or virtual one.
Plenty of thought is invested in search engine optimisation, reciprocal links, banner advertisements, viral advertising and social networking or blog links, but whilst these are all well and good, many people are missing out on the huge impact that offline advertising can create.
Although advertising forms which do not rely on the internet are often overlooked, they can have a huge impact, and help reach the target audience extremely effectively.
Search engine optimisation itself can take weeks before any real results are noticeable, and it's never guaranteed
There are three specific benefits of using real-world advertising, or non-web-based promotion, and these need to be considered carefully.
1. Quick results. Online advertising takes a long time to really have any effect. Search engine optimisation itself can take weeks before any real results are noticeable, and it's never guaranteed.
Banner adverts can take a long time to make themselves felt, and as far as building reciprocal links or blogs are concerned, these again take a long time to build up.
Non-web-based advertising, however, is in many cases instant, or at least, tends to have an impact much sooner. Visiting a local car park, for example, and slipping 500 flyers under the windscreen wipers of vehicles could well result in enquiries.
Even if you only have a 1% response rate, that's five possible sales leads after just a couple of hours' work. And this can be repeated at various car parks – not forgetting that this is only one advertising method.
Newspaper adverts reach far more people, and at much less time and cost. If a local paper has a circulation of 50,000, that 1% sales lead could potentially be anything up to 500 enquiries!
2. Longevity. Banner adverts rotate, web pages come and go, search results fluctuate. However, sticking a business card in someone's hand, or a flyer under their windscreen, or an advert featured in the local paper every week for a few months, and your advert can endure.
Yes, many people will just throw the paper away, or discard the flyer – but you're not looking to reach every single person, only those who could conceivably be interested in your service or product.
If your product or service looks even slightly useful, then people are more likely to keep the advert. It could be dropped in a drawer, slid into a wallet or stuck to the fridge, and you may not get any immediate calls, but through offline advertising in this way, you have provided a tangible way in which potential customers can keep your business details to hand.
This is in a much easier, less forgettable way than a banner flashing briefly on a web page that most probably was ignored anyway.
3. Effectiveness. For most people, banner adverts don't provide a use or benefit, whereas a mouse mat or pen does. So why spend time creating banner adverts for your customers when, assuming you have the chance to meet them, you could give them an item that they're likely to keep, use, and which has your business details printed on it?
This is more useful and advantageous if yours is the kind of business which is likely to find ways of meeting potential customers, rather than seeking them from many and varied locations individually. Trade shows, fairs or conferences can all prove valuable in this regard.
Online services such as Vistaprint offer free gifts, or very reasonably priced gifts, which, for a few pounds, you can have emblazoned with your contact details, and distributed to likely customers.
This is a far more effective means of reaching customers and getting your business name in their head, and of reminding them of it almost every day, than flashing banner adverts on random pages on websites, or hoping that they'll type in the right keywords and happen to click on your site's link.
With careful planning and thought, offline advertising strategies offer a multitude of ways of supporting the promotion of your online business. And although some of these methods cost money, they are often far more cost-effective in the long term, especially when you factor in the time you spend waiting for search engine optimisation or reciprocal linking to have any impact.
