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Feature ArticleTop 10 Ways To Market Your Website Offline
If you have a website, you are constantly bombarded with information about how to promote it, from pay-per-click search engines to submitting articles to exchanging links with other sites. The sheer volume of information that one encounters when embarking on Internet marketing is just overwhelming.
As I was talking to a potential client the other day, the topic of promoting her company's website came up, and I knew that my telling her about all of the ways to conduct online marketing would just sound like gibberish to her. So, instead I started rattling off all of the offline ways she could promote the new website. These she understood and they made sense, as she could relate them to traditional marketing techniques. It occurred to me that in our quest to be the biggest and baddest online, we often forget to use more traditional means to get the word out about our online presence.
So, here's your checklist of the top 10 ways you can market your site offline that won't break the bank:
1. Collateral Materials: Print your URL and e-mail address on all of your collateral materials, including letterhead stationary and envelopes, business cards, postcards, greeting cards, business checks, mailing labels, invoices, brochures, fax cover sheets, print newsletters, press releases, and customer feedback forms. By doing this, everyone with whom you have any contact has your website address. Many of these items pass through tons of hands, and you never know who might see one piece of your collateral material and become a customer.
2. Front Door of Your Business Location: Do you have a retail location? If so, somewhere on your front door or in the window near your entrance, place a sign that says, "Open 24 hours a day online at http://www.yourwebsitename.com/". You could also add this to the permanent outdoor business sign. Let your website do your selling for you!
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3. Voicemail Messages: On your voicemail message, include your website address in the content of the message, letting listeners know that they can find information about you and/or buy products and services via your website. If you have music or a message that plays while callers are on hold, incorporate your website URL into the information that they hear.
4. Promotional Items: Plaster your URL all over any promotional items that you might give away — mousepads, pens, magnets, notepads, etc.
5. Automobile: Use your car to advertise your website for you as you go to client meeting or run errands around time. Place your website URL on removable vinyl magnetic signs on the doors of your vehicle, vinyl cling signs on your back windshield, or I.D. It Plates (http://www.iditplates.com/) on the back of your car.
6. Clothing: Have clothing printed with your web address and logo and give them to friends and family members to wear around town -- baseball caps, T-shirts, button-down shirts. Or, you can give them away as prizes or promotional items. Have your friends and clients become a walking billboard for your website!
7. Media Opportunities: If you're a guest on a radio or TV show or being interviewed by a newspaper reporter or magazine writer, make sure that your website address is mentioned. For television appearances, have the show scroll your URL across the bottom of the screen. For print media, ensure that your website address appears in your quote as a part of your business name, or in the back of the magazine in the resources section for articles.
8. Advertising: Whether you advertise in a newspaper/magazine, television or radio ad, local cable advertising, program booklet, visitor's guide, coupon promotion, or on the back of a register tape, make sure your website address appears. If you are listed in your local telephone directory, have your website printed as a part of your listing.
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9. Guest Books: If you're in a bed and breakfast, salon, or gift shop with a guest book, sign it and leave your website address. The guest books are usually left in public places and are perused by guests while waiting for appointments.
10.. Virtual Grand Opening: Brick and mortar businesses hold ribbon-cuttings and grand openings all the time. Why not do the same thing with announcing your new (or updated) website? You can send announcements to the local newspapers and media or to current or potential clients. I recommend that you send a postcard with the front page of your website on it, and http://www.webcards.biz/ does this beautifully!
Bonus tips:
11. e-mail Signature: Any time you send out an e-mail, send it from an e-mail address that includes your domain name (instead of your AOL or Earthlink account, for example), and create a signature file in your e-mail program that includes your website URL. You can also create a special offer in your e-mail signature to drive people to visit your website, like giving away a free e-course or special report. You can view my e-mail signature here: http://www.onlinebizcoachingcompany.com/emailsig.htm
12. Business Name Tag: When you go out into your community or are running errands or are attending networking events, wear a custom name tag with your business website URL prominently featured, along with a catchy slogan. Your local printshop should be able to help you design a permanent name tag, or you can purchase an LED scroll message badge (Google "LED scroll message badge" for suppliers) and get noticed!
13. Outgoing Mail: Stamp your website URL (or have special stickers made) on the outside of all outgoing postal mail, and include your business card inside the envelope. Do this for both business and personal mail, as well as when paying your bills.
Don't become a victim of tunnel vision when you're trying to spread the word about your website. Try a few of these simple, off-line marketing techniques and get your site noticed!
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Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed professionals make more profit in less time online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE ebook, TurboCharge Your Productivity: 50 + Tools To Help You Automate Your Business and Make More Profit in Less Time Online!, visit her site at www.onlinebizcoachingcompany.com/
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This week's TIP
Always use proper file naming conventions
One of the most common mistakes web
design newbies
make is to use improper file naming conventions on their images. Then
when their images won't display, they wonder why. The problem is that
not all Web servers and browsers display the same way. The trick is to
use HTML and file naming conventions that are common to all systems
and browsers.
When you save an image in an image editor like
Adobe Photoshop, you can name it whatever you want. However, there are
several characters you should never use in a filename:
- It's often convenient to use a long descriptive
name like "My dog Rex.jpg" but
when the Web
server sees this it will stop reading the file name once it gets to
the space. It will then look for a file called "My". The solution for
this is to use underscores ("_") instead of spaces
- People also often include dates in their filenames,
such as "WifePix-6/20/00.jpg". In
this case, the Web server will think
that the slashes actually indicate directories. It will assume you
mean that there is a file called "00.jpg
" which is inside a directory
called "20" which is itself inside
a directory called "WifePix-6" The
solution here is to use some other syntax for dates. A common way to
express dates on the Web is to indicate the year, month, and date in
that order without punctuation. For example, the filename indicated
above could be written as: "
WifePix-20000620.jpg".
- Another common mistake is to use apostrophes as in:
"My_dog's_pic.jpg". In this case,
the Web server will think the
apostrophe is a quote and will look for a file called "My_dog". Never
use apostrophes or quotation marks within a filename.
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Nearly all other punctuation marks can also cause
problems. In general, it's safest to use only lower-case letters,
numbers, and underscores.
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web site, free. *
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Second ArticleYour Brand Is Your Promise!(What are you promising?)
When people mention the word "brand" they usually mean a well known, well defined company. That's why consumers frequently mention names like Target, Rolex, Apple, BMW and others who have done an excellent job in crafting an image and sticking with it. Buyers know what to expect from these companies, and as long as these companies meet that expectation, they will continue to imprint their brand in the minds of our their audience. It's pretty simple really, if you just keep in mind these two principals.
Principal One: Know your promise.
As amazing as this may seem, most companies don't really know what it is they are promising their clients. That's why they have weak brands. They may have mission statements, and can spout off why everyone should use their product or service, but really it's just a rambling list. Out of fear of losing audience, most companies will try to compete on price, quality and service... and that's a recipe for disaster. Who wants to buy a watch from the Discount Overnight Rolex store? If you try to go after all three areas you end up muddied in the mind of the consumer, who is trying to put you in a box. And in this case... that's a good thing!
A mental "box" is not that different from a set of mail room boxes. The customers gets all these incoming "messages" and has to sort them all day. The easier you make it for them to sort your company, and put it in a category, the easier it will be for them to recall it when needed. Try this... think of a fast place to eat. How about the best tasting food? And finally, the place you go if you really want to impress someone? You can probably think of each of these categories rather quickly. And chances are, these companies are more than happy to fill that niche without trying to become much more.
Take a moment and write out in two or three sentences (more if you're feeling inspired) exactly what your brand promises. It will usually fall under three main categories... quality, service or price. But there are nuances. Ben & Jerry's image contains both a quality message and a social message... one of comittment to the community and environment.
Principal Two: Never violate Principal One.
Once you have firmly established your promise in the minds of consumers, make sure every move you make conforms to that promise. Coke was fine to come out with Diet Coke, Cherry Coke and a host of other flavor variations (brand extension) but they completely missed the mark when they introduced NEW Coke. People believed in Coke, identified with Coke and it was a part of their history. New Coke was seen as a betrayal of the brand itself, a vote of no confidence in their core product. "What's wrong with the original Coke?" was the immediate question that popped up in most minds. That's why is so important to know what it is, and why it is, that people buy from you and believe in you.
Know your promise and keep your promise. Pretty simple? Yet it will go a long ways toward making your company resonate with your customer on a deep and lasting level. And that's a promise.
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Phil Davis: President — Tungsten Brilliant Brand Marketing. Phil’s life goal of "creating environments where people thrive" reflects his desire to assist in personal, professional and business growth. Phil founded and ran a full service ad agency for over 17 years and now works full time as a business naming and branding consultant. Phil resides with wife Michelle and four energetic offspring outside Asheville, North Carolina. Website: PureTungsten.com Email: Phil@PureTungsten.com
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just upgraded my computer system. I had a case with
a good mother board, sound and video cards and modem. I stuck in 458 KB of RAM and a hard drive.
his is very nice! My computer never locks up anymore and on the rare occasions when a program hangs, Ctrl-Alt-Del takes care of the problem and I continue working. On my old machine, I'd usually have to hit the reset button on the computer and than let Windows nag me about shutting down from the Start Menu.
ow I realize that I live out here in the sticks and sometimes selection isn't what it is in the cities, but good grief, Charlie Brown, isn't 160 GB over-kill?
nd you can't just use a hard drive that big without partitioning the drive. Can you imagine defragging a drive that size? I'd be here until the middle of next week waiting for it to finish.
ho says size doesn't matter?
