Marketing has become a tricky business these days because of the amount of medium one can use to promote one’s products and services. Simply put, a business owner cannot hope to survive amidst competing enterprises if he is not dealing with a full deck of cards. Productive marketing has always been the key to success in the business world, and it’s extremely important for business owners to utilize all feasible channels to maximize positive results. The percentage of internet users in the general population has increased at an exponential rate, and businesses have taken notice of this fact for the last several years. Think of a successful company and I’m sure you’ll find that it has its own website.

Integrating online marketing with the traditional approach – offline marketing – is the most efficient and productive means  in bringing about a more favorable return on your investment. Your advertisements and website have to work together to achieve optimal results. For instance, a newspaper or television ad should have your website’s URL for it to direct the prospective consumers into typing the whole line on their browser’s address bar. It’s very important that the URL is printed out in a recognizable fashion:  big letters, catchy name, recognizable font and a banner that leaves a signature in the mind.

Now that your offline ad has done its job, you have to do justice to it through your website. All the important information should stand out on the homepage, and should be consistent with what you put out in the ad. The combined input of graphical and verbal information should be streamlined and focused on what the visitor has learned from the offline advertisement. Any small bit of information that is inconsistent with both mediums will cause confusion, and worse, convince the visitor that he’s been hoodwinked. So make sure that the two entities coincide with each other or else the visitor won’t even make it past the home page.

Convincing a prospective buyer to visit your website through the use of offline materials is just as important as the other way around. Many consumers decide on which product to buy by looking for information on the internet, and then purchase the product by going directly to the store. So treat your website like an online directory and make sure that all the addresses in the assigned establishment locations are accurate. To put it simply, your website works like a business card too. There’s no possible way to conduct a business if you don’t leave your business address and contact number.

Keep all of these things in mind and make adjustments whenever necessary. Always be on your toes in all areas that involve the running of your business. With the right business model, extensive research, systematic mining of data, and proper allocation of information through several channels, a company can maintain a steady footing in the market and stay head and shoulders above the competition.

One disadvantage of internet marketing is that not all people go to the internet. And the fact that those who don’t have the potential to take notice of your products and services is one main reason why offline marketing is still being used today. Those who do have internet but don’t use it that much due to time constraints or lack of inclination could make use of a hard copy of what they see online, even for the short while that they got connected.

So what particular medium can they use? It’s pretty easy to remember – PDF. Now before your mind starts to wander, PDF is the short abbreviation for Portable Document Format. The word ‘Portable’ pretty much tells you everything, but the benefits of what a PDF document can is not limited to portability. We’ll get into that as we move along.

What is a PDF Document?

A PDF Document is a file format created by Adobe Systems that can be downloaded off the internet. This file can be shared for distribution as hard copies of the original file after being printed but still remain self-contained – packing text, graphics, even hyperlinks into a single file. You can use Adobe Acrobat for creating PDF files and view them through the use of the Adobe Reader.

How does it translate to Offline Marketing?

Once a PDF file has been downloaded off the internet, a client can print multiple copies for offline use. It gets distributed into many hands and can be perused at the handlers’ own convenient time. These files can often be left unattended and fall into the hands of the curious – and if found useful, get reprinted and redistributed again. The best thing about PDF files is you automatically integrate online and offline marketing.

The time you spend creating the document and uploading it on your website is a small price to pay in exchange for the limitless possibilities the distribution of the hard copies can achieve. You won’t be spending a single cent for the fact that the prospective clients themselves are the ones who have to pay for distribution. You can achieve so much without your wallet taking a big hit!

Why not use MS Word instead?

Using MS Word cannot guarantee that your document is protected. Other online marketers can simply alter an MS document for their own purposes, and worse, use the edited version as a means to ruin your reputation. Employing a read only password is no guarantee either because it can easily be saved under another file name after some alterations. Adobe Acrobat does give options to configure some security settings for editing, password, copying and printing – then you can encapsulate those settings into your PDF document.

Your PDF file can be Googled!

Files with a .pdf extension are now compatible with search engines, making it easier for the website containing your PDF file to get hits! People have a particular thing in mind when they type the key words on a search engine box, so make use of your knowledge in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) upon uploading your PDF Document on your website.

Need to find the best way to market your business? You have two choices here: online and offline. Online is the latest marketing trend today, one that focuses on the internet as the primary marketing tool. Offline marketing, on the other hand, makes use of traditional methods to promote a business. Although many people will tell you that online marketing is the best way to go, there is still an offline marketing advantage and appeal not found in internet marketing.

If online marketing is so popular, then why do offline marketing methods remain? Well, the answer is simple: these methods have been tried and tested, and they have withstood the test of time when it comes to their effectiveness. Specifically, they offer the following benefits:

They Reach Out To A Wider Range Of Potential Customers

Sure, cyber technology is the new trend, but there’s one fact that remains—not all people have access to the internet, whereas almost all homes have televisions and radios, and many people read newspapers everyday. Similarly, not all people are familiar with the use of the internet. Some may be familiar with computers, but only the basic—checking of email and chatting, for instance—but not with the more complicated methods of web surfing. Therefore, advertising through offline marketing methods ensure improved exposure of your business.

They Provide Fast And More Stable Results

Creating a website, optimizing it, and maintaining it will not only take a lot of money but as well as a lot of time—it takes a long time before many people can see your site, and there’s still no assurance at that. Online marketing can be high maintenance. Offline marketing, on the other hand, provides instant business exposure. And if you market offline by giving away freebies with your business name on it, you’re leaving something concrete that can remind people of, and even introduce them to, your business even after a long time. Online marketing, on the other hand, greatly depends on the skill of the people behind the site—just one marketing mistake can bring your site to the last pages of the search results, never to be seen again.

The Personal Touch Is A Sure Offline Marketing Advantage

Nothing beats people-to-people interaction when it comes to marketing—marketing your product offline through trade fairs, by guesting in seminars and conferences, and other means that involve face to face contact. People will trust you more if they see or encounter you in person, contrary to dealing with an online site with no personal face. Besides, more people trust ads seen on TV and newspaper or heard in radio than those they see online because of the proliferation of online scams. People trust TV, radio, and newspaper commercials and ads because they know who to run after in case problems occur.

Because of all these benefits, there’s a guarantee that offline marketing will remain for a long time to come. So if you want a tried-and-tested means to market your business, go offline and enjoy the offline marketing advantage.

In this day and age of cyber technology, everything is done in the internet—from simple activities like shopping to major ones like conducting business. The internet has become one of the most advanced and most beneficial tools used by entrepreneurs to promote their businesses—putting up websites, advertising in online pages, and many other techniques. However, behind all these advancements in technology, there’s one business promotion method that remains effective—offline marketing. This is the foundation of business promotion, the mother of online marketing. And despite the latter’s rise, the popularity of the former remains.

Offline Marketing Basics

What is this type of marketing and how does it differ from the ever-popular online marketing? Well, marketing your business offline is done using traditional methods like the following:

• Business promotion in radios and televisions. You can have a commercial about your business created and advertised using these media. To do this, you may have to spend a lot of money, depending on the company or station you are advertising with. Another cheaper alternative is by appearing as guests in television and radio shows. If you are an expert in your field and there’s a particular station that is discussing an issue in your field, you can serve as a guest and speaker. After the event, you can plug your business.

• Advertising in newspapers and magazines. Similar to television and radio business promotion, advertising in newspapers and magazines can be done in two ways. The first is to pay for a certain amount of space in the paper where you can insert an ad promoting your business, and the second is to contribute a write-up and then promote your business at the end of the write-up. The second is cheaper and may not even cost you money.

• Giving out business cards. You can start doing this among friends, and then slowly expand to improve the exposure of your business.

• Posting of flyers, leaflets, and posters. These should contain information about your business—an overview of the service or product you’re offering, rates, business address, and contact number.

• Sending printed newsletter to people through snail mail. Once you have already built a network of customers offline, you can strengthen your business relationship with them by sending out newsletters to keep them updated of your business, as well as possible new products and services.

• Giving out items with your business name, address, logo, and other important information. These giveaways can include simple things like stickers with your company logo to stuff like key chains, pens, and shirts.

All these marketing techniques are contrary to the methods used in online marketing, which is basically marketing using the internet. Practically any marketing method that is not done in the internet can be considered offline marketing. This is marketing the old fashioned way, and many businessmen still employ this type of marketing until this day. If you want increased business exposure, it will be helpful if you use the two types of marketing side by side each other.

We’ve all seen them – beautiful introductory pages, containing almost no text, but making up for it with a spectacular graphic or animated Flash movie – but do these Splash pages actually increase your website traffic?

Your web designer, who relates to the world visually, would no doubt tell you “yes, of course!” And so would any other artist, or right-brain oriented person. If you’re selling a course on graphic design, or promoting graphics packages, perhaps there’s some merit to having one of these gorgeous displays.

But let’s look at the down side…

A member of your niche market actually finds your site. He comes to see what you have to offer. Instantly, he finds himself faced by what feels like a brick wall; one that’s stopping him on his focused dash towards finding what hoped to find.

Now, if your animated Flash movie is stunningly clever, relevant or beautiful, you might think he’d stay and be dazzled. And a small percentage of your visitors (those with graphic inclinations) actually may do so.

But for the rest, finding the equivalent of a bus-stop and being forced to wait for the bus is an annoying and frustrating check. (Especially if they’re still on dial-up, and your Flash movie takes forever to load.)

People Don’t Like To Be Held Hostage…

You know the unwritten (but no less real) rule:  You have a few seconds, at most, to capture your visitor’s interest and convince him it would be his loss if he were to abort his visit before allowing himself the privilege of reading your scintillating message.

“But I paid a lot of money for that Splash page,” you argue. “It was designed by the best!”

That may be, but the proof is there, right in your website stats.  Go check for yourself, and see how long the average visit to your splash page lasts. (I guarantee you’ll find it’s less than 11 seconds.)

The truth is, as far as your visitor is concerned, your splash page is holding him hostage, stopping him from finding the information he came here to claim. He looks for navigation buttons, or a “Skip This Page” one.  If he finds the latter, you might actually be lucky, and get a click-through.  If not, he’s out of there, before a quarter of your page has barely had time to load in.  It’s as simple as that.

Nor Do Search Engine Bots…

But there’s another reason Splash pages won’t be your best visitor-enticing strategy. These graphic giants are coded with JavaScript, which cannot be indexed. When it’s at the mouth of your site, Search Bots come up hard against it, and find themselves checkmated as firmly as did your potential customer.

Search Bots don’t even wait a second, but bounce out of your site instantly, continuing on their busy way – your site un-indexed and unranked.

They found no keywords, no unique, relevant text. No content at all, as far as their algorithms are concerned.  (And if your Splash page is hosted on a remote site, at a Graphic service, and the Search Bot is diverted to it via a Redirect, it’s a coin flip to decide which sin is worse – redirect or no index-able content.)

So yes, those Splash pages are catchy and gorgeous, but if you’re tempted into adding one to increase website traffic, apply the left side of your brain, and stop and do the math instead.

After all, the proof is in the stats.

You already know about putting your signature link on your business card – and sure that might have helped increase site traffic – but there are 3 potent offline methods you may simply have never considered yet.

Using A Local Marketing PR Firm

Many of them are run by skilled single agents – and although good ones won’t dance for a penny, their services may not be as out of reach (or non-cost-effective) as you might think.

A local Marketing Consultant has her pulse on all the buzz. She knows every resource, probably has ideas about where to promote you – and all that even before you’ve taken off your coat and ordered your coffee.

A basic rule of business is to expend your energy where your money-making skills lie. So you can be focusing on those areas, leaving your Marketing PR consultant free to do what she does best – promote you and drive people to your sites.

Consider Local TV

We’ve all been used to thinking of TV and glossy magazine advertising as something only the Big Leagues can afford – and, in general, that’s certainly true.

But did you know that advertising with your local TV station can be surprisingly affordable?  As well as building your visibility as a “celebrity” – and even in just your own home town, you’d be surprised how far that goes!

One advantage: Local newspaper editors are much more inclined to print your press releases, if they know you’re seen on TV (and trust me, they know!)

And now there’s been a press release stating that Google will act as an advertising broker between local TV and NBC. According to the terms of the deal, Google advertisers will be able to buy ads on 6 cable networks owned by NBC (including Oxygen, MSNBC, Sci-Fi and CNBC. (This is actually history – it’s the first time Google has ever brokered ads via a television network!)

Offer A Weekend Workshop To Your Community College

Now this may not sound as exciting as your own local TV ad, or as workload-relieving as a simply hiring a Marketing Consultant or local PR firm – but offering a workshop to your Community College is a long term status and traffic increasing strategy every online business person should use!

Draw up a solid proposal, find out who to contact and make your pitch. (After all, you do that online every day, right?)

Yes, you’ll put work into it, I guarantee – and you may not get immediate clients from your actual class. But I guarantee, you’ll learn far more than you teach, and it will open you up to brilliant ideas for your market (providing your workshop subject was actually relevant!)

And it’s another great opportunity to increase website traffic by sending out press releases – both to offline sources like local newspapers and trade magazines, and to online paid and free PR services (like PRWeb).

The thing about a little work: The more you do, and the more enthusiastically you put into it, the more you’ll notice benefits returning to you… So stay positive, stay proactive, make the most of every online and offline opportunity – and watch your credibility and business repuatation grow.