Promoting Offline Businesses Online

Using Social Media Marketing To Promote Offline Businesses Online?

admin — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:14:18 +0000

If you’re promoting offline businesses online, whether your own businesses or for your clients, it is absolutely mandatory that you be using social media marketing if you expect to succeed… It really is that simple – social media marketing has become a necessary part of the marketing mix for anyone promoting offline businesses online.

Why Is Social Media So Important To Offline Businesses?

Gone are the days when people spent a lot of time sitting out on the porch and talking with neighbours and passers-by; today most prefer to interface online through the popular social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and the like. There are a plethora of reasons for the rise & popularity of social media sites, but as someone promoting offline businesses online all that matters is that it IS the way it is today.

It doesn’t matter WHY your target market are there – what’s important is that you realize that’s where they are so you can strategize a plan of attack to get your message out in front of them. And, if your product/service/pricing modality warrants it, get some great buzz generated by your happy customers and/or clients!

Secondly, the emergence of mobile computing on cell phones, notebooks, laptops and tablets has led to ‘local searches’ being served up by the big search engines, so to reach those within your primary census area, your local target market, you need as many ‘signposts’ as you can manage that point back to your online presence – and, where possible, signposts that include reference to your city, town or even your neighborhood.

Thirdly, people no longer grab their phone directory as their prefered way to find a local business – instead they’ll just look it up online, whether from a home computer or their mobile device. Need an emergency service like towing? Search for ‘tow trucks in Boston’… Want to pick up a pizza for dinner on your way home? Before you get into the driver’s seat, check to see which pizza company on your way home has the best specials on. Call & place your order & it’ll be waiting for you by the time you get there. New in the area and need a doctor, chiropractor, plumber or electrician? Back to your favorite search engine again…

Think for a moment – do you even know where your phone company business directory is at home right now? How long since you looked something up in it? Or do you just throw it out when the new one comes out each year, never having opened it? So if even you, yourself, is using the world wide web to find local offline businesses you can easily see why social media marketing is so important to anyone promoting offline businesses online!

Free Social Media Marketing Guide For Offline Businesses…

As a marketing mentor & speaker I talk to a lot of business people who realize they need to use social media marketing but are completely confused by the whole thing – just too many sites, too many options & too complicated! So here’s a free copy of my latest report to help you move forward with this…

Niche Social 2012 by Doug Champigny

Niche Social 2012 is brand new, completely unique and written both to help online niche marketers and people promoting offline businesses online. Following my advice in this guide will let you zero in on the most important social media resources and set up a social media marketing mix that’s both powerful and reasonably easy to maintain yourself or outsource to a specialist.

If you’re going to be doing your own social media marketing it gives you step by step guidance to each of the ‘Big Five’ social media sites, advice on how to quafruple your online presence for free, and then how to tie those together with a few additional free resources to create a powerful social media marketing mix – all without costing you a cent!

If you’re going to be handing the task over to an outsourcer, reading this first will help you understand how it’s all done, and you can give them a printout of the report to use as their guideline while being knowledgeable about what they should do and what you should be paying them for.

Finally, I’m sure you’re asking why I would let you download Niche Social 2012 for free, right? Truth be told, my marketing mentoring is priced beyond the reach of all but the most successful individuals and many small businesses, so this is one way of helping that group become successful enough to afford me.

It’s also one of my calling cards for those with deep pockets – successful entrepreneurs, profitable small businesses and mid-to-large corporations – to show that not only do I have about 40 years of marketing experience, but that I too walk the walk each day – every social media site mentioned in the report is accompanied by screen captures of one of our properties or accounts on those very same sites.

And that’s how I know that social media marketing as laid out in the report is perfect for promoting offline businesses online – not only did I write the Niche Social 2012 e-book, it’s a copy of the exact steps we do to stay at the top of our game online too!

Technorati Tags: promoting offline businesses online, promoting offline businesses, social media marketing for offline businesses, social media marketing, social media, free report, free downloads, Doug Champigny

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Offline Businesses – Business Networking On Social Networking Sites Online

Local Internet Marketing For Offline Businesses – Targeted Traffic The Right Way

admin — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 07:56:42 +0000

Local Internet Marketing For Offline Businesses – Targeted Traffic The Right Way

Most offline businesses have jumped on the bandwagon of internet marketing as they have discovered the value of cheap, targeted advertising compared to more traditional advertising mediums. Not only that, but it offers many offline companies a much wider customer base than they could previously access offline.

Just think about it, as little as a decade ago if you wanted to sell something in another city or country you would have to open a point of sale locally, which was certainly not cheap. Most businesses couldn’t dream of expanding abroad due to costs, however the internet opened the doors to small offline businesses as well, allowing them to compete with the big fish.

Worldwide online advertising is not always suited to every type of business, especially some types of offline service providers. For example, a restaurant will never be able to service more than the local area and therefore it doesn’t make sense for its website to target the whole web. This is where local internet marketing comes in.

In this case, the SEO plan is designed to target only people interested in the local area. This can be done with the use of geographically targeted keywords, maps and many more.

The advantage of focusing on local internet marketing is that costs are usually much lower than if you were to target the general public. For example, “cosmetic dentistry in Toronto” will not cost as much per click as “cosmetic dentistry” and will only target people interested in a cosmetic dentist who is in Toronto. On the other hand, a search for “cosmetic dentistry” will bring up a very long list of cosmetic dentists all over the world.

Local internet marketing is an excellent option for offline small businesses that provide local services where their type of business does not allow them to expand globally. Plumbing, landscaping, dentistry, electrical and even cleaning services are all such businesses. On the other hand, web development companies or e-book publishers do not have the same limitations and in their case they should focus on global internet marketing.

One extremely useful way to take advantage of local internet marketing is with maps. The large search engines offer a map service where companies can register their offline address. This has multiple advantages but the main one is that it establishes credibility because people can see the physical location of your business. This also has a positive impact on the ranking of your website but, unfortunately, it is a technique that is often overlooked if an offline business owner or marketing department don’t learn from the online pros who market online daily.

Local internet marketing is an excellent way to reach extremely targeted offline customers for a much lower cost than if you were to market to the entire world wide web. However, you need to do a little more investigation regarding which keywords your PPC campaign should target and maybe even get some professional internet marketing consulting to show you how you can design and track your campaigns.

The beauty of internet marketing is that you can see virtually in real time how effective your campaigns are and tweak them accordingly. However, you do need some professional advice until you learn the ropes and can handle it yourself. The numerous free ways to drive traffic, however, are an easier task for offline businesses to master.

Search engine optimization, article marketing, podcasting, video marketing, blogging and other online marketing systems are all free, all drive targeted traffic and all can be learned in short order by offline business owners, salespeople, marketing departments, service providers, legal and medical professionals and entrepreneurs of every stripe. Don’t be stuck languishing at the bottom of the search engines or forced to shell out hundreds or thousands each month – learn how to market offline businesses online today!

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Professional online marketers use many different strategies to increase website traffic, brand their company worldwide, improve their search engine rankings and make money online. Now your offline business can use those same strategies, techniques, tips and tricks thanks to the new how-to tutorials found in Local Internet Marketing Empire – be sure to download YOUR copy today!

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Technorati Tags: local internet marketing, offline businesses, offline business, offline small businesses, entrepreneurs, professionals, online advertising, traffic, targeted traffic

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Use Online Coupons For Offline Traffic In Retail Marketing

admin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:02:12 +0000

Retail marketing professionals are using the Internet more and more for business branding, to provide customer information such as store location, store hours and to show the products they retail, but in general offline retail businesses have been slow to catch on to using online coupons to build offline traffic.

There are a number of reasons why your retail marketing should already by using online coupons, such as little or no cost, added retail customer retention, increasing the lifetime value of each customer, introducing new products to your customer base, stealing traffic from local competitors and attracting new customers to your retail establishment.

One of the main fears that stop some retail stores from using online coupons is the fear of coupon fraud – that people will print numerous copies and either use them themselves or give them out to all their friends. So what? What is the purpose of using coupons, any coupons, as part of your retail marketing strategies? To get more pedestrian traffic to your retail store, right? So if online coupons bring customers back to your store more often to use the additional print-outs, haven’t your online coupons done their job? And if it brings those friends to your retail outlet, once again the coupons have fulfilled their purpose.

You do need to be careful of other types of coupon fraud with them, such as altering the coupons or trying to use numerous coupons at once. The latter is solved simply by putting the standard ‘Maximum One Coupon Per Family Per Day’ or a similar disclaimer on each coupon, while the former is avoided by making sure each cash register in your retail stores has a copy of any current online coupons displayed where the cashier can easily compare them.

Finally, as with any retail marketing initiatives designed to increase traffic, be sure to build your offers so that your profit margin, while reduced on a per-item basis, remains high on a per-sale basis. For example, limit your online coupons to offers like ’10% Off When You Buy 3′ of an item that normally sells in ones or twos, or ‘Save $25 On Orders Of $100 Or More’ so that your maximum discount is 25%, but drops as the value of the order increases.

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Having gone from newspaper advertising manager to founding and operating 2 full-service advertising agencies, Doug Champigny had already mastered the world of offline marketing before turning his attention to online marketing full-time. Now, over a decade later, marketing mentor, author and speaker Doug Champigny is a world-famous marketer with a major online presence who often appears live onstage at marketing seminars, conferences, conventions and workshops around North America. With more than 35 years of online and offline advertising and marketing experience, Doug Champigny is uniquely qualified to teach you how to succeed in offline and online marketing through his numerous web properties and/or through direct marketing mentoring. Give your marketing the PowerStart it needs today – Click Here for more information!

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Offline Businesses – Business Networking On Social Networking Sites Online

admin — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 02:35:08 +0000

Offline Businesses – Business Networking On Social Networking Sites Online

Offline businesses have always understood the value of business networking, and often offline business networking is a company’s main source of meeting new suppliers, finding new products and services to promote and getting referrals to new targeted leads. But never before has business networking been as simple or as far-reaching as it is with today’s social networking sites.

To start with, whatever niche or field your offline businesses are in probably has an association, and nowadays few industry associations don’t have websites where members can discuss issues, trade referrals and all the other areas of business networking. If your industry association was helpful to you before, think of how much more valuable they’d be to your offline businesses if they also became a source of contacts and targeted business leads?

Next, professional associations that cross the niche boundaries can be a major boost to the networking efforts of offline businesses too. For example, retail councils, manufacturing associations, wholesaler associations and even consumer advocacy groups all have websites where, with a bit of study and prudence, you can find ways to extend your business networking.

Then there are the actual social networking sites online, designed to cover all areas of business for both offline businesses and online businesses alike. LinkedIn, for example, lets each employee or owner in your company have their own resume-style page where they can list what they do and who they work for, and builds company listing pages as well showing which members of that company have pages there. A quick look at their site will show you it’s a dream come true for offline businesses looking for networking opportunities.

Social media sites like Twitter and FaceBook, and Web 2.0 properties like Google Buzz and Yahoo Buzz aren’t designed specifically for business use, but can still be extremely helpful in your business networking quest. Give your employees some guidance in how best to represent your company on these sites then allow them some time each day to network with people there in an effort to find suppliers and get referrals to targeted leads – there efforts can even help you get more traffic to your company websites and directly through the front doors of your offline businesses.

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Technorati Tags: business networking, offline businesses, networking sites, social networking sites, social networking

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Offline Businesses – Business Blog Marketing For Offline Businesses

Offline Businesses – Train Your Corporate Marketing Department In Online Marketing

admin — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:19:22 +0000

Offline Businesses – Train Your Corporate Marketing Department In Online Marketing

Every year, offline businesses like insurance companies, equipment suppliers, telecommunication companies and retail chains spend a small fortune sending executives, marketing professionals and salespeople to seminars, conventions, retreats, trade shows and the like. Yet for just a small percentage of that expense they could be training their entire marketing department in the hottest emerging marketing technologies – online marketing strategies.

There still exists today a gulf between traditional corporate marketing professionals and online marketing professionals. The former are mostly old-school marketers who have come up through the ranks learning the ins and outs of traditional media and traditional strategies – skills that while vitally important, bring fewer and fewer results each year as traditional media audiences dwindle.

The latter, by comparison, would be considered ‘Rockstars’ by corporations and other offline businesses – true hotshots who get amazing results but just aren’t team players. And while everyone wants the phenomenal results corporate rockstars regularly achieve, today’s politically-correct corporations have done their best to divest themselves of them, fearing they can’t easily be controlled.

So what is the solution facing offline businesses? Most will decide to relegate any and all online marketing to outsourcing – web design firms, seo specialists, social media experts, ghostwriters and so on, at a cost of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. And even then they’ll be at the mercy of these outside companies, since no one in-house knows enough about the emerging online marketing tools and techniques to include them in the planning stages of marketing strategies development.

The smartest companies, those with the greatest foresight, will realize it’s far less expensive and far more profitable to train their existing marketing and sales departments in the online marketing ways instead. These people already fit the corporate culture of the offline businesses they work for, have the required offline savvy to make the most of traditional methods, and can now become much more valuable again by learning a whole new, though related, skillset.

Most importantly, this new professional online marketing knowledge will allow marketing plans to include the Internet right from the inception of each campaign’s planning stages and protect the company from outside suppliers pushing outdated web designs, building overly complicated web sites that don’t rank well in the search engines, holding them up for a king’s ransom to get jobs completed or taking 4 times as long as promised to deliver online properties. And if you don’t think major offline businesses fall victim to each of these scenarios every day, ask yourself when you last saw a Fortune 400 company show up on the first page of results at Google, Bing or Yahoo, or came across their presence on social media sites? Those are currently the two largest sources of online traffic, yet for all the millions they spend, the biggest corporations are shut out by small independent online marketing pros with little or no budget.

If you’re a professional offline marketer, think of how much stronger you’d be with these new technologies under your belt. If you’re an HR pro, ask yourself when an experienced professional Internet marketer last applied for ANY position within your corporation – or any other you’re familiar with. And if you’re a CEO, CFO, COO or business owner, ask yourself how long it’s going to take you to realize you should already be training your corporate marketing department in the online marketing techniques and strategies?

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Technorati Tags: customer service, improve customer service, customer retention, offline businesses, online customers, Doug Champigny

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How Online Advertising Saves Offline Businesses Money

admin — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:54:00 +0000

How Online Advertising Saves Offline Businesses Money

Offline businesses, especially small offline businesses, have long sought effective advertising vehicles they can include in their marketing mix without breaking the bank. And while some services, such as film separations for color printing and the need to purchase typesetting, have been eliminated as advertising agencies moved to full computerization, most mass-audience media has stayed out of the financial reach of small businesses. And even the biggest multi-national corporations usually produce more good advertising ideas than their budget will allow, leaving some great ideas relegated to the round filing cabinet.

Well, educated offline businesses can now rejoice, thanks to the internet technologies of today. Those technologies have brought the mass audience within the range of ALL offline businesses. Business blogs, for example, can be utilized by anyone with a computer and Internet access – no additional software is required and hosting can be had for free. Even taking their blogs to the upper echelons online requires only a few hundred dollars year for their custom domain name and business blogs hosting. If you can type, you can blog.

Other powerful marketing techniques can also be employed for far less online. Radio and TV too expensive for small offline businesses? Replace radio ads with podcasts – audio articles or commercials recorded directly on your computer, then uploaded to your web hosting. From free programs like Audacity to fully-featured professional but inexpensive software like SoundForge or Acid Music Studio, the technology you need to turn any computer into your own recording and editing studio is easy to find and easy to learn.

Have great ideas for TV commercials or short documentaries to boost your bottom line, but can’t afford what some offline businesses pay for production and airtime? Learn to use Sony Vegas, Corel Video Studio Pro or similar software and you can be producing powerful spots whenever you have some downtime – with or without a digital video camera! Best of all, you can upload your videos to the video sharing sites like YouTube and Viddler for free, giving you access to a potentially huge audience already geared to video advertising!

Until the current technologies and the evolution of today’s Internet, such advertising vehicles were out of reach of most small offline businesses, and limited in scope for major corporations trying to operate within strict budget limitations. Just these three marketing techniques alone can merge into a very powerful marketing mix, yet implementing all 3 is possible while keeping the out-of-pocket costs under a thousand dollars.

All of which adds up to saving offline businesses thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year – and that’s before we even touch on article marketing, social networking, e-mail marketing and all the other marketing tools employed by Internet marketers every day to boost sales and brand themselves worldwide. Isn’t it time your offline businesses started saving money every month by making self-driven online advertising a bigger part of your overall marketing strategies?

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Technorati Tags: offline businesses, online advertising, small offline businesses, saving businesses money, advertising, video advertising, digital video

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Money-Making Blog Or Corporate Web Site – Marketing Tips For Offline Businesses

Expanding Market Reach for Offline Businesses Online

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:41 +0000

Expanding Market Reach for Offline Businesses Online

One of the most powerful strategies for offline businesses using the Internet is expanding their market reach – that is, start selling their products or services into a wider region geographically. While not all offline businesses can do that, a lot more can than one might think at first glance.

It’s easy to see how a manufacturer, agent or retailer can expand their market reach – they need only accept orders online and ship the product worldwide. Similarly, a consultant can meet with individuals or committees anywhere in the world at any time through services like GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. And a clergyman, even a lay preacher, can extend their Word by streaming sermons and advice through streaming video or online audio.

But it doesn’t stop there – offline businesses like real estate can also expand their reach through strategic use of the online technologies. Companies transferring executives around the world often need rentals or new homes for those employees, or the employee themselves will need to find new accommodations. Much easier, more efficient and cost-effective to use the Internet for most or all of long-distance house-hunting.

Also, if you’re a realtor or real estate agent with a website, blog or social media presence, have you started using the Internet to compile a list of targeted leads amongst real estate investors? There’s no need for the investors to live locally for them to recognize and purchase a wise investment in your area – especially if they invest in commercial properties or vacant lands.

Perhaps on the other hand you’re in a service industry, like those running offline businesses installing and monitoring alarm services, or a paving company. Obviously you’re not going to travel to another state, province or region for most jobs, but a strong online market reach will no doubt produce targeted leads in those areas too. Your solution? Use the Internet to find lesser-known professionals in your industry that service those areas and offer them those leads on a commission basis – since that local business has not marketing costs involved in servicing that prospect, it’s well worth the expense of paying you a percentage of what that prospect spends with them.

If you really work your online marketing and create a large volume of targeted leads, you may even decide to either expand your territory to include the busier areas or become a full-time lead broker in your industry. You might even find that it’s worthwhile to move your offline businesses if your efforts show much greater demand for it elsewhere.

Maybe you’re thinking of opening a branch office in another territory. Why go in cold, having to start from scratch? Use your Internet presence to announce your intentions, target leads from the new area and try to build a demand and a potential customer base in that new territory before even opening your new office there. Expanding the market reach of offline businesses into new territories before moving into them in the physical world can sure help the transition significantly, helping you overcome the growing pains of being a new startup business in those new areas.

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Technorati Tags: offline businesses, market reach, offline businesses online, expanding market reach, expanding market share

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Offline Businesses – 4 Ways To Use The Internet To Market Offline Businesses

Offline Businesses – Business Blog Marketing For Offline Businesses

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:59:09 +0000

Offline Businesses – Business Blog Marketing For Offline Businesses

Business blog marketing is just one part of the marketing mix where small offline businesses can go head-to-head with large corporations in marketing their offline business endeavors. Using blogs for marketing is so cost-effective it can even be done with no financial investment whatsoever assuming the business already has a computer and an internet connection. While blog marketing is most effective when done with your own domain name and hosting for a couple of hundred dollars per year, it is also possible to start out free by using services like Blogger or WordPress to host your blogs.

Offline businesses should be using blogging even before building a traditional website. You business blog marketing can include listing current and new products and services, keeping your customer base up to date on changes and activities at your company and so much more. Plus, where traditional web sites rely on the search engines for their traffic, business bloggers can use the search engines and the blog directories, and adding audio and or video opens them up to the podcast directories and video sharing sites as well. Best of all, especially for small businesses, all of these promotional opportunities an be added to your offline marketing mix for no additional costs other than the time required to perform each task.

All offline businesses can benefit from targeted lead lists too, and your blog is the perfect place to start compiling your own email marketing leads, using autoresponder software to create your email marketing lists for current and future promotions. Use these email marketing lists to drive traffic into your physical location, to make sales online and to poll your targeted prospects on their needs and wants – powerful information for any marketing manager or small business owner!

As mentioned above, using audio and video marketing via your blog can also help market offline businesses in a big way. Larger corporations can convert their existing radio and TV spots into effective online advertising, while small businesses who can’t afford radio or TV advertising can now use online audio and video marketing to their advantage. A fitness trainer or diet specialist can do a five-minute audio tip each week and post it to their blog, a dentist can use video to show they’re equipped with the latest technologies, a chiropractor can show how relaxing and comfortable their studio is, or a golf pro can film one golf tip per week to help duffers improve their golf game – any of these examples can help build a following for business blogs and help offline businesses market themselves online.

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Technorati Tags: offline businesses, business blog marketing, small offline businesses, blog marketing, business blogs

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Money-Making Blog Or Corporate Web Site – Marketing Tips For Offline Businesses

Offline Businesses – Use Online Services To Improve Customer Service

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:48:58 +0000

Offline Businesses – Use Online Services To Improve Customer Service

Customer management systems, customer service systems and customer retention programs abound in the offline world, yet most offline businesses can still improve all 3 areas through effective customer service policies online. And best of all, offline businesses of all sizes can train employees to handle the online customer service opportunities or hire outside firms that specialize in this area.

Giving customers almost instant access to the product information they need is simple online, using sites like Twitter and FaceBook. An employee monitoring these services, or even checking them every 10 or 15 minutes can respond almost in real time. Start giving every customer and targeted lead the web address of your social media accounts, asking them to use the private messaging features on these sites for contacting you. If yours is one of the thousands of small offline businesses using the Internet, consider adding a computer just for this function – then rather than interrupting your workflow, or that of an employee, a simple glance at that monitor from time to time will tell you if there’s a customer service enquiry to be handled.

Further, give clients and potential leads a place on your online properties to join your email list – keeping in regular contact with existing clients will keep you top of mind for them and go a long way towards customer retention. Don’t use this email list for hard-sell marketing, or you could lose more customers than you retain. Instead, use it to keep them up to date about what’s going on within your organization, new information about products and services within the industry, any new regulations that may affect them or their businesses, etc. Use your email list to put a human face on your business – never forget that people prefer to do business with people, not companies.

Are you considering bringing in a new line, or improving or updating your current product line? Use your online connection to your clients and prospects to involve them in the decision-making process as well – not only will valuing their input help with customer retention, but it’s also an excellent way to warm them up to the new and/or improved products you’ll be marketing soon.

Do you sell products that come with users’ guides or operating manuals? Have those copied into a text format and create downloadable PDF files from them. Making those available online will not only make things smoother for your existing customers who misplace the originals, but will also benefit those who purchase your products second-hand – an important target market you want to impress with your customer service to help encourage them to buy their next model directly from you.

If you’ve been in business for more than a few days then you already know that customer service can make or break a company’s reputation, and that customer retention is far more profitable than customer churn. Word of mouth advertising about your company, good or bad, is going to make the rounds online at some point, and fairly frequently as your company grows. While you can’t control word-of-mouth advertising, you can certainly help tip the scales in your favor with effective online customer service strategies and help reduce or eliminate the need for damage control by using these online customer service techniques to head off potential problems and keep your customers – and keep your customers coming back time and time again!

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Technorati Tags: customer service, improve customer service, customer retention, offline businesses, online customers

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Offline Businesses – Use Internet Marketing To Level The Field For Offline Businesses

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:47:13 +0000

Offline Businesses – Use Internet Marketing To Level The Field For Offline Businesses

One of the biggest problems facing small offline businesses and new business startups has always been trying to compete against larger, established businesses with considerably more available capital in their advertising budget. Whether those larger offline businesses have been using flyers, consumer shows, focus groups, print ads, radio spots or TV commercials, traditionally they’ve just needed to outspend you to protect their higher market share and often nibble away at yours.

But now, thanks to the Internet, you have a way for your small business to level the playing field to one extent or another. Used properly, online marketing can have a major impact on your business for little or no cost, and for entrepreneurs and other solo business professionals can even give you a way to turn your small offline businesses into true family businesses.

For example, article marketing is a powerful online marketing tool that can be used by online or offline businesses alike at no cost. If you’re not a good writer or are usually pretty pressed for time, do you have kids at home of high school or college age? Knocking out 300-400 word articles is usually a breeze for them since they’re writing for school regularly, so enlist their aid in your online marketing efforts. Even paying them $5 or $10 an article gives them more incentive, keeps them in spending money and is a legitimate way to spread the income from the business. (Just check with your accountant to be sure it’s a tax write-off in your area before entering it as such in the books.)

Is yours a stay-at-home spouse? If so, seek their help in establishing a social media presence for your business using Twitter, FaceBook ‘fan’ pages, etc. If your small business lends itself to visual representation, use photos from your digital camera to get the word out on the photo-sharing sites and use the photos to illustrate points on your business blogs. Since most families have a digital video camera these days, learn to use the software that came with it to render your videos, then use them to market your small business through video sharing sites. Your videos can be you discussing your business, videos of you conducting business or teaching how the business operates, or even full-blown commercials like you’d see on television – any of those can help build small offline businesses.

And most importantly, be sure you have one of the best business blogs in your line of work. That doesn’t mean the fanciest or the most expensive – in fact it can be done quite cheaply. The best business blogs are those that are the most helpful to their target audience. You already know what information your potential customers need, what they should know about your area of expertise, what they should know about your and your small business, and what they should watch out for in your marketplace. You also know what goods and services are available to them, which they should use and which they should avoid, and why.

So get that information out there on your business blog – help your target market by educating them in the areas they want to – and should – know about. The more helpful you can be to them with the information you post on your small business blog, the more likely your are to turn those targeted leads into customers. And combined with the Internet marketing strategies above, your small business blog can help you level the playing field against those larger, richer offline businesses.

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Technorati Tags: offline businesses, small business, small offline businesses, internet marketing, online marketing, offline businesses blogs, marketing mentor

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