Expanding Market Reach for Offline Businesses Online

Posted on September 8, 2010 by admin

Expanding Market Reach for Offline Businesses Online

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://offline-businesses.info-at-this.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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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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 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 online marketing through his Internet Marketing Coaching and his Affiliate Marketing Coaching programs. Give your online marketing the PowerStart it needs today – enroll now!

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Offline Businesses – Business Blog Marketing For Offline Businesses

Posted on September 6, 2010 by admin

Offline Businesses – Business Blog Marketing For Offline Businesses

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://offline-businesses.info-at-this.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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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Offline Businesses – Use Online Services To Improve Customer Service

Posted on August 25, 2010 by admin

Offline Businesses – Use Online Services To Improve Customer Service

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://offline-businesses.info-at-this.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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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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 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 online marketing through his Internet Marketing Coaching and his Affiliate Marketing Coaching programs. Give your online marketing the PowerStart it needs today – enroll now!

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

Posted on August 21, 2010 by admin

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

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://offline-businesses.info-at-this.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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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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 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 online marketing through his Internet Marketing Coaching and his Affiliate Marketing Coaching programs. Give your online marketing the PowerStart it needs today – enroll now!

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

Posted on August 18, 2010 by admin

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

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://offline-businesses.info-at-this.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Offline business owners are starting to realize that marketing offline businesses on the Internet is the most cost-efficient component in their marketing mix. Unlike traditional advertising, online marketing is interactive, allowing for better customer relations, more effective lead targeting and better damage control when needed. Offline businesses can increase sales, boost their bottom line and brand their company and products for much less money with online marketing as well.

Offline businesses usually start with a company website when first venturing into online promotion, as it’s the most familiar territory for them. A website is the online version of their offline catalogue or brochure, so they feel relatively comfortable in using that as their main promotional vehicle online. While this can definitely help any offline business establish a web presence, it isn’t the only way, nor even necessarily the best way to market themselves online.

The second way to use the Internet to promote offline businesses can often be more effective, because building a business blog is easier and usually more a more powerful weapon to have in your marketing mix. Blogs are easy to update, can be authored by any company employee, have greater presence in the search engines and other directories, and can be built by the company itself, instead of relying on expensive web design firms or advertising agencies. Plus, updates are instant – and any marketing pro worth his salt knows the advantages of being first to market with new products or services. With a business blog, offline businesses can be promoting a product for a week or two while their competition is still waiting for the ad agency or design company to update a website.

Email based marketing is another way to use the Internet for promotional and advertising purposes, and offline businesses would be wise to train one or more of their staff in the art of marketing with email. This is easier for larger corporations since they usually already have someone issuing a print newsletter – but any company, even a sole proprietorship, can issue a professional-looking business ezine that’s cheaper to produce, cheaper to send and far ‘greener’ than a printed newsletter.

The fourth way to use the Internet to market offline businesses is through social media sites like FaceBook and Twitter. Social media is the fastest growing segment of the online world and rapidly becoming the most important part for online marketers of any stripe – FaceBook alone has over 400 MILLION users now, a sizable market no matter what line you’re in. And recent demographics from such sites is enough to make any marketer salivate – far from being kid-dominated as originally believed, these sites are mostly populated by those 30-70 of above average income and education. Definitely NOT a market that should be ignored when using the Internet to market offline businesses!

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Marketing mentor 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 online marketing through his Internet Marketing Coaching and his Affiliate Marketing Coaching programs. Doug created both of these programs himself through his PowerStart Marketing division, and gives his students direct access to him and his vast wealth of marketing knowledge both during their course and afterwards. Give your marketing the PowerStart it needs today – enroll now!

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