Helping offline businesses that want to market themselves online is a big and growing realm for Internet marketers, but it should be an even bigger opportunity for many people who work in offline jobs full-time. In many, if not most industries there are a number of salespeople and consultants who deal with a great number of businesses all operating within one offline niche.

Commissioned salespeople, agents, jobbers, wholesalers, suppliers (especially entrepreneurs like printers, etc), media advertising reps, brokers, bookkeepers – all sorts of offline jobs give the employees the perfect opportunity to also represent and promote online marketing services. In many instances all they need do is find online marketers who offer online promotional services to offline businesses and then make a deal with them. The employee is calling on offline businesses all day, either in person or via the phones, and can mention that the services are available if their contacts want to take advantage of it. When any contact shows an interest, the employee simply turns them over to the Internet marketer for followup and they split any resultant income according to whatever their deal is.

For some of these people, especially those in entrepreneurial positions, it’s important that they themselves use the social media and social networking sites effectively too. In those cases, it may prove prudent to educate themselves in how effective online campaigns are promoted and start building their own social network and social media strategies, not only to boost their own sales but to be able to offer those services to their existing clients as well. And in extremely competitive fields of offline business, being able to add social media promotions as a bonus can often sway a potential client into your camp instead of those who can’t offer this additional benefit. After all, firms will always seek out those businesses and individuals you can help them, and their bottom line, the most!

Fortunately, it’s becoming easier and easier to learn effective social media and social networking strategies, and social media marketing can bring heavy-duty benefits to even the newest of practitioners compared to competitors who aren’t using the social sites. In fact, companies who have websites and don’t support them with social media campaigns will be buried quickly by those who do, in my opinion. Having been online full-time for 14 or 15 years now, I’m quite aware that one has to stay active online utilizing the current ‘hot’ strategies to continue to benefit from the web, unlike offline media where the same newspapers rule the same markets for 100 years, TV stations have dominated their markets for 50 years or radio stations for 30 or 40 years. In fact, industry statistics show that TV and Radio stations are folding at a rate of one a week in North America, and newspapers are suffering the same fate world-wide as their traditional audiences are turning more and more to the internet for their information, including local news and events.

And it’s just that local online market that the offline reps should be tackling. Inexpensive how-to tutorials like Local Internet Marketing Empire and High Profile Social Media can teach you everything you need to get started, while specific site guides like Advanced Marketing On Twitter and FaceBook Ad Explosion can help you to truly excel in social media marketing. And since all of the above combined would require less than $100 invested to own all 4, not only is the entry cost not an issue for most people but it’s easy to see how just one social media campaign would cover any amount you have invested in your skills training.

In these tough economic times sales are down all over the place, meaning especially tough times for commissioned salespeople, entrepreneurs and other offline workers who are paid on performance. It’s nice to know our online industry is able to help out by providing a reasonably easy way for you to supplement your offline income while building your own business at the same time!

Technorati Tags: online marketing, offline businesses, social media marketing, social media campaigns, social media promotions, social networking, salespeople, entrepreneurs, offline jobs

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Are Advertising Agencies The Next Computer-Age Casualty?

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Many offline businesses and jobs have been eliminated by the technologies of the computer age. Telephone receptionists were amongst the first, and shortly thereafter the film-separation and typesetting industries within the advertising community collapsed. With film separations now being one click of a software program, agencies and clients no longer pay hundreds of dollars to have each color photograph separated into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black (CMYK) negatives or plates.

And headlines once costing hundreds of dollars for typesetting can now be produced on even the most basic computers that use the Windows or Macintosh operating systems, with thousands of fonts available for free online. Even controls once used only by typesetters and not available on typewriters, like kerning and leading, are now simple checkboxes or form fields accessible and usable effectively by even those only slightly trained in the software.

But not only did that drop production costs for ad agency clients, it also dropped the earnings of most agencies along with it, since those fees, along with all others incurred in ad agency services, were marked up 17.65% (15% of total budget spending) by the agency involved. And so it goes with each production expense reduction, like outsourcing to areas with lower fixed or labor costs – as the production expense drops, so does the agency’s profit on the job.

Still, ad agencies could survive on their creative fees – the 15% of overall spending on the client’s media buy. Newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television stations all billed agencies at a higher ‘National Advertising’ rate with enough built in to the price to rebate the agency their share of the profits. Fast forward to today, and traditional media are in desperate times. Readership, listenership and viewership are all dropping dramatically, with no bottom yet in site.

With media advertising rates based on audience and reach, what does that do to revenue? Either the media have to charge less, or the lessened response they offer means fewer clients. Either way, revenue is shrinking and has to be made up for somehow. Notice how TV shows have 13 new episodes instead of 26, with a lot more reruns? Or the rise of ‘reality’ shows with no highly paid actors, writers or pricey sets? You can be sure high-ticket shows like Miami Vice or multi-starred sitcoms like Friends are soon, if not already, dinosaurs of a previous age.

With a radio or TV station a week going under in North America already, and newspapers flopping around looking for solutions, they need to find every possible way to cut budgets and increase revenues. One way is through offering free creative and production to clients who would previously have used an agency in order to retain that business. So agencies are seeing reduced income from the media buys, and now the media is getting more aggressive with them in going to the clients directly.

And the final stroke in the death knell? From small businesses to the largest international corporations, business owners, managers and marketers are starting to realize that the best return on investment for their advertising spend is online – and those on the cutting edge are starting to see that the big, flashy, expensive sites designed by traditional offline ad agencies seem to be losing out to independent Internet marketing professionals not spending 1/100 their budget. Can it be long before they realize that one or two well-trained employees might just bring them better results than the biggest ad agencies are capable of?

And with these new online marketing tactics being so much cheaper as to not leave a margin for agencies or other middlemen, can the traditional advertising agency avoid the tar pits much longer?

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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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[tags]advertising agencies, offline businesses, ad agencies, computer-age casualty, next computer-age casualty[tags]

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Legal & Accounting Information Online – Beware Of ‘Accurate Misinformation’

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com –
All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Small offline businesses often operate on a shoestring budget, relying on getting by on personal credit cards and the like during slow times and trying to get them paid back down during the better times. Since almost every industry is cyclic in nature, this happens time and time again. As a result, small offline businesses often rely on the Internet for much of their legal, accounting and other needed information.

The risk these small offline business owners take is that they’ll often fall victim to ‘accurate misinformation’, a new phenomenon that has resulted from the world-wide scope of information online. The term accurate misinformation refers to information that is true and valid in the jurisdiction where it’s written, but is not necessarily applicable elsewhere. Hence it’s accurate in that locale and misinformation elsewhere.

Small offline businesses usually recognize that they can’t use the information from another country in their legal and accounting issues, but may well be misled by information applicable to only a part of the country they operate in. For example, rules pertaining to taxes, laws and by-laws can vary from state to state, province to province, department to department, and often even differ in each municipality.

Remember, small offline business owners and solo entrepreneurs are fairly savvy, or they wouldn’t be in business long in today’s challenging economic times. So most know to disregard the financial and legal information posted by non-professionals and that they should only follow the advice of licensed and accredited professionals. But they do run the risk of falling victim to accurate misinformation when it’s published by a legitimate professional, especially if the web page they’re reading doesn’t list the exact location of the firm or individual offering up that info.

As a small business owner you know you have to exercise caution and prudence in all aspects of legal and accounting practices – just be sure that prudence extends to avoiding accurate misinformation. No matter how tight the budget, find a way to get solid business, accounting and legal advice from licensed professionals in your own community – it’s the only way to be sure you’re operating in full compliance with the rules and regulations in place where your small business operates.

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Helping offline businesses online, especially small offline businesses and solo entrepreneurs, is one of the goals of Doug Champigny’s PowerStart Marketing operations, which include the Offline Businesses Blog Doug authors to help narrow the digital divide for small business owners and solo entrepreneurs. Doug Champigny is a world-famous marketing mentor who appears at live marketing conventions, conferences, workshops and events throughout North America teaching businesses and individuals how to succeed online – contact him through http://dougchampigny.com to book Doug to speak at your next online or offline event!

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Technorati Tags: accurate misinformation, small businesses, small offline businesses, small business tips, online business information, legal advice, accounting, marketing mentor Doug Champigny, speaker Doug Champigny

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Offline Businesses – The Most Effective Online Marketing Uses Direct Marketing Strategies

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com – All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Direct marketing in the offline world has grown to huge proportions, becoming a very professional industry in which the biggest players are immensely successful. And these same direct marketing strategies and techniques are the hallmark of the most successful Internet marketing businesses, etc. In fact, every direct marketing professional should consider Internet marketing as a career or at least a sideline for additional income streams.

Direct mail pieces in the offline business world become email blasts online – and with more and more email programs now HTML capable, can be just as glossy and heavily designed as their offline counterpart. And just as direct marketers buy targeted leads or use location-based mail drops, Internet marketing pros rent email lists, buy solo ads and buy leads.

Direct marketing techniques also include classified ads and TV infomercials – online there are a number of classified-ad sites, some international and many based on certain locals. And video sharing sites are perfect for displaying TV-style commercials, infomercials, product demonstrations, etc.

And the ‘golden lists’ or the big Direct Mail houses, those lists of targeted leads that buy from them regularly, are no different than the customer lists online. Just as direct marketers have a pre-written series of e-mails and offers that go out to their previous customers on a regular basis, so too do online marketers who use pre-written autoresponder series to follow up with each purchaser.

If you own and/or operate an offline business in direct marketing, learn all you can about the strategies, tools and techniques being used by successful Internet marketing pros and use that knowledge to increase bottom line profits considerably. While some online regulations, like the anti-spam laws, make parts a little trickier in compliance, it’s more than made up for by the low cost of email blasts, the lack of lead time required for printing, and the free video hosting the video sharing sites provide. Start by putting every commercial and infomercial in your current library online at sites like YouTube, Viddler and Daily Motion and you’re already well on your way.

And if you’re currently working in the direct marketing industry with no equity in the company that employs you, consider starting a part-time job in online marketing and building it into your own full-time Internet marketing or affiliate marketing business. You have the skills so start investigating this low-startup-costs online industry for your own future today!

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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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Technorati Tags: direct marketing, internet marketing, direct marketing strategies, marketing strategies, offline businesses, marketing, marketing mentor Doug Champigny

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Offline Businesses – 5 Free and Easy Ways To Get More Website Traffic

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://dougchampigny.com . All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

More and more offline companies have ‘brochure’ websites – static websites that just tell about the company, it’s people and it’s products. While that’s all fine and dandy for your existing clients to check, without some extra effort it’s not going to bring you a lot of new business, because most targeted prospects will never know it’s there. So let’s look at ways to get the attention of those prospects and get them to your website and hopefully through the doors of your offline businesses as well.

1) On-Site Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While this should have been looked after when the site was built, often it’s overlooked either out of ignorance or forgotten in the rush to collect from you. So to start with, check to see if your site is optimized for the search engines. In your web browser, go to your site, then choose View > Page Source from the browser menus. Do you see tags at the top of the coding for Title, Description and Keywords? Do they all have your main keywords listed in them? Don’t settle for a page title like ABC Company or Home Page – you need to incorporate the main phrase your potential customers would be searching for.

Is there a page on your site that links to every other page (a sitemap)? Or at least links of each page to all the others? Not only does one or both of these options make it easier for viewers to navigate your site, but it also makes it easier for the search engines to find every page – remember, search engines index PAGES, not sites.

2) Article Marketing. For offline businesses and online businesses alike, it’s important to remember that your prospects come online looking for information. In point form, write down every question you can think of that they might ask about your business, your products, and your industry in general. Now write informative articles that answer those questions – true articles, not sales pitches. You want to impress them with your expertise and how helpful your articles are. Add a paragraph at the end explaining who you are, what your company sells or what services they provide, and a link to your website. This paragraph is called an Author’s Resource Box and is standard online. Now submit those articles to the top article directories. Once published, they brand you and your company, demonstrate your expertise and help your prospective customers. You benefit both from the massive traffic at the directories, some of whom may click the link and visit your site, and from the search engines finding another backlink to your site.

3) Forum Marketing. Almost every niche has one or more popular forum covering their topics. Go to the major search engines and type in your industry or niche followed by Forum. Visit the forums that appear in the directories, and look for those with the biggest and busiest membership. Join the forum and read some of the posts each day for a bit til you have a good handle on how it’s run. Most won’t let you advertise in your posts there, but do allow a small ad in your signature on each post. Again be as helpful as possible, answering people’s questions fully when they’re looking for information. Once again, the idea over time is to make it obvious you’re an expert in the area, and to get them to click through to your site to find out more about you and your offline businesses. Of course, it’s also more backlinks for the search engines to find and follow to your site as well.

4) Social Media Marketing. This is a massive opportunity that most offline businesses never take proper advantage of. Set up an account at Twitter, for example, and do a search for your main keyword or keyword phrase. You’ll be shown each tweet that someone did with that word or phrase in it – go through those and watch for targeted leads, then click to follow those people. Ignore tweets from other suppliers, people who just mentioned it casually, etc, and focus on those you know will be in the market now or soon. Then watch your Twitter stream for questions they ask and answer them, engage them, and invite them to your site. Also, set up a page about your company at FaceBook – not a personal page, but what they call a ‘Fan’ page. Each time you publish a new article as in #2 above, mention it on both your Twitter account and your Fan page – with a link to the article, of course.

5) Business Blogs Marketing. Business blogs are the most common tool used by professional online businesses, yet almost ignored by offline businesses. Not only do blogs give you a fast and easy way to talk about your company, discuss your products and announce new products or services, but they can also be a great place to publish those same articles you wrote for the article directories. And since both search engines and blog directories index blogs, you have even more ways for people to find your business blogs, and through them find yet more backlinks to your web site.

These 5 quick and easy ways for offline businesses to get more traffic to their website are just the start – once you’ve mastered these you’ll see your site, your phone and your physical location picking up in visitors. And there are a lot of other free and paid ways for offline businesses to get more traffic to their websites, so get these strategies under control and then explore some of the other techniques so that you rise above and stay ahead of other offline businesses in your industry.

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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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Technorati Tags: offline businesses, search engines, business blogs, website traffic, easy ways, online businesses, SEO

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