By Izzy Brewer

There are a number of great ways to promote your online business offline. Combining offline advertising with your online presence will create momentum and increase your profits. There are a number of ways to promote your business offline.

Generate traffic. Produce sales. Increase profits.

Those words are gold to every business with a Web site. But an overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs don't ever reach their goals of gold.

This is mainly because there seems to be an unwritten code of Web advertising. It states you can only be successful on the Internet if you are using online advertising methods like search engines, banner ads and buying online ad space. True, this should be a factor in any company's marketing efforts but there's an old rule of advertising you should Consider... offline.

There are three main offline-advertising mediums worth investing in to drive people to your site. Print, television and radio ads are fairly inexpensive and have the power to promote your dot com presence effectively.

It's cheaper and more effective than you think.

Print

Newspaper advertising

Newspaper advertising is an easy way to get your message in front of a large audience. When placing these kind of ads you want to put them in the business opportunities or work at home section of the classifieds. If you are only going to run them one day a week focus on the Sunday edition as this normally has the highest circulation. If possible run the ad consistently as this will build some familiarity with the readers and will lead to better response. Be sure to find out the circulation and compare the cost with the circulation to find the best deals. I would also suggest you "test" a few different ads and keep track of the results of each. Here are some examples of ads I have run recently:

STOP reading classified ads make money from them instead... If they're making money you can too:

For example:-

We recently signed up to the affiliate program at http://www.cashloopholes.co.uk, They pay 50% commissions on their product. In the national exchange and mart it costs just £80 for a one week advert in the business opportunities section. There were other betting guides in there and they have been for a long time so I knew they were making money. This one guarantees to win, 100% of the time. None of the others can do that so we was one step ahead already by promoting such an exceptional product.

The ad read

FREE MONEY LOOPHOLE

If You Could GUARANTEE, With Absolute Certainty, The Outcome of an Event BEFORE You Placed a Bet... How Much Money Would You Invest?

As it's in the business opportunity section this ad immediately captures the attention of the reader, it's intriguing and causes the reader to want to know more

We placed the ad for 4 weeks and we set up an ad tracking service so we knew how well we were doing with it.

In all we received Approximately 500 hits a day and made on average about 10 sales a day. Do the maths and you will see how profitable offline advertising can be.

During the 4 week tester period we also had 46 people sign up as an affiliate under us earning us 15% of whatever sales they made.

I am not saying this is the only or best product to sell, This is what we first used when we first started advertising off-line and it paid of extremely well for us. We have increased the ad size now costing £290 a week but the increase in traffic makes up for the extra cost 10 fold. Its always good to start small and cheaply first though. Always test the market before ploughing all your advertising budget on it.

Lastly I would recommend trying at least three different papers with three different ad copies and expand from there as your budget allows.

Direct Mailing

Put yourself in the shoes of your direct mail recipients. Avoid direct mail deadly mistakes or your materials will end up in the trash too.

Before you even begin to put your direct mail campaign together, you've got to know who your target market is. Are they women? Parents? Young? Old? Understand what motivates them. What are their likes and dislikes?

Write as if you're talking to them. And even use terms these types of people would use.

But all the fancy graphics and the most beautifully created sentences in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't carefully select the people on your mailing list. If you're selling adult diapers, you want to target senior citizens...not 23-year-olds.

Tighten your mailing list as much as possible to be sure it's tailored to your needs. It's tough to make people believe they need your product and even harder to convince them they need it now. But if you've researched your list, you have a higher chance of hitting potential customers instead of the trash can.

You've made your list and checked it twice, so-to-speak. It's the perfect list. Now it's time to write. Define your objectives before you start writing. Stay focused and hit the points of your objective. If you get off track, your reader is going to stop reading.

Spend a lot of time on your headline. Just remember how you feel when reading mail that comes to you. After you read that headline, do you keep reading? The headline can make or break your direct mail campaign.

Does price really matter? Not unless you know what you're getting for that price. Hook your reader with all of the product benefits. By the time they get to the end, they should be saying, "I can't live without that!"

And then you let them in on the price. Even if the price is extremely low, you have to tell potential customers about the product first.

Disclosing this price shouldn't put people into shock. Is your product priced according to the market? If you're selling a new teddy bear, it should be priced within reason. Not many people will pay $90 for a tiny teddy bear, right? Truth is, a lot of direct mail goes unanswered because the products are unreasonably priced.

Success! Your potential customer read all the way through your mailing. Now what?

Did you tell the reader what you want them to do? You can't sell if you don't tell.

Your readers need a call to action. Tell them to send in the card, call you, etc. Then tell them again.

Once your direct mail is ready to go, test several smaller mailings before sending out a huge chunk. Test each of these mailings by changing a few items when you send them out.

Have two or more sales letters you test against each other. By testing, you will find out which of those mailings are bringing in more responses and - hopefully - more orders.

Stick with the clear winners. Remember the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Direct mail is a waste of money for a lot of people. But it doesn't have to be for you. Understanding direct mail deadly mistakes -- and avoiding them -- will lead you to sales success!

Flyers

The next offline advertising method I am going to talk about in this article is a simple flyer. These are a great way to get your website in front of a wide audience. Make 1000 copies and dedicate yourself to handing out all of them in the next 7 days. Here are just a couple of places to hand these out: around your neighbourhood or a large neighbourhood nearby, place stacks at local restaurants, dry cleaners or other places of business, or go to your local college campuses and find areas you can place your flyers.

Novelty advertising

There are loads of novelty ways to advertise. Use your imagination and be original.

Depending on the product you could have your web address printed on t-shirts and give them away to tourists. If you make them bright enough they will wear them with big smiles on they're faces all day advertising your website

Try printing on mouse mats, pens, balls or any other novelty item. It doesn't even always have to be related to your product to get good results although a related gimmick can work wonders.

Million Dollar Bills are another great way to advertise offline. These can be used a number of different ways including as an attention getter, door opener, response generator, networking device, or simply to get a smile out of the recipient. I would recommend ordering a minimum of 2000 and handing them out as quickly as possible. You can even hire someone to hand them out for you if you are short on time. As strange as this may sound to some of you this method works great and is worth the cost.

Statement inserts

Even huge corporation's send statement inserts. You're going to send a statement to your customers anyway, why not throw in some advertisements for yourself?

This can also be done when paying bill, you think all them people sat at there desks all day don't want nothing better from life.

You get all the advantages of direct mail without paying extra for a separate mailing. Take a look at these numbers:

Complete direct mail packages run between $200 and $600 per thousand. In contrast, statement inserts are only $6 to $15 per thousand. A huge savings for you.

You can also use statement inserts to test a new product. If your product doesn't generate much interest, you can easily change your advertising angle. But if you've pumped all your ad dollars into commercials, print ads and a solo direct mail campaign without results, changing direction is much harder and more costly.

Now the bad news. You get your statement and there's an insert for a high-ticket item inside. Chances are, you're not going to shell out the big bucks for something knew when you've just received this blow to your billfold in the same envelope.

That's why your statement insert should advertise a reasonably priced item. Save your top-dollar items for your high advertising dollars. Those big prices won't pull in a lot of orders off a statement insert.

Be sure to watch the weight of your mailing too. You can pack a lot in a 34 cent mailing. But anything over one ounce will cost you more in postage.

You should also consider using a large statement insert. Packing your mailing full of smaller inserts may seem more logical but research indicates larger inserts have higher response rates. Three panel is most popular, followed by two panel.

If you choose to send out a single panel, pack it with information. Deliver the offer, product, copy and audience to pick up the slack in size and details.

Order forms must be easy to fill out as well.

Keeping your customers waiting for several months, even weeks will reduce your chances of that customer becoming a repeat buyer.

Consider having a customer service department solely devoted to your featured product. If someone doesn't receive their order or has other complaints, you need a staff that will handle those concerns immediately. Handled correctly, a good CSR can turn an irate person into a satisfied customer. And that customer will tell a friend about how you solved their problem.

Get the most out of postage rates and your ad dollars with statement inserts. Who knows? Your customers might even start looking forward to receiving your bill!

Radio

A 30- or 60-second radio spot is quite a bargain. Rates vary depending on your area's population. Even still, you can negotiate a cheaper price and receive a better rate if you buy a bulk amount of commercials.

One of the many advantages of radio is that you can target your audience. Specific age groups and lifestyles are all defined by the station's format. Ratings also help determine this information and can help you choose the best station and time slot for your company's commercial.

The key components of your radio commercial include your name, address, telephone number and selling message. But be sure to ask listeners to visit your site. Repeat your URL at least twice and, again, tell them what they'll gain by visiting.

Television

Get ready to shatter the myths about television commercials. You don't have to be a major corporation or have tons of disposable ad dollars to hit the airwaves.

Buying airtime on your local television station is actually very affordable. But for an even lower rate, check the cable TV companies in your area. Airtime is significantly lower than broadcast television ad rates.

You also have the added benefit of reaching a specific target audience. If you sell sporting goods, your ad can run on SportsSouth and ESPN for the best possible prospects. Your cable operator can even gear the commercials to a zip code or local community.

Infomercials aren't too far behind commercials as a low-cost, traffic-building tool. Even a 15-minute infomercial can explain your products/services and promote your Web site at the same time.

Just like with print, make sure your URL is prominently displayed in your commercial and/or infomercial. Keep in mind, not everybody has a big screen TV at home and this can make a huge difference to a potential customer with a 19" screen.

Conclusion

New technology forces us to adapt to new advertising means. But sometimes old school techniques are overlooked when, in fact, they can actually help propel business into the money-making wave of the future.

Don't just do it once and be happy with your results, if something works keep repeating it and as you make money put more money into your venture.

Best of luck to you all.