| By :
Ted Holcomb
It has finally happened...the Internet is no longer the world wide web. It has become the local wide web. Every community knows the power of the Internet. Put anything you can think of into Google search, and you will find it. There are millions of sites to go to and order anything you can think of. But here is what is happening in your local market. How often have you wanted to know where to go locally to buy something that you needed today? I bet often. The yellow pages has been taking advantage of that need for years. Your local yellow pages has 100's of local businesses that are advertising for your patronage. Not a bad idea, since it has been around for years. But it has limitations. When you advertise in the yellow pages you advertise to everybody along with all the other businesses that have similar products. Even though a small percent of the people show an interest in your product. Local radio. Its been around a long time too. When you buy a spot on local radio, you again are adverting to everyone that is listening to the station. A lot of waste of your money on people who are not interested in buying your product. So the money you spend, and it is not cheap, a waste on the waste... People that are not your customers. Direct mail is another option you have. You buy a local list and send your mailing to everyone on that list. The question is, "How many of those people are customers or potential customers of yours? Direct mail goes GA GA when they have a 3% return on a mailing. That is a 97% waste of mailing, which is not cheap! You have to design, print, schedule, and pay for the postage. Not to say about the amount of time it takes to put the campaign together. So it is taking your time and money. The biggest culprit of robbing your advertising fund is the newspaper. Paper goes out to young, old, men, women, in town and out-of-town, absolutely no focus on your customer. You are a womans dress shop in Troy, Ohio and advertise in the paper. Look who all gets the paper. Everybody does. Even worse, you have to hunt in the paper to find your ad. Additionally, you ad is lost among all the other ads in the paper. What a mess. It is a fact that newspaper circulation is declining. Now look at offline marketing. For the first time in the life of advertising, you are able with laser sharp accuracy, target on to your customer and develop a relationship with them, at a very low-cost. How is this done? If you have an in store promotion, or get the email address of people who are shopping your store. You are now able to communicate with them directly about products of interest. You can segment men from women, young from old, those that shop on the weekend vs. those that shop during the week. Only the Internet allows for this type of offline marketing. It's time to checkout the value and strength of offline marketing. It is the one of the only media that you can almost advertise for free...now that is a good idea and make the difference of being profitable or going out of business.
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