Offline promotion

chatterbox

New member
How many of you interact and network with others within the industry? Even if you are just talking to others about your hosting business or trying to promote it to businesses in the neighborhood. Most of you are most likely doing this almost every day - but are you passing out your business card? I'm always surprised by the number of business people online who do not get professional cards printed up with an url to your business on it.
 
Business card is one of the important marketing tools to get business from your offline contact, you can even add there powerful reason to do business with you. Good for relation building that can be achieved by exchanging business cards and making contacts.
 
Sure, this will be help to promote your site and business..
In this e-marketing generation , the website address is most and most important to build up your brand.
 
I totally agree that business cards are a terrific promotional tool offline. I am trying to figure out why so many don't bother with it and stick on online promotion only.
 
I keep copies of my cards just about anywhere you can think (in the car, laptop case, wallet, etc.) There is never harm in dropping a card off to anyone you meet during your days or nights out and about.
 
I agree with u guys, and i don`t see why they don`t have it... there is alot of card making companies doing it for a small amount of money...
 
I've used business cards in the past for a couple of things but in truth I don't think that I got a lot of results from it. The point was the stuff I was marketing had no local appeal-yet eMarketing was able to reach a far greater variety of people.
 
Has anyone tried any offline promotion via classified advertising?

Or any joint ventures? I.E Gettingyour hosting service offered as the back end to other companies service such as web design?
 
The best marketing is Verbal marketing,nothing can beat it not even advertising worth a million dollars.:agree:
 
At times, I feel like I am the only one in my city of 100,000 that even owns a website, but I recently realized that there are lots of locals that do the same. There are many advertising routes I could think of, but word of mouth could be good if it comes up.
 
Perhaps there is something that you could do to encourage word of mouth? Some kind of incentive, a discount I guess as I would like to avoid affiliate schemes. But a discount of a certain percentage of your next month's bill for every person you refer who actually takes services.
 
If you're doing a great job for the customer they will tell others about you, you don't have to offer an incentive for that.

If you're a designer, you should be teamed up with a print shop and hosting company. If you're in hosting you should be teamed with marketing, programmers and designers.

Offline media works (at least for us). Whether it's a flyer or business card in Dublin Ireland or a business card at a local resturant in Omaha Nebraksa, meeting someone at a bar in Las Vegas Nevada, or playing golf in Palm Springs California - hand your busienss card to EVERY person you meet. If you're not actively promoting your business, then your business is not growing. EVERYONE takes a business card from your hand (even if they think they don't want it). It costs less than $30 for a couple thousand cards - well worth the money for the potential return.

Go the next step - get a t-shirt print screener and print up T-Shirts. Costs are reduced to less than $4.00 per shirt if you make them yourself. Hand them out, send them to clients - it's marketing. You must advertise! And when all else fails, go back to the old marketing saying "you have to spend money to make money".

If you're not familiar with marketing techniques, hire a marketing person or a marketing consulting session with people who do this all day every day. I came from a marketing background (hotels and a waterpark), so launching into my own business was a fairly easy step as the same markeing principals carry over.
 
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