Your original business plan may have involved the money needed for the start up, searching and renting a good location, compiling your store fixtures, lining up an accountant, etc. Oh yes, and of course, you needed money to pay for an advertising blitz and having the mayor over for a ribbon cutting.

But most business people over look the power of planning out the complete promotion strategy. Who are your customers, where are they located, what kind of promotional message can you relay to them that would make them come inside your brick and mortar business? These and several other factors are things you should think about. Check out the video below.

1. put your blog link in all your email signatures
2. print your blog link in your company letterheads
3. record your voice mail greetings with your blog link at the end
4. get your blog link in a QR code and display your QR code in your store window
5. when talking on the phone with your friends and customers always mention your blog link
6. pass out your business cards with your blog link printed on it
7. start a meetup.com group and present your blog link and supporting material on the greeting table
8. take out a short text print ad in your local coffee newspaper and insert your blog link

These are just a few ideas of promoting your blog link. Believe it or not, if you do just a part of this list, you will notice a spike in your blog traffic.

The most power social media sites are, of course, Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you continue with promoting your blog link on these sites too.

The key to success in offline promotion of your blog is to keep promoting to these places on a consistent basis.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “think outside the box.” Well in this case, press releases are a great way to break through all the advertising “noise” out there. While the majority of small businesses are practicing advertising in the conventional way, you must start advertising in places where less of advertising is being made. The large corporations have a separate department strictly for the purpose of writing and submitting press releases.

Press releases can be regarded as another online way of promoting your business. Not long ago, it used to be that you would have to get various media outlets a phone call and bug them to receive your press release submission and then either fax that outlet or send them “snail mail” of the document. Now days, you can go online to a site like www.prweb.com and submit your press release directly. From there, these press release sites will submit via internet, to literally hundreds of national and worldwide news agencies. From that point, you will see your website or blog visitor count spike up dramatically for up to several weeks after the submission is made.

This is a great way to generate more popularity on the web for your business as well as opening up the door for more business opportunities that can come from anywhere in the world because the world has seen your news story.

Make press releases on a monthly basis and you will see your business grow!

There is one particular way to effectively market your blog for 2011 that will definitely make the difference between success and failure. Based on Google’s “caffieine” algorithm or “special formula” for a site to get high rankings, emphasis will be put into how fast your website loads online. What this means is that your site must load quickly or else your lose high rankings because the “internet experience” will be dampened by not being able to quickly see what you are specifically searching for. Do you remember the days when all of us had “dial up” internet service and we had to wait “forever” for a favorite video or large document to open on your screen?

There is a great tool at iwebtool that will test your website for how fast it loads. Click here to get to this valuable tool. This is only to be used as a guide so you know whether to be concerned or not with your website speed.

If you want some ideas and tips to speed up your website or blog, click here for more information. Believe it or not you have many things you can do to speed up your site. If you own other sites, make sure you plan on testing and tweaking all your sites for load speed. It could mean the difference between success or failure of your site!

What he touches on is “attention” from your target market. In tough economic times, your main marketing goal should be to find ways of getting attention out there…..this generates free advertising. It’s priceless.

There is a great opportunity in going out to see your potential customers. It gives you a reason to strike up a conversation with your target market. When you start doing this, you will find that you won’t get “kicked out” of their establishment, rather, the business owner will ask questions or even make small talk with you.

What you must do is have a reason for dropping in. It could be just to introduce your business and what you do, show a product, ask how their business is, or take a poll of how they can possibly use your product or service. Going out and personally visiting a business, surprisingly, is a pleasant way to start the sales process with a prospect. Remember the old sales rule, it takes 7 contacts to a prospect to get to the sale. Well, visiting a business starts you with the first contact and therefore getting you closer to the sale.

If you do drop in, make sure you leave them either a business card and/or flyer with product information, your place of business, your name, contact info, and your website/blog address.

Believe it or not this is one of the best “guerlla” techniques you can do and it doesn’t cost you a lot of money to do. You can print out 100 flyers at your local Kinkos for $50. All other expenses is the gasoline for your car to drive around town to pass them out.

The great thing about passing out flyers is that you actually make contact with your target market. It’s better than cold calling because you get to peak your prospect’s interest and possibly score a sale right on the spot!

Remember that passing out flyers is just not going in to a place of business, hand the receptionist a flyer and rush out of that business. It is about asking some questions and identifying the product you have for sale while handing out the flyer. This builds raport with your prospect.  It may not sound glamourous but it is effective.

If you use this method in combination with other marketing channels, you can’t help but make sales for your business. Also remember to have your blog website address prominently displayed on your flyer to drive visitor traffic to it.

Word of Mouth
Passing Out Flyers
Visiting Businesses
Email Blast
Hosting Open House/Offering Free Seminars

These are the most effective way of promoting your blog outside of the internet. Remember that just promoting your site from search engine optimization or other means of online promotion is only a small part of properly promoting your blog. You must implement a multi channel method of promoting your blog.

In the coming blog posts we are going to go over in detail each of the offline methods of promoting your blog

I have a great video that goes over 6 key tips to help drive visitor traffic to your blog.

Blogs started off with just being a “diary system” for personal use and to communicate with friends and family. Back in 2006, it started to evolve as a business tool, spreading the word of businesses and to better communcate with their customers. Now, mainstream media outlets have managed blogs on behalf of their business customers to make sure their customers and new online audiences are well served.

The main thing is to maintain blogs on a daily basis to keep customers and search engines happy. Everyday is a new slate where a blog has to attract attention of the search engines….that in turn makes sure the customers being served gets the latest news on the business of interest.

Blogs are going to be the mainstay of websites because of the ease of use, unlimited flexibility, the built in search engine attraction functions, and the ability to interact with its audience.

Blogs are sure to survive through the years ahead. But a new trend is happening on the horizon. It is cell phone “app” technology. In the near future, cell phones will be the focal point for information for the consumer on the go. Statistics show that there are now more cell phones with internet connectivity than desktop and laptop computers. This means that, in order to get attention of the mobile customer, a business not only needs to keep up their blog, but also their connection of the blog to the cell phone population.

In our next post, we will go over this phenomenon and how to capitilize on it.

It can be hard and easy at the same time. First, you need to know your customer completely. Where do they “hang out” on the internet. Get yourself in their “space” where they are and make your presence known.

An example, let’s say you are a home repair business. Go to other home product or service related websites. If you can make helpful comments, go there and make them. Make sure you leave your real name (of your person) and a backlink to your business blog. Now, there is an interesting strategy that goes along with this. You seek local customers who live in your physical area so they can go to your business to actually buy your product or service. First thing is to go to the local directories.

Here are a few local directory sites that you can list your blog for free.

www.usa-local-search.com
www.citysearch.com
http://www.areaconnect.com/
http://www.cityslick.net/
http://www.localpages.com/
http://www.thinklocal.com/

Also, give out a flyer or printed card with your blog URL and give them incentive to spread the word to their friends and associates in return for a discount or gift.

The object here is to promote consistently to every avenue possible and within reach that is cost effective. You will find that eventuall, your business blog will become popular.

It seems that we are being bombarded with more “noise” in our lives whether it be in the form of advertisements or so many other forms of mass communication that we come in contact with. Somewhere it is written in the advertising trade publications that each day, we are exposed to over 50,000 references of advertisements through sight, sound or smell? How can that be? Well, it could be true, given that if that number of advertisements are being thrown at us, that we are not going to remember any of it. Actually it proves out that, if we are exposed to that many ad messages daily, it is no surprise we do not retain the messages given.

This brings me back to the social media like Twitter and Facebook that has taken over many peoples lives. For the people who have all the time in the world, more power to them for keeping up with all the followers and followed. For us business people or serious bloggers, how does this media serve us without being part of the problem or ineffectiveness of true “networking?”

In the end, we have to find ways to maximize our time, for time is very valuable for all business people, whether online or offline. We need to cut out “time wasting” activity and reel in what kind of “time” makes us money.

For online marketers and offline, brick and mortar businesses to prosper into the future, we all need to focus on where we place our priorities with our time. I am afraid that social media is a “fad” until it can be made useful and more complementary to our “money making” time.

Give me your thoughts here….

First, offline promotion is huge. As mentioned before, make it mandatory to have your blog web address in your “signature” when closing any letters, whether “snail mail” or email. Pass out flyers, preferably 5 1/2″ by 8 1/2″ with a short headline and URL address to your blog.

Second, reach out to join forces with other businesses that complement yours and propose to share the customer list. Explain that both of you will benefit from presenting your products or services to each list. Don’t be afraid if either your list or your “joint venture” partner has a smaller list. Main objective here is to get your message out to more people and more businesses.

Third, get hold of “free” lists of businesses. Comb the internet for associations or other business related organization web sites and see it they have a membership list that is accessible to the public.

Even the “business white/yellow pages” would be a good “free” leads list to solicit sharing email lists. You will be amazed that, with a little coaxing, you will have great success with getting word out on your particular business by tapping into their lists.

In my next post, I will go over, step by step how you can approach a new business with this “mutual benefit” process.

Here is a practical list for marketing your blog offline:

1) Send postcards out to your prospect, vendor, customer lists with a simple reminder or announcement of your blog.
2) Attend as many networking events that you can and pass out either a business card or a card advertisement that has a simple design that points people to your blog URL.
3) When talking to each and everyone on the phone, whether personal or business mention your blog and how they can visit it.
4) This is actually an online technique, but make a “signature” file and add to all your email closings. A signature can be a little “motto” of your business along with your return physical address and URL to your blog.
5) Register for trade shows and make a banner with your URL address for your blog in as large as letters as you can to draw attention.
6) Get advertising specialties made with your blog URL address on it, such as pens, mouse pads, post it notes, etc.

In closing, make sure you promote actively each and everyday. You will see, that in time, there will be “critical mass” of when you promoted your blog both online and offline that will snowball into tons of new visitors to your blog everyday.