Offline Marketing - The Next Wave In How To Monetize It?

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Here is some food for thought....

As we all know one of the biggest things in IM as of late has been offline marketing. It seems like every other week a guru (or wannabe) has a product that we should be buying that will teach us all how to be consultants to offline businesses.

But, a few interesting things to note:

Do you really want to manage a PPC account for Bob's cleaners? Or do SEO work for said cleaner (and live through his wrath if Google changes their mind one day and his site drops in the rankings). Not to mention the problem with just trying to sell services to local business - most of them do not really understand how to market on the net.

But, what if there were a product that had a direct impact on Bob the cleaners bottom line that he would understand? What if you could offer him a way to interact with his customer on a daily basis? What if we could give him a way to offer his customers incentives to do business with him instantly? And, no I am not talking about email marketing (who reads email anymore anyway).

What I am talking about is one to many text messaging. One to many text messaging is a way for a business to have their customers text a phrase or word to a specific number and then said customer gets something in return - usually a free this or that, or an instant discount.

These types of services have been around for a while. But, nobody has really applied this technology or sales approach to local business marketing.

Here is an example of what I am talking about, let's use Bob's Cleaners as our example:

Bob wants to increase his business. He does the usual local print advertising, even does some valpak door hanger advertising, he may even advertise online a bit (although we all know he is probably not good at it and his website probably sucks).

One of the emerging ways he should connect with his customers is via text messaging. Why, because over 90% of all text messages are read within one hour (not my stat, but it is true).

Here is how he could do it - he could put up a sign in his store (or use this in his advertising as well) that said:

To Get an Instant 10% Off Your Next Cleaning Order:
Text "Discount" to 90210

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Okay, so what is he doing? First and foremost he is building a list! By having them text to that number he is capturing phone numbers of customers and prospects that he can communicate with instantly on a daily basis to drive traffic to his store. And, he is using a device (text messaging) that almost guarantees that his message gets read.

These are just a few thoughts. I am sure that there are others out there. Anybody who wants to sell more to their customers would be interested in this....don't you think?

Why am I posting this in the forum? Because I have seen it work and it is pretty cool.
#marketing #monetize #offline #wave

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