Offline Business Builders Series: "Your Offline Business Is NOT Exempt From Business Principles!"
Hey Offliners,
I don't want to get on a soapbox, but somebody needs to stand up and tell the truth.
I get all types of emails, pm's and responses to some of my posts as well as see some fairly naive or downright misleading information being spread around about truly building a "real" offline marketing business.
Here's the main issue as I see it...
Because it's so easy to get into doing offline marketing, some offliners begin to think they can build a consistently successful offline business while picking and choosing which basic business principles they do or do not follow.
It simply doesn't work that way.
Let me give you an example...
Let's say you buy a wso or even figure out on your own how to get five to ten qualified leads a month from LinkedIn for your video marketing service.
After getting the leads signed up for your $250 per month package, you begin cranking out video's each month that are getting decent views.
However, after two month's a couple of the business owner's tell you that they love the video's, but they're not really getting enough real leads from those videos.
So, you let them know that you're going to throw in a couple of additional videos for the next 3 months to see if you generate more leads.
(On a side note, the thing that most LinkedIn WSO sellers will not tell you is that you have less room for error with business owners who are internet savvy like the LinkedIn crowd.)
After a couple of months of throwing in some extra video's, you check in with the business owner's and they let you know that it's not really working and they think they're going to try something different for marketing, but they'll be in touch with you.
What just happened?
Well, the thing that most offliners forget is that there are several underlying business principles that you must pay respect to regardless if you're selling Google Places listing, Website design or email marketing services.
Here are a few of the basic but very important business principles:
- Conduct market research for a proper message to market match. This takes real work to get right. This can be done through survey's, calling past customers, researching the competition etc.
The marketing message in the video's must be a match to what your offline client's target market cares about and wants to take action to solve, fix or gain access to.
- Crafting compelling sales messages. Otherwise known as copywriting. Writing persuasive copy takes ongoing practice, study and time on top of all the fun offline marketing stuff we all love to do. No matter if it's a video, email, salesletter or flyer...you must be able to present a persuasive message.
You can have a perfect message to market, but if you don't present it into a compelling and persuasive way, then no one will buy it. Great products die right on the shelf all the time because of crappy copy and sub-par products go on to become blockbusters because of great copy.
- Careful tracking of any and all results your marketing efforts generate for each client. It doesn't matter if you can crank out dozens of video's a day. 99% of offline clients want dozens of leads that turn into customers. Most times they don't care if they only came from one video, letter, flyer, email etc.
When you don't track actual results, you feel as if you're job is done because you created a video, google placing listing, facebook page etc. However, business owners measure success in dollar signs. So, that's what you should be tracking too.
When you start to consider just those basic things above, offline marketing starts to lose some of it's sexiness...doesn't it?
But, that's just some of what it takes to create magic for each and every offline client you work with.
I learned this the hard way, but you don't have to because I'm telling your right now.
Offline marketing is not exempt from the best practices that have been proven to work in thousands of successful businesses.
Don't try to fight it...instead use these business principles to launch your offline business into another level of income, client loyalty and ultimately get more client referrals.
Hope this helps,
Chris
I don't want to get on a soapbox, but somebody needs to stand up and tell the truth.
I get all types of emails, pm's and responses to some of my posts as well as see some fairly naive or downright misleading information being spread around about truly building a "real" offline marketing business.
Here's the main issue as I see it...
Because it's so easy to get into doing offline marketing, some offliners begin to think they can build a consistently successful offline business while picking and choosing which basic business principles they do or do not follow.
It simply doesn't work that way.
Let me give you an example...
Let's say you buy a wso or even figure out on your own how to get five to ten qualified leads a month from LinkedIn for your video marketing service.
After getting the leads signed up for your $250 per month package, you begin cranking out video's each month that are getting decent views.
However, after two month's a couple of the business owner's tell you that they love the video's, but they're not really getting enough real leads from those videos.
So, you let them know that you're going to throw in a couple of additional videos for the next 3 months to see if you generate more leads.
(On a side note, the thing that most LinkedIn WSO sellers will not tell you is that you have less room for error with business owners who are internet savvy like the LinkedIn crowd.)
After a couple of months of throwing in some extra video's, you check in with the business owner's and they let you know that it's not really working and they think they're going to try something different for marketing, but they'll be in touch with you.
What just happened?
Well, the thing that most offliners forget is that there are several underlying business principles that you must pay respect to regardless if you're selling Google Places listing, Website design or email marketing services.
Here are a few of the basic but very important business principles:
- Conduct market research for a proper message to market match. This takes real work to get right. This can be done through survey's, calling past customers, researching the competition etc.
The marketing message in the video's must be a match to what your offline client's target market cares about and wants to take action to solve, fix or gain access to.
- Crafting compelling sales messages. Otherwise known as copywriting. Writing persuasive copy takes ongoing practice, study and time on top of all the fun offline marketing stuff we all love to do. No matter if it's a video, email, salesletter or flyer...you must be able to present a persuasive message.
You can have a perfect message to market, but if you don't present it into a compelling and persuasive way, then no one will buy it. Great products die right on the shelf all the time because of crappy copy and sub-par products go on to become blockbusters because of great copy.
- Careful tracking of any and all results your marketing efforts generate for each client. It doesn't matter if you can crank out dozens of video's a day. 99% of offline clients want dozens of leads that turn into customers. Most times they don't care if they only came from one video, letter, flyer, email etc.
When you don't track actual results, you feel as if you're job is done because you created a video, google placing listing, facebook page etc. However, business owners measure success in dollar signs. So, that's what you should be tracking too.
When you start to consider just those basic things above, offline marketing starts to lose some of it's sexiness...doesn't it?
But, that's just some of what it takes to create magic for each and every offline client you work with.
I learned this the hard way, but you don't have to because I'm telling your right now.
Offline marketing is not exempt from the best practices that have been proven to work in thousands of successful businesses.
Don't try to fight it...instead use these business principles to launch your offline business into another level of income, client loyalty and ultimately get more client referrals.
Hope this helps,
Chris
Student of all things Offline.
Free SMS Training | Offline Business Report (No Opt-in) | Listen To Practical Small Business Marketing Strategies