Huge opportunity in making money with offline businesses for IM'ers

Even though most of us in the internet marketing field have advanced in leaps and bounds in generating profits from the Internet this really has not translated much into main stream offline business. As far as I am concerned there has never been as much opportunity for a skilled internet marketer as there is today.


Don’t believe me? If we were to randomly pick 100 offline businesses with a web site and ask the business owners these questions can you imagine the blank look on most of their faces?



1. What is the average dollar value of a visitor to your site?
2. What is the conversion rate of a visitor to your site?
3. Have you set up your sales funnel(s) and follow up marketing?
4. What are your primary traffic sources?
5. Are you split testing your traffic?
6. Do you have a 1 year online marketing calendar and offers setup?
7. Have you reached the point of being able to spend a dollar in marketing on the internet (PPC, Facebook) and make a profit from that spend?
8. Being found for what search terms online make you the most money? Can you prove it?


(What are some of the questions you would add to the list above?)



Think about the huge difference between two businesses if business A can answer those questions and business B doesn’t have a clue. By moving a business from one end of the spectrum to the other it is not unreasonable to suggest you could literally make the difference between them being average to hugely successful.

Even today most business owners still think they just need to get some web site up, that it is pretty much like putting together a business card and that by doing this they have taken care of the internet. Sadly 90% of the pitches they see from our industry support this.

Go to any local directory and see the hundreds of ads trying to sell business owners a web site. The common thread is that they are all competing on price! $100, $200, etc.. Some ads say “I will beat any price.” It has become so bad that weekly I see business owners posting on these sites looking for a free web site in exchange for the web guy being able to build his portfolio! How can I blame them, they have been conditioned to view a web presence as having little or no value and sadly they are correct when it is treated as a glorified business card!

Once the business owner has their business card styled web site up they are bombarded with emails/calls taking pot shots at their online presence and are sold on a service here and there that has nothing to do with addressing the big picture and the questions above. Perhaps a video here, a quick punch at PPC, maybe slap together a custom Facebook page or get listed on some directory and since all of it is not working as part of a bigger plan they notice no difference in sales and decide it’s all a waste of money.

By the time we get to them they FEEL they know from experience that internet marketing just does not work. Trying to sell these guys is a real uphill battle to say the least and unless they are begging for help I don’t even go there.

How can this help some of you? If you start to have more meaningful dialogue and start selling a plan, profits and sales conversions over a web site or Facebook page you will make more money and attract clients that are in a completely different league.

At the very least if the business owner is not ready to do more than buy a piece of the puzzle you will likely still get the work because you have differentiated yourself. Even if you are not an expert in many of these areas just by starting to think about it and talk about it you will find clients willing to work with you towards learning some of these lessons and putting some of these things in place.