Continuing on from yesterdays post, here are even more offline techniques that you can use to generate leads for your business that will ultimately lead to more customers and more sales.
Flyers – We have all seen flyers nailed to telegraph poles or stuffed into your front screen door handle or had someone put them in our hands as we walked past them in the mall, right? Flyers have been used to promote businesses forever. They are a cheap means of delivering a message to hundreds and thousands of people. you typically only need a couple of customers or sign-ups into your business to recoup the material costs. I’ve known business owners who would hire kids to cycle or run to every house on a street leaving a flyer in the door handle.
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Postcards – I’ve known marketers mail post cards to entire zip codes to try and generate prospects for their business, and others who will buy lead lists and send out postcards to each one advertising their business. Results from exercises like this vary wildly based on whats on offer, how it’s worded, the demographics of the area being mailed to and so on.
Sending postcards out to confirmed prospects can definitely increase the likelihood of turning them into a customer though, and done right to an existing customer you can definitely entice them to buy again.
Newspaper Ads – check the classifieds in your local newspaper and you will see tons of ads related to home businesses – either services on offer, services wanted, business opportunities, and more. You can take this one step further and look for industry specific newspapers to post your classified ad.
Relevant Magazine ads – just like with newspapers it helps to target the magazine to make it as specific to your business as possible. You can choose magazines based on location, demographics (age, sex), and interests.
Dropcards – These are business card sized adverts that you can hand out or leave in certain places for others to find. Create curiosity with what you put on the card and you can get a good response rate, especially if you are leaving them in places where your ideal customer would be. I had terrible results leaving these in local laundromats trying to get people to call about my business opportunity, but had good success leaving them in college bars when i was looking for part time writers, and people to do some of the leg work in my business.
TV Commercials – Local TV stations can be a great way to get your message out to massive amounts of consumers, but you typically have very little control over who will be watching at the time. You get a message out, but it’s going to mostly an untargeted audience. this isn’t typically a good avenue to follow when you are first getting started, but it’s worth considering as you look for ways to scale up your efforts once you are established.
Radio Adverts – Much like a TV broadcast, or newspaper print ad you are hitting a general audience and hoping to catch a few that are interested in what you have to offer. In years gone by there were only traditional radio networks to broadcast your adverts on, but in recent years there have been so many online radio stations cropping up, including many niche specific channels to help you better target the right audience. There is a cost to doing this along with the associated risk of an untargeted audience. Radio ads are great for many traditional-type home businesses where you offer a service in person, but are less useful for online businesses such as for information products and the make money online niche.
Replying to unsolicited letters with your promo flyer – This one is a tip i picked up at a No Excuses conference a couple of years back, which i think really only works in some kind of make money niche. It’s not a mass audience technique, and goes something like this. Whenever you receive one of those pre-approved credit card applications, or other form of solicitation where they include a prepaid return envelope you simply take one of your flyers and mail it back to the company. How much do you think the people opening those return letters get paid? Do you think they might be interested in learning how they can supplement, or even replace, that income with your help and by joining your team? You won’t get a ton of prospects this way, but you might pick up some here and there, and it didn’t cost you a penny.
Sponsorships – Every city and town has events where they need sponsors – Church events, charity events, school events even. Sponsoring the event and getting your company brand on the hand-out material and the posters or banners can be a great way to expose your brand to the local community. You can also turn this into a face-to-face technique by actually being at the event to further brand yourself and hand out your business card or flyers, network with other business owners and people attending the event.
Anytime you are leveraging mass media to get your message across you are dealing with a mostly untargeted, and often totally uninterested, audience in the hope that a small percentage will show an interest in your message and follow up with whatever call-to-action you left them with at the end of your message.
Also, be aware that each technique will have differing results based on the kind of home business you operate and how you present what you offer to them. The more able you are to communicate with your ideal customer the more likely you are to reach the small portion of the mass audience that will be interested in what you have to offer. If you try to be general in your promotions you probably won’t reach those people who are primed to become customers further down the sales funnel.
In almost every offline remote technique there is a monetary cost involved and a risk of just not hitting your target audience. this needs to be factored into your marketing budget and efforts.
Personally, after i started marketing my business on the Internet i all but stopped my offline promotional efforts. Why? In most cases using the Internet offers the following benefits:
- Mass advertising can be done for almost no cost, and in many cases for free.
- You can get very specific in who you want to communicate and target very specific groups of people (your ideal prospects) very simply.
- Capturing prospects online allows you to communicate with them by email automatically to allow you to build a relationship with your prospect without ever having to actually call or talk to them in person. Of course, adding that extra personal touch can make the difference between someone only being a prospect, and them moving to become a customer – especially if what you are offering is at a higher price point.
Part 4 in this series will discuss online techniques to attract leads into your business – click the link below.
Part 1: How to Take Complete Strangers and Convert Them Into Life-time Customers
Part 2: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Face To Face Marketing Offline
Part 3: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Remote Marketing Offline
Part 4: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Online Techniques
Part 5: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Online Techniques – Continued