Online Marketing….Offline Marketing….Which Way Am I Going?

It can all be so confusing. Am I an online marketer or an offline marketer? Does it really matter what I call myself?

Probably not the most profound questions, but worthy of a quick look.

I remember reading a series of books that portrayed an ancient Roman Merchant in the prosperous days of Rome and the stories were build around the secrets of being a merchant, basically buying and selling of goods. The Roman Merchant told stories which revealed his secrets of buying and selling to a new found friend, he never shared them before and he was getting up in age and wanted to pass his legacy down. After all he was the richest man in Babylon.

The sales and marketing lessons were all surprisingly applicable to any of us today! All of us try to satisfy basic human needs which left uncontrolled all end up in greed anyway. But the fact remains, someone has to display, market and sell everyday goods, making them appear as the best to the would be buyer.

That’s what we do….don’t we. Our internet stores are our display racks. The shelf’s and cases and isles are our web pages. The products are really just electrons, but we dress them up with virtual covers with pretty colors. The purchaser clicks a button to order, we get the cash or I should say a bank gets the cash and we then delivery the goods, could be an electronic book, maybe we have to send a real book!

There’s been big changes since the days of the Romans, changes in how people and products get distributed. In Rome’s day, people walked..they might have a donkey, usually horses were just for fighting and carts were pulled by asses to deliver the goods.

Next came boats, people and products were moved by boats, we were able to touch the 4 corners of the earth for the finest of anything.

Next came cars, trucks and planes. We go anywhere for anything in our world today. We are only limited by our pocket book.

Then came Computers.

Somewhere along the line came this geeky guy by the name of Bill Gates. He worked to develop systems that could be used in computers to process information, these systems were to become available to everyone.

The world wide web was about to start. First used for educational and military means the structure was laid and computer users dreamt of common usuage and being able to communicate with other computers around the world or even in the next room.

It’s been said that the internet was started around 26 years ago.

A major paradigm shift in the way we do business was about to take place. More and more computers were hooked up to his new internet thing, but communicating between computers and finding information proved next to impossible and was truly for geeks!

Then…..about 10 years ago Google appears on the map.

Google was like asphalt was to the automobile. Suddenly we could find what we were looking for and each year it gets faster and more accurate.

Today we use our computers and the internet to communicate in so many different ways it is astounding. It would certainly look like magic to the richest man in Babylon. We can buy things from the other side of the world and have it delivered to our inbox in seconds!

We have just entered the breaking of traditional business as we knew it 20 years ago. Yellow pages are no longer needed. Newspaper classified ads can be replaced with free online classified ads. Your customers can be gathered, grouped and tracked. As your customer base is grouped together, you can communicate with your group of “buying” customers on a daily, weekly or monthly basis…..and on a personal level no less. The big change is the fact that you can now contact your customers regardless of where they are or time of day.

Yes the internet has changed the way we do business. Google Adwords allows you to test local marketing conditions or worldwide marketing conditions. You can test every component of your ad or product. You actually get to advertise and test your ads at the same time. This has never been done before.

So….my point is, marketing and selling is as old as the sun. The way we’ve done it over the years has changed but the concept has remained the same…Customer buys X and Merchant delivers X. High speed internet has only enhanced the buying and selling process and with the new modality the customer can find exactly what he wants and he can buy it from just about anybody around the world. The merchant, on the other hand, can determine the perfect combination of words, images and/or presentation that’s needed to sell the product.

Also, the merchant, as he employs the new technology to his business, will sell more and profit more, maybe he will stay local and maybe he’ll go world wide. These new options have opened the entire buying and selling process wide open.

Because of the internet we will lose some things simply because the market is dictated by value. Yellow pages will be completely online. Classified advertising is almost all online now. I recently heard one person talking about the demise of newspapers and how much of their fall was due to revenue….particularly classified ads. Television will merge with the internet and its outcome is yet to be seen.

The internet is all about giving people what they want. It’s all about servicing and providing the best solution to someone’s problem. That’s why newspapers are dying on the vine. Most are far left in their views or worse they simply project their leaning in all they write….nobody wants to read that. So…where to people go…..they go online!

The local merchant or offline business can use the tools of the internet to focus in tightly on their market. They can use email to develop a relationship with their buyers. A restaurant can set up a blog for their website and post the meal of the day and even a review of that meal….of course their entire menu will be online. That same restaurant can use Google Adwords to drive traffic for special meals or holidays for literally pennies per visitor. The restaurants webmaster can optimize the pages of their website so that all their traffic is organic search traffic….which is free! If that restaurant owner is smart and hires a qualified offline marketer, or internet marketer gone offline consultant, the restaurant will literally be able to control and guide the traffic that comes to their website. That traffic represents customers, so in essence, by using the internet the restaurant is now in control of their cash paying customers and thus their cash flow.

Offline Marketing and Online Marketing are slower merging together as time passes and one will serve the other in the end. But for now there are 4 basic dimensions of online and offline marketing as mentioned by the Rhodes Brothers.

1. You can use online tools to sell online
2. You can use online tools to sell offline
3. You can use offline tools to sell offline
4. You can use off-line tools to sell online

Keep those divisions in mind as you work and both the offline marketer and the online marketer will prosper!

If you want to further study Offline Marketing I suggest you check out Offline Cash Formula by the Rhodes Brothers. It will help the creative juices start flowing and you’ll really get a handle on brick and mortar stores, marketing and the internet.

[tags]offline consulting, offline marketing, offline consultant, offline gold, offline gold on steroids,offline marketer[/tags]

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