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Offline Promotion - Lesson 8Using offline advertising in conjunction with online marketing techniques can prove to be quite rewarding for your e-business. The aim of offline advertising is to create awareness of your e-business and direct people to your website. Offline advertising can be especially useful if your e-business is unique or you are selling a unique product or service.Press ReleasesPress releases can either be electronic (email press releases) or traditional. Electronic press releases don't cost you anything and are easy to do.There are certain services available on the Internet that will mail your press release to thousands of media sources including TV, radio, newsgroups, magazines, newsletters etc.). Some of these services will email your press release to hundreds of magazines and newspapers (including major publications) at the push of a button. All you need to do is fill out what you want sent and click the "submit" button. It is important to make an impact on the editors when sending out press releases. Make sure that you have a well-planned and powerful press release that will get their attention before you use this service. There are some services that will handle your press releases for a small fee. Your approach to distributing a press release should be very targeted. It is important that you don't send press releases randomly to any email address or fax number that you find. If you send a press release to a large number of editors randomly, you will get a much smaller return than a targeted press release to a small number of editors who have direct interest in your industry, product or service. If you want your press release to be noticed, you will need to make it stand out from the rest by tailoring it to specific magazines and newspapers. Each publication has its own editorial point of view and requirements when it comes to choosing what to publish. It is therefore important for you to choose which publications you want to issue a press release to, study them, and then determine what would appeal to the editor the most. Keep in touch with the editor and build a relationship so that you can present them with articles in the future. One feature article has a much greater advertising power for your product or service than an advertisement. Remember that the primary function of a press release is not to publicize your business or sell your product. It is to provide news, entertainment, and relevant information to the audience. Therefore you may even want to write an article instead of doing a press release. You could submit your article to ezines or newsletters. Relationship BuildingOnline relationship building techniques can be similar to offline relationship building. Relationship building and "infectious enthusiasm" are effective whether they occur online or offline. When you build online relationships, you may be able to carry them over to the offline world. Likewise, you can communicate with people online that you have developed a relationship with offline. The reason relationship building is important is that it takes trust to induce someone to buy or join. It takes a relationship of some sort to build trust. These principles are true in the offline and online worlds. Relationships begin when your audience first sees your advertisement. They then continue formulate judgments and decisions based on any interactions that they have with you, your website and information on your e-business. An advertisement in itself does not sell. Advertisements start relationships and trusted relationships sell. |