In February 2006, John Ritskowitz hosted a teleseminar with Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Yanik Silver, and JP Maroney. Entitled “Million Dollar Roundtable,” it was a chance for these marketing pros to share some of their best secrets for marketing offline, which is something more online Marketers should be doing. Ideally we should all be marketing both offline and online. Well these folks delivered the goods, and while the call lasted about 2 hours, it still wasn’t enough time to get to everything (it never is, right?). So John compiled some of the ideas they talked about on the call, plus lots more ideas to cover the offline marketing spectrum. Some of these ideas are more traditional, such as yellow pages advertising and classified ads. Of course that doesn’t mean they should be neglected. Other ideas are traditional, but not used as much, or I should say not always used as effectively as they could. Direct response marketing and publicity are two that come to mind. And then there are really creative ideas that are often overlooked, such as valuable joint ventures and strategic alliances. Some of these ideas have the potential to really deliver a lot of leads and sales with minimal traditional “work.”
Don’t think of these methods as too simple or mundane. They are very effective when done right and combined with other techniques in this report. 1) Classified Ads – This is something everyone should be testing in some form or another. It’s great for lead generations. You should still have a strong benefitdriven headline and a clear call to action. Free reports work very well with classifieds. My local paper, the Hartford Courant even has an ongoing deal of 3 lines for 3 days – for free! Even adding more lines only ends up costing a few bucks. With a price like that, there’s no reason anyone with a website should not be testing ways to draw traffic to the site with classifieds. 2) Direct Mail – Nothing beats direct response when it comes to results-driven proven advertising. And messages sent directly to your highly targeted market via direct mail can deliver a terrific return on investment (ROI) when tested properly. There’s a wealth of information on direct marketing by Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and many more experts.
