Small Business Owners: Go Online-go Offline Or Both
Offline business owners are trying to take their business online
. Online business owners are trying to take their business offline. Maybe everyone should do a little more of both.
Until recently small business owners were primarily thought of as off line businesses. They could be a micro-businesses like a one or two man shop. They might have a handful of employees or even up to 100 or so.
Today's small-business owners can find themselves both working out in the real world and on the World Wide Web. Many businesses are realizing the advantage of doing both.
For example Internet business owners have the benefit of not needing a lot of employees. However to make their business grow faster they are outsourcing day to day tasks. Some of them are even finding real cost savings in countries such as the Philippines or India.
Off line business owners have often relied on a specialist to do their advertising for them. This could include the yellow page rep for advertising in a local yellow page book. It could also include a sales rep for newspaper, radio, television or direct mail.
Many Internet businesses are promoting in local newspapers. Some savvy Internet business owners are actually doing Internet advertising for local offline businesses.
Small business owners are looking to these type of individuals to help them establish an online presence. As off-line advertising such as Yellow Pages continues to dwindle having a strong local Internet presence is really beginning to pay off.
One thing that both off line and online businesses can benefit from his email marketing. Every off-line business should have a website with a sign-up form on it. Internet businesses that are promoting off line find themselves promoting landing pages that directly build their list.
All advertising continues to be expensive. There is a very big advantage to building an email marketing last that can be accessed at any time.
Off-line small business owners can run a sale and let their email list know about it. This can bring customers into a store or help make the phone ring for a seasonal business such as landscaping or air conditioning.
Internet business owners can promote their website directly in a newspaper ad. Unlike a static yellow page ad they can make changes to their website to match the type of ad they just ran in the newspaper. As you can see there are many benefits for small business owners to be both offline and online at the same time.
If you find yourself doing more of one than the other you may want to re-evaluate how you are currently promoting your business. Having more of both off-line and online advertising can mean a huge impact on your bottom line!