Selling Locally? When Should You Advertise Off Line?

For many clients online advertising is done in addition to direct mail, print advertising, flyers, and Yellow Page advertising. For some online advertising is the only type of advertising that is done. When should you consider advertising offline once you have an online presence?

Here are my tips:

1. If you have a store location, it would strongly benefit you to advertise in the local and regional yellow pages as well as online. Some customers may not be able to find you quickly with a Google.com search and may pick up the phone book, especially when it comes to local services like a plumber, attorney, or even a dog walker.

2. If you are advertising on Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Bing and have great conversions now’s the time to expand your offline presence to really work to penetrate your market if you have a local business. Some of our clients have expanded into bus advertising, billboards, radio, and even local flyers. In this case this type of advertising makes perfect sense. This approach does not make sense if you are located in California and selling nationally. The sheer expense of bus advertising in all the major markets is really left for huge enterprises and not right for small to medium sized entrepreneurs.

3. Have you considered flyers? If you live in a densely populated area such as New York or Washington DC where you have condos, co-ops, and apartments and many non-driving customers flyers placed on bulletin boards in lobbies, meeting places, bistros, and local restaurants can really work to drive traffic to your website and potentially bring you more business. This approach does not work for suburbia or areas where there really are no common meeting places that are heavily trafficked.

I think the real takeaway from this article is that online advertising is important to nearly every business in today’s world, but is not the only place you should advertise. Your marketing plan should contain both offline and online efforts. For businesses who really have not done much advertising at all, online is an excellent place to start.

If you need help with online advertising using AdWords, Yahoo or Bing give me a call at 301-705-7303 or visit my website at www.McCordWeb.com.