offline marketing

Recently, a new professional services client told me that “no one looks for financial advisors online.” The following email was my reply to his comment.

Just a quick note in reference to Earle’s assertion that “no one looks for a financial advisor online.”

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

• 81% look for information about a product or service before buying it.
• 73% get travel info online.
• 51% take a virtual tour of a location online.

And according to BIGResearch:

That may seem like a strange headline for a blog that’s supposed to be about small business marketing, search engine optimization, online marketing and copywriting. Believe it or not, it has everything to do with all of these things.

This was the headline for a marketing postcard we received from Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop. It had a picture of a housewife circa maybe 1958, with a glass of champagne. We liked it so much we put it on the refrigerator.

The sub-heading at the bottom of the postcard read:

Yesterday, I was a guest on WCCO Radio and I was stressing that almost any business could be adapted to the Internet. The example I gave was a residential window washing business.

You might wonder how a window washing business could be adapted to the web. Here’s how he did it.

The guy had a residential window washing business. He contacted a web designer and had a web site designed where people could sign up for window washing service in his city. Next they designed a calendar with week days between Monday and Friday and times  between 9am and 5pm where people could sign up for window washing service.

As you may know, I’m a big fan of Jay Abraham. So when I’m looking for a new marketing idea, I often turn to his “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got” book.

Today, I was reading up on referrals. If you really are focused on customer or client satisfaction, this is a great way to leverage that relationship.

If you’re that kind of business person, sometimes it’s difficult to see the Return On Investment (ROI) from all that great service. Other than the customer or client coming back to you for more business. A formal referral system leverages or multiplies the essence of all that extra work you put into every customer of client.

A couple years ago, a friend and I were reminiscing over a few beers about all the rock bands we saw in our misspent youth. My friend grew up in Los Angeles and there was a bar nearby that Eric Clapton and Cream would show up at every year. And my friend would make a pilgrimage to the bar to catch his favorite band.

The only problem was, every year, he would watch all the bands leading up to Cream, and when the last band was cleared off and Cream was set up, three total strangers would come out on stage and start playing. One year, Clapton had on bright colored paisley and curly hair, then next year he had straight hair and sunglasses on.

I have friends who own an online dining guide. They’re always bragging that they’re the 800 pound gorilla in their city. The numbers speak for themselves. They get 300,000 unique visitors a month. In fact, if you Google a restaurant in our city, their listing in the dining guide will pop before the restaurant’s website. And yet, my friends are only making about 60 grand a year from it.

Now you might say that’s not chump change for an online business. But at least half of that comes from his search engine optimization, web design and hosting business. So that leaves us with about 30 grand for the actual dining guide.