Not Your Mother’s Marketing Techniques

Marketing used to be simple. Well, sort of. Before the days of branding, Internet marketing, offsite marketing, social proof, and influencer outreach, marketing was just…marketing. There was maybe a company brochure, a direct (snail mail!) campaign, The Yellow Pages, and cold calling from a purchased email list. Those lists were usually more focused on the number of people reached rather than the quality. The general philosophy is that if you stuff enough mailboxes with your offer, a decent portion of the recipients will eventually take you up on it.

And now we have the Internet, or basically, one giant mailbox.

For many business owners, getting a website means saving a whole lot of time and money by allowing them to broadcast their message to the millions of people out there in internet-land. This completely replaces the need to try and reach prospects through the black hole of direct mail. With one static page, or with a blog, they finally have a way to continuously reach huge masses of people in one shot. No more having to spend tons of hours and thousands of dollars on organizing, mailing, and keeping track of loads of paper inserts and flyers. Plus, thanks to Google Analytics, businesses can actually see who's visiting their website and whether or not those people are reading the content!

I know what you were probably thinking when you first got your website set up. Did your thoughts go a little something like this?

“Now everybody will know what I have to offer!  People are going to be so impressed with my gorgeously designed, professional-looking website. I can't wait until all the visitors start flocking to my homepage, so I can see who's checking my business out!”

Did I come just a little close to getting it right?

Well, if I did…there are a couple of major problems with this way of thinking:

  1. A website or a blog is not a broadcast…it’s basically a virtual flyer
  2. There is a vast sea of other businesses flooding the internet with their websites and blogs. So you’ve got a lot more competition than the monthly credit card statements, coupon books and supermarket circulars that routinely clog up people’s snail mailboxes

Let’s look at point #1

You hire someone to make a beautiful website. You add a blog and you post occasionally about new products or services that you offer. You put a link to your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

And then you wait.

A month goes by, maybe three, maybe six. You’ve been eagerly waiting for some traffic to make it to your website or to get a boost in your product sales. At the very least, you were hoping for an increase in your social media followers. But, nothing. Not one bite.

Does this sound familiar?

If so, then this upcoming section is especially for you.

So…why did the whole “if you build it, they will come,” Field of Dreams thing not work out so well for you? This is where Offsite Marketing comes in.

What is Offsite Marketing?

Offsite marketing basically refers to the marketing you do outside of having a website or blog.

Your website is informational but it doesn’t go out and grab customers by itself and bring them back to view what you’re offering.

Your blog, on the other hand, is a little better at doing that…but not just by having new content added to it occasionally. As a marketing tool, your blog must have carefully written and curated content that stays relevant, interesting, and helpful to your target market.

Other than blogging on your own website, some of the most commonly used offsite marketing activities include:

  • An active social media presence
  • Writing guest posts for other blogs
  • Article marketing
  • Creating videos or podcasts
  • Seeking publicity
  • Creating products

The goal of offsite marketing is to go out and drive traffic to your website in the form of prospects who may not have been able to find your site through organic internet searches. On-page Search Engine Optimization attempts to attract those prospects with targeted keywords and other techniques, but used alone, it can be hit or miss.

Offsite marketing involves a comprehensive, targeted wide-ranging approach to creating a buzz about your website and product offerings. It involves a bit of work and pre-planning, but when executed well, an offsite marketing strategy can make the difference between your prospects getting lost in the sea of internet noise or them viewing you as a go-to influencer in your industry. Your Offsite marketing strategy may include all of the activities listed above or just a couple of them. The number of marketing avenues you pursue doesn’t matter as much as the integrity and passion with which you pursue them.

Let’s look at a few of the most popular Offsite marketing strategies in this next article, Is Offsite SEO Really Necessary or is it Just Sales Talk?

Want to learn how to automate some of the necessary steps in creating an effective Offsite marketing strategy — without sacrificing your company's authentic voice? Reach out to the Localsync Team to get started.