Offline Marketing

I have found that online marketing can only get you so far, and you have to develop offline marketing oppotunities as well. Since what I do is custom embroidery(and sell some items on the side) I knew that I needed to find local customers. I found a book called Guerrilla Marketing by
Jay Conrad Levinson, which is a method of marketing on a shoestring. Many of the marketing methods cost nothing but your time. Another thing he speaks about is people do not allow enough time to see if their advertising works. Most small businesses will place an ad, then decide they had no response and stop. What they should be doing is placing those ads multiple times to truely check the effect of the ad.

Here is my list of Guerrilla Marketing methods:

**Craft Shows-even if I don't sell a thing, I get names,addresses and phone numbers of people I talk to about custom work. I contact them just a few days after the show to jog their memories.

**Fliers on local bulletin boards-any where there is a posting board,stick up a flier. Grocery stores,coin laundries, colleges, etc. The name of the game is to "get your name out there".

** Ad listings on craigslist.com- if you do this, do NOT place a link to your online store.It will be flagged almost immediately and removed. Place the ad for your item or service and at the end,
tell them for more information to contact you. Once the do-then you can give the link to your website or store.

**Ad listings in your local newspaper- I place small ads in my small town newspaper(weekly)
sometimes a couple of times a month. Several months ago,the ad manager asked me if I could do
some shirts for his family reunion. Of course. Well that conversation earned me a sale as well as a feature artical about my business. Get to know your newspaper staff.

**Cooperative Marketing- This type of marketing can be several shops doing promo swaps for goodie bags, or a group going tpgether to share the cost of placing ads. Both of these methods have worked for me.

**Do trade shows-even though they are the most expensive of the in person marketing methods, they also get the most foot traffic and people are primed to hear what you have to say.
I figure that all of the money I save by doing cheap or free advertising-that allows me to do 1 big trade show a year. Wether it is a woman's show, toys for big boys, or the annual christmas extravaganza, do one that fits your targeted audience.

There are afew things that I will be trying in the next month or two to see what the responce is.
I will be trying out Little Black Boxes as a contributer in November and possibly December.
My other try out will be the Holiday Hotness Bazaar as a goodie bag contributer. Both of these
options put your promo items in hundreds of hands.
Give Guerrilla Marketing a try,but do it the right way. No fair doing hit and runs by leaving your business cards everywhere so that they are percieved as litter.