Guerrilla Marketing

by Charles Rubin

Despite the undeniable allure of cyberspace, the fact remains that most people spend most of their time off-line. So no matter how much you're doing to promote your business online, your online marketing attack won't be complete without some support from your off-line marketing weapons.

Let's look at some off-line weapons you can use to support your online attack.

Your physical store. Your store gives you lots of opportunities for promoting your online presence. Window signs that announce, "See us on the Internet!" will bring in customers and alert them to your online presence at the same time. You can also use in-store signs to announce specific advantages of visiting your online store. For example, signs could announce that you offer a discount for online orders, or that customers can easily search through an online catalog that contains far more items than your store can hold.

Your stationery. Your letterhead, invoices, business cards, packing lists, cash register tape and other print media should carry your e-mail and storefront addresses. If you take online orders or offer catalog browsing online, your stationery could also include a line that says, "Open 24 hours a Day online," so you customers will have a reason to use those addresses.

Print advertising. More and more companies are including e-mail and storefront addresses in print ads. When you include these, make sure they're prominently displayed, not hidden in the fine print at the end of the ad. For example, Oracle Corporation currently ran an ad that spells out its URL across babies' bare bottoms. In this case, the URL has become a key feature of the ad.

Publicity. If your business is the first in its category or in your geographical area to go online, you should be able to generate an article in the local newspaper or in one of your industry's trade publications. If you have a reallly interesting storefront, you might even pitch the local TV station about doing an on-air demo. When you launch your storefront, send an announcement to monthly cyberspace magazines like Internet World, because these publications include columns that feature new Net resources. Also, think about the magazines where you advertise to reach customers, and pitch them about doing articles related to your online attack.

Direct mail. If you know that a significant number of your customers is online, or you can select a group that is, one way to boost traffic to your online storefront or mailbot is to send out a simple postcard with only the electronic address on it. Curiosity will lead most customers will check out the address.

Free software. If many of your customers aren't online, you can draw attention to your online presence by giving them the tools to get there. Distribute free disks containing collections of shareware programs for accessing the Net through an ISP, and then make a special arrangement with a local ISP to sign people up. Before you distribute freeware Internet software, pre-configure it so your company's e-mail address is already in the e-mail program's address book, or so the Worldwide Web browser is set to go to your company's home page when the customer launches it each time.

Advertising specialties. Buy computer-related specialties such as diskette holders or mouse pads that feature your URL, e-mail address or even a picture of your home page.

A demo system. Put up a PC in your store or in your booth at a trade show and let customers tour your home page.

Promoting your online presence offline lets you reach customers you can't reach in other ways, and it polishes your company's image as a modern, technically-savvy enterprise. As you adopt new off-line marketing weapons, think about how you can make them do double duty and promote your online presence as well.