The past few years have created very exciting marketing opportunities for small business owners.  The ability to get yourself known, both locally and internationally, has been made easier and cheaper than ever before.

The explosion of social media has allowed you to upload videos, publish articles and reach out to potentially thousands of new clients – every day.  And without having to shell out thousands of pounds to do it.

But does that mean traditional marketing, such as printed brochures, face-to-face networking and advertising are things of the past?

Can’t we just ditch all that expensive stuff and put all our energies in to these new, web-tech tools?

It’s tempting isn’t it?

But be tempted and you’ll probably find yourself left with a very quiet business pipeline.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Social media and online marketing techniques can be incredibly effective.  I use tools such as facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because of they do generate great results for me and my business.

But use them in isolation? Absolutely not!

Behind my very visible online presence lies speaking schedules, regular face-to-face networking, newsletters as well as postcard campaigns and word of mouth referrals to name but a few other marketing activities I embrace.

Let me give you a great example of a recent campaign that has taken place over the past couple of months.  Google released its own internet browser, Chrome.  And if there is one company that is synonymous with the internet, it is Google.

Google is dominant in the world of online advertising and it has become a verb, just the way the brand Hoover did all those decades ago.

And yet, when Google launched its new internet browser, did it rely only on the internet?

Absolutely not!

They took out full page spreads in national papers.  They were on billboards up and down the country.  They had posters in and around the underground in London.

They had a full scale, offline advertising campaign going.  And all to spread the word of an internet based product, that could only be used on the internet.

So, it’s not a case of choosing between using social media and traditional methods.  It’s about integrating the two worlds together and making sure your offline world is backing up what you are doing online, and vice versa.

How do you do this?  Here are a few simple suggestions to get started with (and none of which involved a national advertising campaign, you’d be relieved to know!)

• Have your online profiles on your business card, along with your phone number and business address – give people the option of how they want to get in touch with you.
• Arrange to have a coffee meeting with a new contact you “meet” on LinkedIn – get to really know your online network.
• Have your phone number listed on your website, blog and social networking profiles – make it easy for people to speak to you, rather than be forced to message you electronically all the time.
• Pick up the phone to someone rather than send them a message online – it’s amazing how these conversations can go!
• Follow up the people you’ve met at a networking event and search for them on LinkedIn – get connected online with the people you meet offline.
• Use postcards to promote your facebook page or LinkedIn group to encourage more people to visit and sign up – don’t just rely on those automatic email invitations that seemed to get ignored most of the time.

These are just a few ideas to get you going and very few of them need any cash to follow them through.  So, don’t get caught up with the sparkles and glitz of social media and ignore your offline strategies.

The more you can integrate your social media marketing with your traditional marketing, the more effective it will be.

Other articles you may be interested in:

1. Small Business Owners: Beware the hype of internet marketing!
2. Social Media: What’s the worst thing you can do?
3. Social Networking: How do you request friends on facebook?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 8:05 am and is filed under Featured Articles, Marketing Small Business, Social Media, Website & SEO Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.