People think that offline advertisements cost more than what they used to. What they don’t realize is that there are better and cheaper advertisement tools offline than online. In this episode, Ken Courtright asks the biggest question for online marketers, “What would you do if the internet was never invented? What would you use to advertise and grow your business?” Discover how offline advertisements cost less but sell more.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Go Offline
I’m trying to come up with little nuggets, little seeds that I can drop in 3 to 20 minutes that can help people and companies grow businesses. I would say that 99% of what I drop out there would be considered a guerilla marketing type approach, meaning it’s either free or nearly free. This and all episodes leading up to our annual event Digital Footprint, where you can get info at DigitalFootprint.net, are sponsored by Digital Footprint. I was trying to think of a little nugget I could say about Digital Footprint and the only thing I can say is this, why not? If you’ve never gone to Digital Footprint, come and see why Forbes recommends it is a can’t miss, must-attend business conference in North America. Why do they say that? They’ve only said that about five conferences ever and we are one of the five. Come find out what’s been growing businesses for years and check it out.
I decided to resurrect something I did quite a while ago. Anybody that’ll go into iTunes, followed a couple of podcasts, get on a desktop computer or laptop. Go into iTunes and giving me an honest, legitimate review, and then email me, Ken@IncomeStore.com. I will shoot you a code and I will pick up your entry fee and all your meals at Digital Footprint. That’s for you and any guest that also followed a couple of podcasts. If you bring a guest, that guest has to use the code that I emailed them. They have to register separately, so we know who it is because we use those registrations. Even though it changes the price to $1, we still know how much food to get in table settings, it’s awesome. Check out some of the videos and the pictures from previous Digital Footprints, check out our speaker lineup, this one is going to be insane. Here’s what I’ve been saying a lot, and I’ve been saying it because we’re doing it. What would you do if the internet was never invented?
Telling more sells more. Click To TweetWhat would you do to grow your business? There is no internet, right now stop and think what would you do? Let’s talk about that. Some of the things out there, have you ever heard of Valpak or Clipper? These are things that you can pay for a couple of hundred bucks and get a local zip code or a city-wide presence and see if a small version of direct mail would work for you, it’s a teaser. How about this? How about highway billboards? Everybody says, “They’re too expensive.” When is the last time you priced out highway billboards? You are going to be surprised. It would be the reverse of sticker shock because many people think that the only way to advertise is online with everything, Facebook, pay-per-click, organic search rankings. Billboards, because they have small billboards on smaller streets but more importantly, they have digital billboards, they’re selling partial space. The cost of a billboard is so far less than it was years ago because few companies are using them.

What would you do if there was no internet? I’m going to throw a few ideas at you because we’re doing it right, or I should say we’ve done this in the past. How about the radio? Radio to pump an event, radio, did you know you can buy remnant airtime? Do you know what that is? Remnant airtime means you have a budget, let’s pick a number, $500, $1,000. You call a radio agency and ask them what they’re doing for remnant airtime. You call this agency and you say, “Can you get me some remnant airtime?” What they do is, right the day before the week closes out, almost every major radio station has dead airtime. Since they haven’t sold that airtime, what they do is they backfill it with free commercials for their biggest advertisers. If the big advertiser bought twenty commercials in there, some dead airspace, they probably get 23. Remnant airtime is amazing. It’s been amazing for us for years. I used it more in the ‘90s, I used it years ago when there was bid for spots, but I know there are still agencies out there selling remnant airtime.
How about Sirius radio? I had a gentleman tell me that he’s getting twenty calls a day from a small Sirius radio spot, twenty live calls a day. Even if he gets one client, I know the value of a client for that. Here’s one for you, this blew my mind. We got a call. It was one of the major stations in Chicago. They want me to do a half an hour show on their radio station on Saturdays. Guess what it cost? $1,300 and I can have a half an hour show, no commercials. The whole thing would be a commercial. The whole thing would be stockpiling 3 to 4 podcasts in a row and talking about it. I can bring guests. I don’t need guests. You know the old phrase, “Tell more, sell more.” Remember how many podcasts I’ve had about leveraging large audiences? Radio still has a huge audience. Why not go offline? Try a little bit of Valpak. Try a little highway billboard. Try a partial smart panel where you get five seconds every minute. Try some remnant airtime or Sirius, or maybe even call a local radio station and see what they charge you for half an hour show. You would be shocked. Go offline, take care.
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