Hopefully, you’ve already begun to put into action some if not all of the tips share in my earlier articles 2 Offline Techniques To Help You Make More Money Online and 2 (More) Offline Techniques To Help You Make More Money Online, you may already have begun to see some positive results too.

Marketing can often be seen as a set of discrete activities with very little connection between them. An example of this would be a direct mail campaign which has no online equivalent running at the same time (or vice versa). However, by pulling the online and offline world into one campaign you will create a better result than if you had left them unconnected and operating separately.

So, here are my last two ideas for linking together physical and virtual marketing.

#5 – Get Free PR

You’d be surprised how easy it is to get some free publicity.  Here are a few ideas to spark you off:

1. Listen to the local radio and see if you can find an angle for your business to comment on.  Go to their website, find the producer’s email address and tell them directly how you can help them.
2. Get interviewed by your local newspaper on how you survived recession or how you to grow a business.
3. Get your customers to take a survey and then send the results to the media.
4. Write your rags-to-riches story and send it to the business press.
5. Do a podcast on how your business was the first to do something.
6. Piggy-back a story on other publicity.  For example, Mother’s Day, Halloween, or an awareness week which is relevant to your industry.
7. Find local/National events and request to speak at them

The next step is to make sure that you get your web address into the publicity.  For example; If you’re being interviewed by the newspaper/magazine/radio, etc. make sure that your website address is mentioned. Or, make sure that your web address appears in your quote as a part of your business name.  If you’re on TV get the show to scroll your web address across the bottom of the screen.

#6 – Referrals

Perhaps one of the most powerful and influential techniques you have at your disposal comes from your business’s relationship with people. These relationships can take many different forms; customers, prospects, suppliers, professional friendships, advisers and so on. All of these relationships represent a rich opportunity for you to further market your business. You can do this in a number of ways, but most obviously through the power of referrals.

Getting referrals simply means asking your customers to refer your business to their customers, suppliers, etc. You can use your website as a means for them to register these referrals, explain what you will give them in return when they give you a referral, sign up for the referral program, etc. Not only does this automate the process of you acquiring referrals it also formalises it and in doing so moves it away from being ‘ad hoc’ and more towards a structured programme. And I can promise you that anything which has a structured programme of activity will perform better than something which is informal and unstructured.

So there you have it.  Over the last three weeks I’ve given you 6 techniques for powerfully linking your offline and online marketing together.  Pick two and give them a go this week.

Jed Wylie is the author of Make Your Website Sell and works for Morgan Wylie a web design and digital marketing agency in the Midlands.