We have been discussing promoting your business both online and offline. Here are some additional tips for you to promote your Cruise Planners/American Express franchise offline.
Collateral Materials: Print your URL and email address on all of your collateral materials, including letterhead, stationary, and envelopes, business cards, postcards, greeting cards, business checks, mailing labels, invoices, brochures, fax cover sheets, print newsletters, press releases, and customer feedback forms. By doing this, everyone with whom you have any contact has your website address. Many of these items pass through tons of hands, and you never know who might see one piece of your collateral material and become a customer.
Put a sign in a visible office window. Somewhere on the window near your entrance, place a www.YourWebsiteName.com". You could also add this to a permanent outdoor business sign.
Voicemail Messages: Be sure to include your website address in the content of your voice mail message. If you have music or a message that plays while callers are on hold, incorporate your website URL into the information that they hear.
Promotional Items: Plaster your URL all over any promotional items that you might give away – mouse pads, pens, magnets, notepads, etc.
Automobile: Use your car to advertise your website for you. Place your website URL on removable vinyl magnetic signs on the doors of your vehicle, vinyl cling signs on your back windshield, or special tags(www.iditplates.com) on the back of your car.
Clothing: Have clothing printed with your web address and logo and give them to friends and family members to wear around town -- baseball caps, T-shirts, button-down shirts. Or, you can give them away as prizes or promotional items. Have your friends and clients become a walking billboard for your website
Media Opportunities: If you're a guest on a radio or TV show or being interviewed by a newspaper reporter or magazine writer, make sure that your website address is mentioned. For television appearances, have the show scroll your URL across the bottom of the screen. For print media, ensure that your website address appears in your quote as a part of your business name, or in the back of the magazine in the resources section for articles.
Advertising: Whether you advertise in a newspaper/magazine, television or radio ad, local cable advertising, program booklet, visitor's guide, coupon promotion, or on the back of a register tape, make sure your website address appears. If you are listed in your local telephone directory, have your website printed as a part of your listing.
Guest Books: If you're in a hotel with a guest book, party, or B&B, sign it and leave your website address. The guest books are usually left in public places and are perused by guests while waiting for appointments.
Virtual Grand Opening: When you have a new or updated website, announce it to all of your clients? You can also send announcements to the local newspapers and media or to current or potential clients.
Email Signature: Any time you send out an email, send it from an email address that includes your domain name like, mary@cruiseplanners.com and create a signature file in your email program that includes your website URL.
Remember, even with social media exploding ads all over the electronic arena, you still need to use the traditional methods to advertise your business. Marrying one with the other, saturates the market and spreads your personal network and also your net worth from one continent to another.
