Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business

Chapter 16. Take It Offline

Sure, technology makes things easier. But remember: becoming a smarter, faster, cheaper trusted resource takes place as much offline as it does online.

Much of online networking, brand building, marketing, and promoting actually happens offline. Away from the computers and phones. In the real world (insert scary music here). And, these offline opportunities go hand-in-hand with online opportunities.

The online and offline worlds aren't two different, scary places that are engaged in some kind of sci-fi battle with each other. They work together and enhance each other. Online opportunities create offline opportunities, and vice versa.

The dumber, slower, expensive approach is to draw lines in the sand and take the stereotypical approach by making the following distinctions:

• An online business is a tech-heavy organization run by evil and sketchy übernerds and ripped-jean kids in Silicon Valley, who don't care about humans, hate customer service, and are looking for the quick buck.

• An offline business is old-school and run by people clad in pleated pants (or skirts?) who've never heard of the Internet(s), are eager to retire, and who hate "those kids and their damn technology."

Despite what many people seem to believe, your company can't be either an online or an offline business. You are—you have to be—both.

The smarter, faster, cheaper approach: Take your online brain and your offline brain and make them hug ... like they mean it. Seriously.

Becoming a trusted ...