In today's online marketplace, an important but often ignored marketing technique is that of offline traffic generation. Marketing your web site will never ever simply mean submitting it to the engines and waiting for the traffic to come swarming all over your pages. Web surfers today are more informed, more educated, and more sophisticated than ever before. Thus, using the typical online marketing techniques such as banner ads, e-mails and the like, may not be enough to reach out and make an impact on the minds of these Surfers.

Never forget - There's A Whole Real World Out There! Almost daily, we are inundated with information and offerings through newspaper ads, billboard ads, mail, telephone, radio, and of course, the TV. The total time that we are exposed to these offline forms of advertising is in most cases greater than the time that we may actually spend on the Internet. Advertising on the Internet, even in many different locations and ways is one-dimensional advertising. Offline advertising with its many different formats and possibilities offers another dimension for you to market your web site and/or Internet service.

While most Jamaican webmasters will not have the advertising budget necessary to go on an all out television campaign, it might be worthwhile to consider some of the techniques below.

Neighborhood promotion

If you're somewhere in Canada or the U.S.A., chances are you get a lot of coupons in the mail. If you're in Jamaica, you may get a flyer or two when you buy a copy of the Daily Gleaner or Jamaica Observer newspapers. It's often not as expensive as you think to advertise using these means. Print a few flyers. Pay someone to stuff mailboxes, or do it yourself. Pay the newspaper guy to include some of your flyers in the papers delivered or sold. Who to tell how far this bit of paper with your URL and/or Internet service offering printed on it will go.

Classified advertisements in newspapers

Classified ads are definitely among the cheapest advertising options available offline. They also offer tremendous potential in terms of reach, because just about everyone who reads a newspaper will glance at the classifieds section. Classifieds definitely provide a good long-term solution to small businesses facing a tight budget, so it's an option that's well worth a try.

Your company stationery

Ensure that the company's web site URL on all your stationery. Business cards, brochures, fax coversheets, invoices, list your website on any and every printed company related material no matter how insignificant you may think it seems. You never can tell who might hang on to that document and eventually end up visiting because they saw the printed URL.

Think outside the box

Be creative in coming up with your own offline marketing techniques. For example, if you've got a events/party web site that you'd like to promote, it may suit you to form alliances with club operators, party promoters, beverage manufacturers and other companies in that particular industry. From this, there is always the possibility of getting some free promotion for your URL.

Whatever you ultimately decide to do, here, I'm not suggesting that you cancel your ISP (Internet access) account and take your business to a traditional brick and mortar marketing structure. I'm simply suggesting that you add some offline variety to your existing online marketing strategy. Big businesses from Yahoo to E-Bay are doing it, and so should you. If your 'little web site' cannot afford to do some of the types of offline marketing that the "big boys" are doing (things like television and radio campaigns), then you must try to use other inexpensive and creative methods to grow your web site's traffic and visibility offline.

Sandor Panton ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is a Jamaican currently working as a Search Engine Optimizer for an Intenet Marketing Company in Ontario, Canada. He is also the owner of www.top5jamaica.com, a Jamaican search portal.