These letters are on a Black Label (a beer product from South Africa) billboard inside Khayelitsha (one of the bigger township from Cape Town South Africa.)

These words strike me everytime I drive by the billboard. I don’t even drink beer but the words stir something inside me. I feel a sense of pride, a sense of reward deep inside me.

How many of us actually say, “You’ve earned it!” to ourselves? How does it make you feel when you are trully in the moment and then say it to yourself?

Nothing can replace the sense of accomplishment that you can give yourself when you trully congradulate yourself after a protracted struggle. My parents, my teachers and my professors have said it to me countless times but my thoughts count more than all their compliments combined.

My thoughts would be along these lines:”Thoriso, you own property, you are a qualified medical doctor and a business owner…Thoriso, You’ve earned it!” Thinking that makes me almost tear up.

What about you? Have you taken a long hard look at your accomplishments and told yourself in earnest, “You’ve Earned It.”

It must be in the second person, like you are saying it to yourself as an admirer of your accomplishment through adversity. “I have earned it”, is cliche’d and weak compared to “You’ve earned it!” thats possibly why Black Label used the phrase.

Try this simple exercise, and as always please comment on this post and tell me what you think and felt when you said, “You’ve Earned It.”

Offline marketing is still very effective even as the world moves deeper into the digital age. We online marketers have seen amazing profits borne out of small investments. Unfortunately due to the low threshold caused by low overhead costs of starting an online business competition is fierce.

Taking ones business to the next level will require offline marketing efforts. This level I am talking about is the stratosphere of 6 to 7 figure profits. Television and radio still have the power to bestaw expert level on individuals that have no true claim on such titles let alone your time.

But most people have told me how hard it is to buy into offline advertising because there is no instant feedback seen with using media like Pay Per Click. The website domain names are hard for people to remember.

Lets write down what you need to do to intergrate successfully.

1) A simple domain name with some authority.

www.xyz123.info is commands less authority than www.thesensiblechoice.com.

2) Selecting the best medium based on good demographic research. Don’t you dare take out a newspaper ad about your website targeting teenagers. Learn and ask the people close to you where do they get their daily information.

3) Send them to squeeze page with a prominent and highly visible opt in form. Do not send your offline visitors to a busy website like Yahoo.com expecting them to find that sign up form buried in piles of graphics. I wouldn’t send them to my blog either. Its too busy. You can’t send traffic from Google’s pay per click to a squeeze page but you can offline visitors.

Depending on your advert and your niche you can thank them for subscribing by giving them a one time offer. This offer must be enticing and not too expensive, (about $3 - $47 depending on your niche). Don’t be too agressive as it might scare your expensive subscribers away. Some marketers use this one-time offer to recover advertising costs almost immediately.

4) You need to build an email campaign that has loads of trust building between you and your subscribers (even though the offline advert gave you some) and you need to make offers.

So I hope I made intergrating offline and online marketing less unerving for you.

As always please leave me a comment if this post gives you inspiration. I always look forward to reading and replying to your comments and questions.

The number 1 marketing tool to people that bought from you is customer service, hands down. If you skimp out on that you will never realise upsells, repeat sales or even downsales.

When you are a seller your chief task is to sell. Your second task is to give a legendary customer service experience that will have them singing you to their friends and loved ones. Your third task is to sell them again, hopefully something else.

I have seen people being sold the most absolute nonsense but because of customer service that is great to work with they keep buying. I sometimes want to shout, “Don’t buy that, its crap.” But I keep quiet because I might get lynched.

So dear reader, please go sort out your customer service response times and manner. Test them, get feedback from your customers and improve on some of their constructive suggestions.

So, please comment if you feel inspired and if you want to pick a bone with my customer service (be nice)