Don DiBrita Offline Internet Marketing Craft Beer Geek

Don DiBrita and I met on Blab. It was fun getting to know Don DiBrita – Offline Internet Marketing Craft Beer Geek. Don is the founder of Offline Internet Marketing where he helps local small business owners that are struggling to engage their audience by offering community building strategies to grow their busienss. He also founded BeerDogging.com which is one of the largest beer clubs in the United States. He works with breweries and industry folks on all kinds of different projects to help market the craft beer industry. Currently, he is working with “Beer for Dummies” author Marty Nachel on the casting process for his reality web series the “#1 Beer Fan”.

The conversation quickly dove into Don’s experience for his marketing success. He has a corporate background in training and an MBA in human resource training and he has a lot of experience in sales and marketing. When he started the beer club, he found the marketing element to help other businesses, it was a logical progression that worked out well. He started helping breweries, bars and retail shops with the various aspects of local marketing.

He really dove into his consultancy by helping create unique messages for each of his clients without sounding like a vaccuum cleaner salesman. Don realized a big shift happening in this industry. He found that most of the small business owners had a “Tell Don’t Sell” attitude. He found most owners went on to their social media accounts and weren’t engaging properly. It’s like a little mouse standing on the street corner, very quietly, saying “hey, buy my stuff”.

Many people teaching online marketing strategies are using one workflow that incorporates seo, keyword searches, sales funnels and tripwires. The small business owners didn’t really understand this process. He found that many of the business owners really enjoyed the face to face approach, knew they had to generate an online presence to stay competitive, but they just didn’t enjoy that aspect of the business. This is why many of these businesses are wary of online marketers.

Offline Internet Marketing

During the interview, I asked Don if he could explain what “Offline Internet Marketing” actually meant. Don is pretty witty and came back with a quick joke about wishing his wife was on the line because she is has a masters degree in literature and always correcting Don when he mentions his company. Don goes on to explain the reason he chose this name was that to him, it sounded like a play on words. He goes on to say that there is a lot of online marketing happening right now, but the offline aspect to business outlines the principals that many of the small businesses he works with have done well for years.

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Many of these small businesses were transitioning over to the internet trying to figure out how to market their products and services. They were getting in touch with the big marketing gurus. While many of the people are good, and even those that are, may not be teaching the best strategies for that particular small business.