Offline marketing ideas

[bakedbeans4]

Has anyone thought of printing out stickers and sticking them in public places?

 

[nielsencl]

Yes. And putting in little slips of paper in library books, leaving flyers on buses and trains too. It's called "guerilla marketing". Do a search in Google and you will much information on the subject.

While I am not 100% against it, you could consider it spam, so keep that in mind. Some methods may be illegal, like putting up stickers everywhere or spray painting your URL on buildings. If you try that you may want to pay for WHOIS privacy.

 

[DNNinja]

most people would call it littering and doesn't look good for business. The best traffic anyone can get now days and very simple is to do is Video Marketing. But since you want offline marketing then go where the crowd go like shopping malls, beach, etc. and walk around with a T-shirt with your site name and url.

 

[mwzd]

Yeah, we've done it, back in 1998.

Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail.

Specially since you can precision market to your target audience a lot cheaper.

 

[JB Lions]

"Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail."

I wouldn't say that. Depends on what type of site you have and what you're doing as far as marketing.

 

[elias75]

"Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail."

I wouldn't say that. Depends on what type of site you have and what you're doing as far as marketing.

true

I am an ebay seller and I always sent to my customers business cards or postcards that advertise my websites which are in the same niche as the items they bought.

no fail at all - targeted offline marketing can work pretty well!

 

[gelan]

most people would call it littering and doesn't look good for business. The best traffic anyone can get now days and very simple is to do is Video Marketing. But since you want offline marketing then go where the crowd go like shopping malls, beach, etc

 

[josephjgomez]

I went to a seminar featuring a guy that did a lot of offline marketing. Some of his ideas, I thought, were pretty good. You could go to garage sales, buy books on sales or internet marketing (you get the idea) and then he would make a stamp that he would put on various pages throughout the book that would read: "Looking for work at home opportunities? Go to www.xyz.com". Then he would donate the book to the local library.
He also did those fake $100 bills (the ones that look like a million dollar bill doesn't look real enough) and would print the same thing. He would leave those in parking lots, on the bus, etc. He said he would get quite a few leads with just those two methods.

 

[arnoldsmithh]

Printing stickers and stick them in public areas is old technique. My suggestion is now a days print your website or product on your t-shirt and order atleast 100 t-shirts to your friends and family person and tell them to wear everywhere for some days.

 

[fm1234]

posted by mwzd:

Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail.

That is the most hilarious thing I've ever read. Have you looked at a television, newspaper or magazine any time in the last couple of years? They are filled with ads for websites, or ads for offline products & services which direct readers to a website for more information.

I've been running an ad in National Marketplace since 2007 -- with almost no changes to the ad, or to the landing page copy -- and making a +$ every single week that the ad has been running. Other shorter-term campaigns along the same lines (create a small site with consumer interest info which ultimately redirects to an affiliate or leadgen offer, then advertise it via offline publications) have produced generally positive results in a broad spectrum of businesses (not like the epic 3+ year auto loan campaign, but still a good medium.)

You need to remove whichever blog told you offline marketing doesn't produce returns from your bookmarks.


Frank

 

[mwzd]

Frank, what does the ad cost you?

Have you tried analysing and targeting the same kind of audience via a cpc method?

When was the last time your ad was cut out and shown by the readers to other people who might be interested?

Ever heard of social media reach for print ads?

I didn't say it wouldn't work at all, read the last line I wrote in the post.

Oh, and I didn't say this, was quoting a world top 10 marketing agency head who was earlier with Yahoo and founded some of the top startups in the world, currently also runs a very successful venture capital firm.

TV/Print ads which mention a website are usually for offline products / services, using offline advertising for a purely online offering is, imho, not cost effective at all.

 

[JB Lions]

"using offline advertising for a purely online offering is, imho, not cost effective at all."

Go back to my first response. Maybe what I quoted is your experience or you have no actual experience with it (recently) all or: "Yeah, we've done it, back in 1998." things have changed since 1998. We're pushing 2011, most people now have internet and high speed internet at that. A lot, most people shop online and do things online. Every merchant I know of that has a brick and mortar presence sells online. There are merchants that sell solely online, ala Amazon.

And this is ridiculous:
"TV/Print ads which mention a website are usually for offline products / services, using offline advertising for a purely online offering is, imho, not cost effective at all."

Most of those "offline products" can now be ordered online. I even started ordering my pizza online just recently

The one thing I will say tho, sometimes it's hard to measure the traffic that comes from offline advertising, especially if you have more than one thing going at once.

 

[mwzd]

JB, we're saying the same thing, just differently.

If you try to promote a 'twitter' type of service offline, it would cost you a lot more and get a lot less response for the same kind of money spent online.

I've been in advertising since 1987, online advertising since 1998 and do have 'some' recent experience in offline and online advertising and marketing too, though you don't have to take my word for it, talk to some media planners in your neck of the woods and see what they say.

 

[fm1234]

posted by mwzd:

Frank, what does the ad cost you?

Irrelevant, since it makes a profit. I actually went back to my one major slam-dunk campaign -- which is currently in its 168th consecutive week running. It has turned a profit in 154/167 completed weeks, and a net profit every month -- average monthly profit close to 50% of the ad cost. In those three years and change I've tweaked the ad a couple of times, and tweaked the landing page quite a bit.

Now, I will point out again in the interest of honesty that this is a single and exceptional campaign. But I have had many others, especially seasonal stuff, services targeted to "newspaper demographics" and the odd controversial bit (anti-Democrat ads in an election cycle tend to do really well in getting offline eyeballs in front of a website.) I also prefaced my experience with online sales with offline and mail order sales, so it could just be my copywriting or demographics jockeying skewing the numbers. But the numbers are almost universally positive, across a broad spectrum of niches and demographs.

Have you tried analysing and targeting the same kind of audience via a cpc method?

Yes -- for "grand slam's" particular niche PPC advertising is a hugely expensive, affiliate-choked nightmare.

When was the last time your ad was cut out and shown by the readers to other people who might be interested?

I would guess close to never, but I would imagine that at some point in the last three years, a few people have mentioned it to a friend or family member, which is a much much much more effective referral than a Facebook share or retweet.

Ever heard of social media reach for print ads?

Nope.

I didn't say it wouldn't work at all, read the last line I wrote in the post.

Fair enough, as are your additional qualifications about promoting an online-only service such as Twitter. But what you said first was, exact words, Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail. Incorrect, or at the very least overly broad.

Oh, and I didn't say this, was quoting a world top 10 marketing agency head who was earlier with Yahoo and founded some of the top startups in the world, currently also runs a very successful venture capital firm.

I'm amazed he's gotten as far as he has with that incorrect view of offline promotion. Good on him, though.

TV/Print ads which mention a website are usually for offline products / services, using offline advertising for a purely online offering is, imho, not cost effective at all.

Right, this is a much more specific and more or less believable statement than the original.

I'd like to add: If you're big into advertising concepts, then you are of course familiar with demographic targeting. All the AddThis buttons in the world are lost on someone who is reading print classifieds. A short, effective ad, which directs a reader to a short, grammatically-correct, easy-to-remember domain name, is not -- it is powerfully well-suited to those people, because even if they do not rush to the computer the name and ad will stick with the majority of them.

It is definitely not all kinds of fail, in any event.


Frank

 

[vanmed]

Any business that has a measureably effective marketing program can show proof that the best marketing programs use an integrated multimedia approach, utilizing print, traditional web, web 2.0 and social media , email, direct mail, face to face, b2b, television and radio strategies depending on the target markets. Very few successful companies are successful in their marketing efforts solely using online media. A rule of thumb is the Rule of Three. Choose the top three media forms for your industry and focus your efforts using these.

 

[!!]

It really does depend on what your marketing, if your marketing a product aimed at a certain demographic then you want to target that niche directly. It will give you a better chance of success. Guerilla marketing doesn't have to be seen as spam if you do it correctly. Leaving your business cards in coffee shops where you know for a fact 'a certain type of people' go in there isn't spam its... 'forgetfulness' and also if you leave one of your leaflets on the train then for all the person who picked it up knows is that it was someone else who left it there

 

[Jawed]

Today using offline marketing for any website is all kinds of fail.

I think you need to edit your original post. In subsequent posts you are saying entirely different things.

 

[mwzd]

I'll stick by what I'm saying.

I haven't seen any concrete info to make me change my mind.

If you're using the web as a marketing tool, advertising your site offline doesn't make sense in this day and age.

Exceptions exist, just as elsewhere, but good luck selling hosting via newspaper ads.

Media options and planning is for companies with higher budgets - say over $10k/mo., the average website doesn't even spend that much in a year.

 

[vanmed]

I just want to point out the MILLION DOLLAR television ad campaigns running for GoDaddy. They seem to disagree with your web only ad approach.

 

[mwzd]

Stop looking at what people with access to unlimited promotional funds are doing and talk about yourself.

When was the last time any of us spent $1mm on an ad campaign for a website?

How many websites do you own?

What are the ad budgets?

I'm going to clarify this once more, then I'm done - dollar for dollar you'll get a better ROI and reach with online advertising for a web only offering.

You can hand out stickers / business cards and what not, you'll never get the immediacy of someone who 'wants to buy at that time, at your website via those.