<--Back
to Article Index
Offline Promotion Guide
(cont'd)
Branded
novelty items
This method is a personal favorite of mine. It involves purchasing
and distributing items such as pencils, pens, t-shirts, mugs, mouse
pads, calendars, keychains, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets
and the like. All these items will have your URL located somewhere
on them helping to attract people to your website.
Usually these items are given away for free, however some sites such
as Google successfully sell a number of items specifically designed
to improve the Google brand.
If you decide to use such items in your offline marketing campaigns
be smart about it, offer items which will be used by the people most
likely to buy your products or services, for example if you sell
software or computer components distribute branded mouse pads as
computer users are likely to be interested in what you offer.
Similarly if you sell office stationary you could distribute pens to
local businesses, hopefully when they need more stationary they'll
notice your slogan and URL then come visit and buy.
There are lots of angles one can take with this method, most can be
very effective but just have a good think about it before you order
those 3000 pens, won't you!
Press releases
Press releases were touched upon earlier on in this article but now
for more in depth coverage of using them for offline promotion.
Press releases or news releases as they're sometimes known are
newsworthy stories about your business that you send to various
sections of the media. These sections of the media must be related
to your industry for you to have any chance of success. Newsworthy
stories are stories which readers of the media publications you
submit to might be interested in.
If the journalist reads it and likes it he or she may publish it or
some of its contents in his or her publication, if this happens
you're on to a winner because the public in general are much more
responsive to a news story than a plain old hyped up advertisement.
This could mean they'll enquire about or even purchase your products
or services.
Using press releases for promotion of your website uses the same
principals, if it's newsworthy release it. Newsworthy events for
websites include website launches, website re launches and new
online services among other items.
It'll be up to you to decide what might be of value to a journalist
and hence his or her readers, however there are hundreds of
businesses that can organize what's of value into a professional
press release and can then submit it for you. I would recommend the
path of using these businesses due to the fact that if you submit a
poorly written press release the journalist who receives it will (a)
not publish it or any part of it and (b) not even look at your
releases in the future so do it right the first time and hire
somebody. Googles a good place to start looking.
Others ideas
Other ideas include having flyers and posters printed specifically
to promote your URL. Flyers could be handed out locally and posters
could be placed at strategic locations such as supermarkets, malls,
social clubs and business centers, well you get the idea. Don't
forget about direct snail mailing to qualified prospects, bus and
building billboards, bus shelters and cinema screen advertising (yes
you can run ads before those big movies come on!)
Page:
1
|
2 |
3 |
4
<--Back
to Article Index
