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Offline Promotion

Bumper stickers or Magnetic Signs

This means to have bumper stickers or magnetic signs made up with your Website Url and perhaps a brief slogan, motto, or description and then drive around with them on your vehicles. In essence you drive around showcasing your site to all that are in the proximity of your car. You should be careful that the vehicle you are displaying your branded advertising on is appropriate for the type of site you have. It is not wise to drive around with a clunker with ads for a website specializing in jewelry or something where quality counts for example. The downside with ads on your personal car is that if you get in a wreck the other party might be inclined to think you are more wealthy and be more eager to fake injury and sue you because to them you are a business owner and wealthier. Also if your site is a content site rather than something commercially oriented you might be stopped and asked about the bumper sticker and be forced to invest time with people who online have a value of less than 1 cent to you. In essence bumper stickers are a cheap advertising means that costs nothing once you get your signs or bumper stickers made. But you could end up spending more time explaining your site to others than the value of the visitors it brings to you. A company such as SignstoGraphics can provide magnetic signs, stickers, and other promotional matterials if so desired.

Business Cards/Stationary/Return Mailing Labels

Business cards and branded stationary and envelopes and such are a staple of offline advertising. To many the sign of a real legitmate business is company stationary and business cards. This is no major feat to acheive as it can be done with a graphics program, a cheap printer today, or a visit to almost any office supply store. While stationary and business cards are minor things to do they do give one an appearance of greater professionalism. For a website with a strong ecommerce element these things are a good idea but for content sites perhaps they are not. If you run a content site that averages less than 1 cents per visitor in profit does it really make much sense to spend extra money on loads of business cards and stationary? Even if 100 percent of the people that see such branded items visit your site it may still not be economical it would be more of an ego thing. Also one should keep in mind that many telephone companies charge higher rates to businesses than to individuals so paying a bill to your local telephone company for your personal phone with a professional dot com at the top of your address is not a good idea unless you wish to pay more for phone service. The same could be true for water and electricity service in your area too. Even if you run a content site that makes little per visitor in profit it might be wise to have some professional stationary/business cards that you keep on hand for any important things you might have to send out to sponsors or reporters so you can appear important to those that count.

T-shirts, pins, hats, and other branded merchandise

Another staple of offline advertising is branded merchandise which is given away. Every bank or small mom and pop store has their own branded ink pens, hats, bags and other things. By selling these to their customers or giving them away the store in theory is given a little free advertising by those that come into contact with these items as they are used. The effectiveness of such freebies as means of advertising is questionable and it is doubtful that the value of the advertising given will exceed the cost of the freebie. Many who give away such branded freebies view it more as a constant reminder to the customer it is given to of who they have done business with or may in the future. This is perhaps a more reasonable reason for freebies than free advertising. Online you can even try to sell your branded t-shirts, calendars, bumper stickers, and what not. This is done in the hopes that not only can you make a bit of money from your site visitors but they can also be used to advertise your site for you for free as well. If you decide to try selling site themed merchandise for this aim you can either pay for a large amount of a given item upfront and have lesser costs per item or use a service like Cafepress which creates items as needed. Cafepress charges from $5 to $20 or so for various items that can be custom made with your logo. They have a base price and you are charged that for each item but if you decide to charge more than this your site visitors end up paying for the item and giving you a little profit as well. Selling branded merchandise to a site's visitors work best for site's with very dedicated fan bases and not just large commercial entities.

Your own line of videos, books, audio CDs/tapes, or posters

If you are an authority on a given subject online it would make sense to believe that your site visitors might want more than text or the small images that the web is mostly limited to today. One could create a picture book, or a DVD or CD of data with larger pictures or video footage where a webmaster expands upon the themes of his site. If a site is popular and well enjoyed by a core audience it might sell such items well and enjoy the added boost of the offline discussion that such items will provoke as a means of advertising. One could even make a poster or trading card set with popular images from a given site or of its visitors even. This is more classifed as a money making method than a means of offline promotion but it still can serve as a means of offline promotion too. This type of thing can also make other offline means of promotion more feasible too. If a content site can only hope to profit via website visits making less than 1 cents per visitor offline marketing makes little sense. But if one can offer a video, book, or poster that one can make real dollars from then one might have more of an incentive to promote a site offline as one might could yield some sales of such offline merchandise.

Print advertising

Compared to online media, offline print media is very expensive, results are a lot harder to measure, and you can't even be sure how many people even actually saw your ad. Untargeted advertising in newspapers is generally a not so bright idea for a website for example. Perhaps targeted offline advertising of a site in a few publications visited by those interested in your topic might be a good idea. But this should only be considered after one has actually done some advertising online if that is economical for you. If online advertising is not cost effective it is even more doubtful that offline advertising will be with its harder to measure results and sky high ad rates.

TV and radio advertising

This is even less effective that offline print advertising for measureable immediate results. From a website perspective TV or radio advertising can make a website seem more prestigious if it belongs to certain industries. For example if no website from a given industry advertises on TV or radio and your site does it might be deemed more legitamate in the eyes of those who see your ad who are interested in your industry's products. Direct sales from TV or Radio advertising are very rare unless you set the ads up for the sole purpose of a direct response and have high grossing "junk" items that make it economical for you. TV and Radio as a general rule are far less targeted than print. Sponsoring an individual show rather than running ads on a channel might make more sense if one chooses to try to advertise in radio or TV.

Writing articles

Most newspapers and print publications accept submissions for articles. If you can create an article that is chosen for publication in a given publication you will get free advertising as usually a line or so at the bottom is allowed for the author to present some contact information or perhaps a website url. This is not only free as compared to the expense of advertising in print publications but usually more effective too. It is more effective because people respond better to content rather than just ads and also because by being a writer in a publication the publication is by default endorsing you and your company in a small way. If for example you have an article published in a coin collecting magazine about how to grade coins and you yourself operate a coin grading business the publication's reader would assume that you are the best expert around because you are writing for a given magazine. The more technical the article and more specific the publication the more the readers will associate expertise with the magazine's writers even if they are guest writers with their own separate businesses.

Hosting Radio or TV Shows

If you have expertise on a particular topic you might can serve as a guest to talk about it on small radio or Television shows for example. If you achieve this you can promote your business in the same way you can with writing articles and it can be productive.

Making the news

This means that you will be written or talked about by print, TV or Radio. Sending out press releases can help this process along but unless you have something unique for reporters to share about you it is unlikely you will be "making the news."

Distributing flyers locally or nationally

This in essence is doing the same thing as the people that leave ads on top of your car while you are in a store or hang something on the side of your mailbox to avoid paying postage. In addition putting a flyer on a free public posting board is a variation of the same thing. Most of the posted messages are for car washes or something very typical and boring. By presenting a message for something more unique in a more unique way hopefully you can have better results with flyers than our offline brethren.

There are a few ways to go about using flyers including:

1. Post a one time flyer on public message boards throughout your region or sphere of control.

2. Post a new flyer each week or month on a given public message board. This means you can either update your message monthly or even have a continuing message with a date of when the next message will be or you can just be hanging new flyers to make up for the ones taken down.

3. Print up hundreds or thousands of flyers and distribute them throughout your neighborhood and surrounding community. The aim of this if you are not running a site about your community is to satisfy ones ego more than anything else. If you see lots of people visit your sites using the ISP's of your area then you know your flyers are generating traffic. If you receive complaints or questions or even a write up in the press you know you have done something major rather it is productive or not. Remember by putting your url on a flyer that your identity is now known and it would be easy to bring civil lawsuits against you should someone deem your flyer distribution violated some community law or what not.

Tips for Effective Flyer Distribution

1. If using public Bulletin boards it is more productive to staple your flyer than use provided thumbtacks. Other people with flyers will be more apt to take down the ones with tacks which are easier to remove than to take down your flyer which is stapled. If your flyer stays up longer it will be seen by more people.

2. Use color, multi layers, and other things to get attention. Having a cover page with a question mark, chinese text mixed with english, a page saying DON'T LOOK HERE, or lots of color will inspire more people to really read the page underneath it than just presenting the content itself for example. Having questions on one page and answers on anothers is also productive.

3. To really drive people crazy have a well attached flyer on a public message board with bizarre upside down writing, or foreign language text with a note stating something like "This will make sense if you view my other flyer at..." and then have another flyer near by on another message board within walking distance. You could also do this with flyers distributed at people's houses by just telling them a message board that will explain it all. Just make sure the flyer at the message board has reasonable uptime. You could also leave a web url on one of your bizaree flyer pages to explain the flyer and your flyer distribution method if you wish. On your flyer you could also leave a letter key with instructions to keep it as a message will follow and then give a url and a date that the message will appear. Some people may visit your site out of curiosity at just what your bizarre code means. If done on a large scale local media might even write up your stunt.

Sponsoring outdoor or recreational events, or adopting a highway

If your community has a local sports team or yearly competition in many instances you can become a sponsor for a one time fee. By paying for uniforms or some equipment you might can get your name or website mentioned at the start of every event as a sponsor or at least mentioned in written materials distributed during the event year after year. Some communities allow volunteers to adopt a highway in which they agree to clean up trash and keep the side of the street clean in exchange for having their name or organization name on a sign on the street. This could be done with your website being on a sign perhaps but it would require work.

Billboards

This is a very expensive method of advertising a website and is not suggested. Most billboards are used to advertise things of immediate gratification like food. A few local people will always have a billboard for Jesus or something of that sort but that does not mean it is cost effective advertising.

Organizing your own branded industry trade meeting or group

Whatever your interest from anime to plastic manufacturing or even investing you can be sure that even in the age of the internet that some people like to have a local group to be able to go to for discussion on their topic of interest. If there is not a group on your topic of interest in your area you could choose to organize one. This could allow your site to become the dominant force in your community online on your topic area because of its association with you and your group. That is if this is worth the trouble. A big boost to ones ego and sense of expansionist beliefs can occur when one first is recognized locally as an expert on your topic. This can be good practice for the future position as an expert before the world on your topic which perhaps may be one of your goals.

Other Offline Advertising Methods

On park benches, on plaques in honor of equipment you have donated to schools or what not, on food wrappers as part of co promotions, and paying to have your website mentioned in movies and television shows.