Effective Offline Marketing
I'm interested to hear what methods of offline marketing people have found effective in promoting their websites. A lot of people who have become successful through SEM and have a bit of cash in their pocket are now realising that 'branding' and building real sites and real businesses is the way to go (as well as doing a little bit of blackhat on the side to keep the funds coming in obviously!)
It would be interesting to hear about the more unusual and non-mainstream methods of marketing that people might not be aware of. For instance, I read a book recently that discussed 'Undercover Marketing'. This medium involves using actors to stage situations whereby people overhear another group of people praising a particular company or product. For instance, a group of hikers are out walking, another group of hikers approach from the opposite direction. They are talking animatedly about this great new brand of walking shoes that are the best they've ever had. Obviously, things we overhear like that are more likely to sway our decision making process than obvious advertising directed at us. Another example of this is the story that Amazon paid lots of concierges in apartment complexes to leave Amazon boxes in the hallway in the morning. The supposition of the tenants passing these every morning is that this company must be good because lots of people in my apartment block are buying from them.
I quite liked these two examples and I thought they could work well to promote websites. Interested to hear from other people what forms of offline marketing they find effective.
A few books I would never be
A few books I would never be without.
Vance Packard - Hidden Persuaders ISBN 0-14-013670-3
Richard Bandler & John Grindler - Frogs into Princes ISBN 0-911226-19-2
Seth Godin - Purple Cow ISBN 0-718-14696-4
Kerry L Johnson - Selling with NLP ISBN 1-85788-047-1
And my single all time favourite
Richard Denny - Selling to Win ISBN 0-7494-2131-2
None of these directly offer guerilla marketing ideas but once understood they seem to flow from me.
I undertook a while ago the old technique of having books of matches printed and dropping them all over Covent Garden. It generated a lot of traffic for the investment and it turns out quite qualified and targetted at that as it directly led to sales giving a highly positive ROI
I've also done the London Tube, sticker on posters thing (not too great but again it showed a positive ROI)
What I would love to do is start a UK / EU focussed [url=http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_31/b3743001.htm
]Buzz Marketing campaign[/url] business, but alas time prohibits. :(
Who did you use?
Thanks for the suggestions Jason. Who did you use to do the above? Did you do it in-house or use a 3rd party company? or students? or asylum seekers? :)
"Richard Denny - Selling to Win" - good book. It's in my library too.
[quote]Who did you use to do
Not exactly glamourous but, printers from the Exchange & Mart and me and the team here.
Add another to the list - Great Read :)
Also, although I don't own it
Also, although I don't own it I've heard good things about This book
A couple we use
Car stickers - with our domain name on, can't track the ROI but the cost was so low they only have to generate a couple of sales to break even.
Underhand guerilla marketing - small furry dragons with the sticky feet and a fabric tail printed with the business name on them. Gave them to the kids to give to their friends at school. Again very cheap, and definitely produced a measurable positive ROI.
A couple more books
Jason hit some of my favorites, but here's a couple more. The first one is probably my all-time favorite in this genre...
Richard Bandler & John LaValle - Persuasion Engineering
Kevin Hogan - The Psychology of Persuasion
Genie Z. Laborde - Influencing with Integrity
Public Relations
Some good books suggested.
I've had decent success with PR in the past. Anyone else?
Motivational Books / Quotes
As we seem to be discussing useful books here, I thought it would be a good idea to start a separate thread for Motivational Books / Quotes