The Internet provides millions of ways to advertise your website online, but your competitors are using the same sources and online advertising ideas too. Promoting your website offline can bring in new traffic and help with overall website branding. Since your competitors are probably not doing any offline advertising, you will be the only one to compete with. Using your own ideas and the ones below, you can defiantly create your own buzz in the offline world.
1. Promotional items. Purchase promotional items such as t-shirts, pencils, cute little stress balls, or other items you can pass out. Send them to your family, friends, and even your current website visitors.
2. TV commercials, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards. This is the traditional way to advertise offline, but it still works! Get in contact with various vendors and get the word out about your website. Not that many websites utilize this form of advertising still, so it is still a unique way to advertise your website.
3. Stationary, envelopes, business cards. Anytime you send mail to anybody including your credit card company or phone provider, send it on your personal stationary with your website logo and URL. The person checking the mail is a person too and might get interested in visiting your website.
4. Telemarketer reversal. Why not turn the tables on those telemarketers that bother you? Start to tell them about your website and why they should visit it. It is a lot more fun than telling them ‘no thanks’ over and over again!
5. Create a seminar or class. Start a class on your websites topic or even on just on using a computer. This can get you wide exposure with your community and even if they are not directly interested in your website they will talk to others about your class and website. This gives you a lot of free exposure.
6. Printed postcards. You can send out postcards in small newspapers or other mailings that your local city provides. This is a great way to target your local community.
7. Answering machine. Do you have an answering machine? Telemarketers and other callers are people too! Leave a little blurp on your machine to visit your website and they just might.
8. Sponsor events and expos. There are lots of local and national events you could sponsor. Donate or even show up and help run the event. Ask to put up a banner or to get your URL included in any pamphlets they will be passing out.
9. Car decals and stickers. Get a special sticker made for your car and slap in on the back or sides of your vehicle. Whenever you are stuck in traffic or at a stoplight, you will be advertising your website to the cars behind you.
10. Print flyers. You can hang flyers all over town on bulletin boards and other community boards. If you post your business cards too it will allow them to take your information home with them!
11. Rubber stamp or stickers. Order a stamp with your website URL on it and stamp everything you see. Best way to go about this is to hand it to your 3 year old, they are really good at this type of advertising! Works great with sticky stickers too.
12. Welcome committee. Join your neighborhoods welcome committee or just find out how to put your promotional items in their welcome kit.
13. Buses, trucks, blimps, airplanes, trains! Get your ad on the side of a huge vehicle such as your local bus, airplane, trains, or blimp. This would certainly attract some attention and also if you post a picture of it on your website, I’m sure a lot of websites would buzz about it.
14. Coupons, discounts, free stuff. Offer coupons, discounts or even free stuff in your offline advertising. People might not even know what your website is for, but if you offer a discount and free stuff, they will visit your website to check it out. A lot of towns have a coupon books for their local businesses too!
15. Run, Walk, Bike, Hike. There are 100’s of races you can join in. Just wear your special promotional shirt or write on you racing shirt your website URL. There are thousands of people that show up for these events and will see your website.
Bonus Advertising Ideas
16. Body sign on busy street. Stand out on the side of the curb with a body sign you wear advertising your website and URL. You can even get a costume to attract more attention to your sign. Wave and be nice to the drivers.
17. Public computers. There are a lot of public computers that are waiting for your input. You could easily set your website as the browsers homepage, put your URL on the desktop, or even set your URL on their screensaver. Ask for permission first of course.
18. Parade float. You could either sponsor or have your own parade float for your website. Talk about maximum exposure with a big float with your website name spread across it.
19. Paint your house. Paint your website URL on your house of even put a banner outside in your front lawn (a lot more practical). This might also attract the local news station to do a story on your painted house and get you lots of free exposure with your own personal billboard.
20. Tattoo your body. This is a little extreme but you can tattoo your body with your websites URL or get somebody else to do it. I’ve seen this done on ebay before. Just as a side note, you can also do fake tattoos or a permanent marker just for once off situations.
Many of the ideas are very low cost or even free making them easy to use and to implement into your current marking strategies. I can also agree that some are a bit extreme, but with a little creative thinking you can still implement successfully into your offline advertising campaigns. Using offline advertising can help you gain traffic from untapped resources your competitors haven’t even begun to think about.
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Very good methods. I’d love the ability to market both my blogs offline, as it just seems more substantial than online, doesn’t it?
All I can say is :
Crazy…Impossible…Addictive…I love it
Great ideas Sarah
It definitely does Rhys, to do both online and offline would be a great way for steady traffic and website branding. I think doing a case study on the tattooing is needed! Anybody willing? :c)
those are some great ideas, if I had more money I would try that for my sites that I run. This type of advertising is a great way to establish your company but I don’t think it would be worth the effort for bloggers to try this.
You have GOT to be kidding me! I seriously hit the “Publish” button on my blog then decided to come here and saw that you had posted a VERY similar post to mine! Anyway, you might want to check mine out too:
http://sitefever.com/top-10-mo.....e-traffic/
@shaun: I think it really depends on your niche if you can successfully do offline advertising. Certain niches certainly would do better, for instance if your blog is about your town or even something general like hiking.
@sitefever: Great minds think alike! I should have thought about the writing your domain on a dollar bill. That is genius, I’ve actually seen this done before!
Sarah this post was awesomely awesome, greatly great and magnificently magnificent
I had to stumble it
I must say very very nice tips for bloggers
The first one is my favorite “Promotional Items” as it helped me a lot to publicize my blog
Thanks Dj Flush :c), I’m glad you enjoyed it. Some are a bit silly, but fun non-the-less. What promotion items did you pass out? I’m thinking about for sure making some shirts to wear around, especially when I go to geeky type events!
No way I’m gonna get a tattoo of of my site!…
SMALLER THAN MY WHOLE BACK THAT IS! BWA HA HA!
Hehehe Bush, you can do that Henna stuff!
They are good suggestions.
I have name shirts made featuring my websites.
I’ve advertised my website at my local gym. I’ve been going there for six years. I asked they let me do it. I created a banner friendly advert and now it’s featured in on their ad space board.
A few days ago I created another website that focuses on nutrition and exercise. I believe it will do well and after I have added a lot of content I’ll ask to refresh my ad.
I’m an Earth Save member in our monthly meetings they give us a chance to promote what we are doing occasionally I talk about Vegan Momma but the past few months I’ve mentioned my alternative healing website.
Healing Yourself Naturally has passed Vegan Momma in traffic (I’ve had VM for almost three years) and I started only four months ago. I discovered that it wasn’t indexed by Google until this Saturday. I fixed it, and now it’s indexed. Can you imagine how far that website will go if it’s already beating Vegan Momma?
I knew it would pass VM just not so quickly.
I’m a huge fan of online and offline advertising.
The last one, body tattoos, was actually the idea behind pixelheadonline.com, which I had wanted to sell not only temporary tattoo space on my head, but also was going to have pixel pages where advertisers could buy pixel adds on my head, as opposed to just the entire page…but the idea has since gone dormant, may have to revive in the future.
@Opal: That is great Opal! I know that it can work out, especially if done correctly. Networking works offline too, not just online as you have done at your gym.
@Adam: I can admit I was not sure what your domain meant exactly but it makes perfect sense for selling pixel ads. You were going to put like a picture of your head? That actually is totally thinking outside the box!
Sarah,
A lot of my networking goes on in the sauna. I’m there for an hour after my workouts. I’ve met some fabulous people. I created business cards for my personal websites because of them. We mainly talk about health care and alternative healing. We are in the gym after all, lol. I have three new websites that cover all three. It’s something I’m extremely passionate about. I can honestly say I’ve read hundreds of books on nutrition/alternative healing.
Supermarkets is another idea. I’ve advertised my business website on their ad board (for free) and received numerous clients that way. You could market a personal website also just make your ad appealing to the audience.
Bally’s Total Fitness & Giant where I go is predominantly white, middle/upper class women. My approach is a lot different than say targeting an inner city minority hair salon or grocery store.
I’ve done them all with good results. I think knowing your audience, and making the correct pitch is very important. I love meeting people so I’m always thinking of ways that I can connect both virtually and in person.
[...] GnomeyNewt lists 15 unique ways to advertise your website offline. [...]
Sarah,
I was then thinking of having different pixel pages with my head in different locations or category pages. Lots of different ways to go with it.
But it does seem like I have gotten a bit side tracked…it happens.
I have thought of some of your ideas too but my age is limiting me so much. By the way, I think of this post when you talk about tattoos:
http://www.vincentchow.net/152.....nt-tattoos
[...] Pacopac of Blue Jar writes about 15 Unique Ways to Advertise Your Website Offline. Some very nice ways. Time to start advertising your website offline [...]
Vincent, that was insane find you have there! I mean I knew people auctioned off their body parts, but he just tattoo’d because I guess he liked the websites!
[...] Read 15 Unique Ways to Advertise Your Website Offline [...]
I just decided to start offline advertising for my blog so I have cute business cards coming in the mail. My problem is I’m not sure who or where I would hand these out to.
Something for everyone
All these suggestion are great, but I have already thought of them….how do I do it on a national level I ask?
@Detmurds: I imagine if you have a lot of money that might help take it to the next level :c)
Hello Everyone.I think all of those are good ideas.I will defintely try them.I just want to get more exposure.Iam already in Google.Suppose to be in yahoo and msn.I know i would be really doing good since iam in google already.I also have submitted my site to over 200 hundred directories and plan to do 200 more in the next week.Do anyone think its a good idea to advertise more online also just as much as you do online? Because i figured since i dont have a storefront offline then it would make more since to focus on the online advertising more.
Great tips! Thank You.
I seen a picture of a guy holding a huge sign for a “gas saving” affiliate program, on the ramp to a freeway. Apparently he got 6 sales that day, for a total of about $300 for one days work. While it’s not my preferred method of advertising thinking outside the box can yield huge results. Like everything else you need to think about your target market, before your jump into anything. I.E A game website most likely will not do good at a marathon, but vegan recipes might.