I am looking for information on how to market my business website offline. I am always getting phone calls and emails from online advertising agencies but I want to go down a different route.

Does anyone have any good offline marketing ideas?

Interesting...

Flyers, - fairly cheap to produce and you can proabably pay some kids to deliver/hand them out or do it yourself. Make sure you've got a good design. Theres plenty of good designers out there willing to do jobs for next to nothing. Expecially on the freelance sites such as RentACoder.

Posters, as above, careful you don't get done for flyposting though!

Stickers? T-Shirts? (see Cafepress thread in the Dropshipping forum)

If you have regular customers you could send them a letter offering them a (small) discount for recommending you to a friend.

Radio? local stations have quite good advertising rates.

Anything that gets your name to the public is good!

Thanks,
I have been through most of the popular ones and have even thought about advertising on the back of a bus! Some of the ideas that are cropping up are so novel;

Like I saw one guy on ebay who was selling advertising space on his head!

just wish I had thought of them.

Haha, I read an article on the darwin awards (http://www.darwinawards.com). A guy heard a competition on the radio to win $100,000 if he got the logo of the radio station tatooed on his forehead. He did it and it turned out that he had missed the part where they said it was an april fools prank. What an idiot!

Buses are a good idea, bit expensive i'd imagine though.

What about the adverts in pub toilets?

People always read them (if their in a state to remember them in the morning is a different matter).

Heres a few links...
http://www.hi-tech.co.uk/newsletter/newsfeb05.htm
http://www.warnerhowardmedia.co.uk/home.html
http://www.positivemediamarketing.co.uk/.../index.htm
http://www.eyelevelmedia.co.uk/main.htm
http://www.men-arena.com/corporate/adver...tions.html

The top four are agencies and the bottom one is the MEN arena in manchester. I've seen the hi-tech media ones everywhere though, especially the student scream chain which are all over the country.

Just stick washroom/bathroom advertising into google and you'll get loads.

Loads of football clubs offering it too.

Hope this helps.

Thats a great idea... why didn't i think of that.

Anyone done this before? I'd be interested in how much it costs.

A few of them hav eother ideas like beermats talking posters(!) washroom poster dispensers, even screens on the hand dryers! Blade Runner style or what?!




Check it out

I've e-mailed hi-tech media to get a quote for you guys.

Looks cool.

Hope its not too expensive, big companies advertise on these things...

flyers are always a good honest cheap option, but in advertising, you would only expect around a 1 to 3% uptake so you need to be serious and post lots. Flyers are becomming more and more lacking in their return as folks have started to learn to ignor them (how many flyers though your door do you acutally sit down and read??) but they are a good starting point.

Its realy down to what you are promoting.
How about sharing what you are trying to promote and see if we can could up with some really of the wall original ideas to help you

Depending on what the product/website is, some don’t warrant any offline advertising. I used to be the editor for a monthly magazine and managed to sneak a few of my sites in to the mag when I could.

So it’s probably a better option to place a targeted magazine ad then leaflet drop. Daily newspapers offer very little return for your outlay, but if you have a local monthly magazine, this these are great value as people keep them and read them a couple of times over the period.

Any word back on the toilet posters?

Hi, yeah just received an e-mail from hi-tech media today.

The rates are suprisingly low! Starting from £49 p/month for 500 venues for posters.

That is pretty low, Think i'll give them an e-mail too.

R u sure
I asked for rates last Month, the company are about 26 steps away from my front door by the way.

POSTERS 325mm x 525mm portrait
Live area 310mm x 485mm

Gtr Manchester
Venues 135
Panels (1 x gents 1 x ladies) 270
Rate (gross) £35pp per month
Production (net) £415 per 1 design

Ah missed the PP bit didn't I! Per Poster! DOH!

Sorry everyone!

Camsi.

no worries i had to look twice, also try booking for around christmas time, not a chance all busy times are booked up