5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Website Offline
Print your url on a fake rocket
Former Dragons Den contestant and winner of North East Entrepreneur of the Year Ling Valentine has a unique method of promoting her car leasing website.
In 2005 Ling had a 6 wheeled military truck imported from the People’s Liberation Army in Shanghai and her husband built a giant nuclear missile to go on top. The truck was parked next to the A1 motorway in North East England for a couple of years before being moved to one of the busiest motorways in Western Europe, the M62, where it remains.
Millions of motorists see the missile truck every year and it is no doubt a much better investment than any online advertising campaign in such a competitive industry.
Draw it on the street
Julian Beever is the worlds most famous street artist and has been commissioned by large companies such as Sony to promote their products by drawing them with chalk on the ground. Virtually any picture released on the web by Julian is reposted on hundreds of blogs and is almost guaranteed to make the Digg homepage.
Ask Julian to paint you a stunning picture with your website in it and publicity is almost guaranteed.
Pitch in the Dragons Den
Hundreds of companies pitch in the Dragons Den every year but only a few of them are web based businesses. Some of the most famous are Lings Cars (owner of the rocket above), Gaming Alerts and most recently Hungry House.
The one thing these sites have in common is a huge influx of traffic after the show. The day after Hungry House were on TV thousands of people were searching for them on Google and even competing sites saw an increase in business because of it. Their Alexa Rank went through the roof and continues to rise even today.
Paint your url on a streaker
In 2002 Vodafone paid a New Zealand rugby fan to run onto the pitch during an All Blacks vs Australia game wearing nothing but the Vodafone logo.
The streaker was fined £30,000 and Vodafone were more than happy to pay it in return for publicity in almost every newspaper across the world.
If you can find somebody willing to streak at a major public event the press coverage is likely to far outweigh any fines levied, especially for large companies with multi million pound marketing budgets. Recently television networks have been reluctant to give coverage to streakers so this tactic may not be as effective in 2008.
Project your website address onto a building
Most people remember the infamous FHM stunt involving a giant image of Gail Porter, a very large projector and the Houses of Parliament. The publicity was huge and so was the cost, around £40,000.
Luckily the cost of hiring a big projector nowadays is more affordable and you don’t even need a giant building any more. Arcstream can not only project your URL onto any building you like but they can even create a giant wall of water vapour and project onto that instead.
Categories: Marketing
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Haha nice ideas, Dragons Den is my favourite program and I got the book at Christmas, read it in 2 days
*Googles “streakers for hire”* :p
Matt Jones January 8, 2008 12:41 am | Reply
I love the missile truck and the build page at Ling’s site is hilarious!
Sucker January 8, 2008 1:43 am | Reply
Genius, genius moves! I wish I had thought of them myself. Oh that, and coming up with the £50,000 I might need to defray any costs and fines I may receive in the process. But genius, nonetheless.
Lucy Dee January 8, 2008 2:57 am | Reply
Pretty Good
However your message has to be spread globally not only in a very local area to be effective in the end
A Faithful Employee January 8, 2008 3:25 am | Reply
[…] wrong. I really do appreciate you stopping by. Enjoy!There is an interesting post over Blogstorm, 5 ways to promote a website offline, the 5 methods Patrick talks about are very good and are proven tactics that have been used with […]
Offline Marketing Methods for a Website >> My 5 :: UK SEO/SEM BLOG >> B10G January 8, 2008 4:28 am | Reply
Nice list Patrick my favourite is definitely the paint your url on a streaker! I decided to do my own version of the list on my blog here
B10G January 8, 2008 5:04 am | Reply
Or more than one of them! Ling also was on Dragon’s Den and this got her plenty of publicity to. She’s also one of the people offering freebies as a promotional technique, she’ll send you a free lunch! And then as you expect when it arrives you tell everyone about it!
Ling is a fantastic marketer!
Diane January 8, 2008 8:43 am | Reply
Love Dragons Den - and this post has given me some great ideas to promote my Limos - Look out for something special along the A1 very soon!!
Durham Limo Hire January 8, 2008 11:42 am | Reply
Back in a days some gay dating website placed their advertising banner on Mass. Avenue is Cambridge. Residents complained a lot… ad was removed by Cambridge City Hall.
Sergey Rusak January 8, 2008 10:08 pm | Reply
thanks
Jon January 10, 2008 8:47 pm | Reply
I think I looked at the Coke picture for ten minutes to realize it was drawn on the street. Simply amazing..
I like the projector idea. Maybe combine it with a gathering of people, like right outside a concert or such.
West January 11, 2008 3:59 am | Reply
[…] I love guerilla marketing, so I really liked these 5 off line promotion techniques […]
Link Building this Week (02.2008) | Wiep.net January 11, 2008 8:11 pm | Reply
Very cool. All great ideas. Now you got me thinking
7leads January 12, 2008 10:53 am | Reply
Yeah, you surely got our creative juices flowing.
It would great to see some REALLY thought-provoking ideas flowing that have the least cost involved.
So basically, a post outlining ideas that have the highest return on investment (ROI)…
The lads at Grafdom last month did something quite intriguing when they got permission to have the URL of a client’s blog printed on all the seats of a football stadium. It cost peanuts and had a rather lucrative feedback.
Marianne January 14, 2008 12:57 am | Reply
Nice Post
TPN WEB DESIGN INC. January 14, 2008 4:31 pm | Reply
I live the Vodaphone promo
What next
Wonder what the front shot of the advert looks like
I Would Rather be at the Cottage January 14, 2008 10:59 pm | Reply
I love the rocket.
I would however advise against having my blog associated with the streaker (especially an ugly streaker!)
Not John Chow January 15, 2008 9:12 am | Reply
Julian Beever is amazing!
Melia Widjaja January 19, 2008 6:43 pm | Reply
Hahaha the one with the beamer, this is so funny. You could do everything with it on almost everything.
/me is searching a big flat at the highway right now on Google Maps
geld lenen February 10, 2008 11:54 pm | Reply
Haha good post. I would say invest to display our ad on all the buildings of a colony.. Those kinda things get publicity through word of mouth too
And these kind of offline promotion methods help for big companies that seek to find some sales of products etc.
Chetan February 21, 2008 4:23 pm | Reply