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.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
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
I love the missile truck and the build page at Ling’s site is hilarious!
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.
Pretty Good
However your message has to be spread globally not only in a very local area to be effective in the end
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
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!
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!!
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.
thanks
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.
Very cool. All great ideas. Now you got me thinking
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.
Nice Post
I live the Vodaphone promo
What next
Wonder what the front shot of the advert looks like
I love the rocket.
I would however advise against having my blog associated with the streaker (especially an ugly streaker!)
Julian Beever is amazing!
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
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.
Wow- now these are some really creative ways to get noticed- I love it!!!
Hey, this is a very interesting post and hugely entertaining. I was contemplating doing some vehicle wraps for our company, but the ideas above are outrageous!
Being realistic – this only works if you have a short, relevant and easy to remember website. Like gay.com. To get a great URL like that you need millions, so buying a streaker, missile, artist, etc should be no problem.
It does not apply to most websites, such as this one promoting Places to visit around Houston, Texas
that’s freaking so not cool though its the est advertising technique for any new website.
These kind of advertisements can give you tons of exposure, I love it. Good ideas.
Although for a common person with not much money to boot for these tips , I have to say that these are indeed going to work becaus e creative ideas like these stimulate people to check something out. Printed media is quite nice too in promoting your site offline. Although word of mouth is rare nowadays, maybe some of your loyal clients talks about your site’s amazing features to a co-worker or family. Call them old school, but some companies do these things a lot.
Very good post. It only proves that there are millions of ways to promote your website or blog offline. You only need to be a little bit creative. This gives me a lot of ideas already. I am very excited…
This post is worth millions of $$$
i Brilliant for exposure of websites very helful. thank you
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Hey thanks for sharing great idea.
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Seems like these folks were desperate to promote. Or at least that enthusiastic about their website. Streaking? Ummm, that’s a little extreme. This is actually my first time hearing about Dragon’s Den so thanks for the reference. I’ll have to take a look.
More comments from Paid Survey Siteshaha !you can do
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very cool and nice idea thanks!
very clever way of doing this. good information, thanks. daniel zane hertfordshire uk
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All the posts in this article are worth their pound in gold.
I’ll be using all the advice I can get here. If I can add a little piece of advice to our fellow readers is to think outside the box for opportunities.
What I am planning on using is buying tens if used vans on the cheap, have my logo and web address on it and place them all over town at targeted locations. The cost of it will only be penny compared to the income it will generate.
One site to check out is Office removals london
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People are often trying to figure out how to get attention. Simple solution: create something of real value and give it away freely without opt-in…but with your brand and url all over it. First comes the fame, then come the $
More comments from oliverolsenVery nice.
I once read about a guy who put his ad up in front of a speed camera, so that it showed up on the photograph people received after speeding, if I remember correctly it was a hairdressers ad
they are talented people about it and always giving inspiration
Hy!is very good your article!it`s true that people try to get attention though funny ideas!
I love the streaker idea! I know of a few companies who have purchased tanks and other military hardware to promote their web businesses.
really nice ideas
thanks
Interesting Article. Hoping that you will continue posting an article having a useful information. Thanks a lot!
More comments from Abercrombiehhhh yeah good idea
hahaha these are some very interesting methods to promote your business offline! Creative and unique – I'll try them all! Lol
Incredibly creative… I have to admit I love the streaker idea, my URL is a little too long to fit though!
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