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Marketing your blog offline. You’d be crazy not to.

By Barry Bell on March 14 2006

With blogging creeping into the mainstream, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t market your blog offline as well as online. Here’s a couple of cost-effective ideas for you.

Flyers & Postcards.

Flyers are reasonably cheap to design and print, and there are plenty of ways to get them in front of people, too. You could…

slot them into relevant magazines – Either do this in stealth mode while the magazines are on the shelves, or try to work something out with the magazine publisher.
do a doordrop – Hike around your neighbourhood and drop them into letterboxes. This could be especially useful if your blog covers local issues.
hand them out at stations – there are always loads of people at train stations and bus stations crying out for something to read while they’re traveling.
leave them in a strategic place – Depending on your topic or content, you could leave a few flyers in tourist offices, restaurant foyers, theatres, pubs and bars, community centres, shops, sports clubs, and leisure centres. You’ll probably need permission to do this.

Posters.

Again, reasonably cheap to design and print, but posters are fantastic at raising awareness. Instead of competing with all the band posters you see in city centres, take a more intelligent approach, and try to get some wall space inside offices, staff rooms and canteens -and any other place where your target audience might hang out regularly for more than just a few minutes at a time.

Stickers.

Everyone’s favourite. Stickers are probably the most versatile marketing tool available. Why? Because whatever it is, or wherever it’s at, you can brand virtually anything with a sticker. Use your imagination.

Beermats.

This marketing idea is often grossly overlooked. But it’s beautifully simple. And not terrible expensive, either. The premise is that pubs and restaurants are places where people talk. About anything. And one of the things that often sparks conversation is whatever’s printed onto the card beermats on the table in front of you. You usually see drinking related stuff on there, so something a little different (like advertising for a blog) will definitely be a talking point. And all it involves is getting some branded card beermats printed and then persuading a bunch of pubs to use them on their tables. Easy.

Press advertising.

Ok, this maybe isn’t as cheap as other forms of marketing, but advertising in the trade press, or local press if it’s more appropriate, has one huge benefit – it gets your message in front of a ready made audience who will readily devour every bit of information they can about their specialist subject. Including your blog.

Ambient advertising.

Another great idea that’s often overlooked. Next time you’re on a train or a bus, or even in a taxi, take a look around you. You’ll see piles of ads about piles of stuff. And because there’s not much else to look at on a train – especially if it’s underground – people tend to read them. Create a good ad for your blog, and people will also remember it, too.

Direct mail.

I love direct mail. Really. Away from your blog itself, it’s probably your only chance to catch potential readers when they’re themselves, whether that’s at home having breakfast, at home after work, at the weekend, whatever. And your direct mail doesn’t need to be anything more complicated than a simple letter explaining who you are and why they should read your blog. Trust me, people love getting letters, and there is much more chance of someone responding to a personal letter than to a quick ad they might glimpse at the corner of their eye.

Giveaways.

You can print onto just about anything now. Pens, keyrings, buttons, torches, eggs, cookies, bags, hats, t-shirts, rock, blah, blah, blah. And some of those things might not be as expensive as you think. Hand them out with flyers, post them off to anyone who joins your mailing list, or send them with your direct mail. Either way, it’s a great excercise in branding.

Any more ideas? Any stories or successes? Or even failures? Tell me…

Technorati Tags: marketing your blog, offline marketing, marketing, blog marketing

Contributor: Barry Bell

I'm a freelance writer and designer with over 10 years’ experience of creating award-winning recruitment and consumer marketing communications, together with a wide range of other creative marketing colateral. ... more »

WURK profile: http://WURK/profile/admin
Contributor website: http://barrybell.com

COMMENTS

By TDH
March 15, 2006 9:20 am

Nice list Barry. However, thinking that you’ll get readers just ’cause someone sees another bloke in a Wurk t-shirt is a bit of a long shot. I think most marketing gurus would agree with me there.

I especially like the putting flyers in magazines in stealth mode-thingy. I WILL do that! :D
By Barry Bell
March 15, 2006 1:08 pm

You don’t think so? What if it was one of those really tight gay ones??

Seriously, though, in terms of raising awareness, having a big group of people wandering around town wearing strongly branded t-shirts will do the job as far as I’m concerned.

But anyway, the t-shirts thing was just an example of something you can print on. And as a giveaway, it’s a pretty cool thing to do. It doesn’t need to be extortionately expensive, but it shows that you’re spending enough to want people to be interested.
By TDH
March 15, 2006 1:55 pm

Tight tees goes without question! However, I assumed you didn’t mean those since they generally are more expensive to print on… (Yup, I’m partly in that industry.)

;)

It’s a cool thing to give away, I’ll give you that, but as markering goes I still think it’s useless other than strengthening your brand with your present visitors. Unless you’re dishing out LOTS of tees of course, but that’s also money better spent elsewhere.
By Barry Bell
March 15, 2006 2:06 pm

I agree. Tell you what, though, I still think that one of the most powerful ways to promote a business-focused or local blog offline is by building a super targeted offline mailing list.

Much of my background is in Direct Mail for major corporations (I’m talking tens of millions of printed pieces a year). It’ll be interesting to see how it works for promoting a blog (network) on a comparatively microscopic niche level.

I’ll write up some results when I’m done.

I might also give that beermat idea a shot. Something about it just seems right.
By TDH
March 15, 2006 2:09 pm

Wish I hade the budget to do that. Direct mailing (physical) has worked very well with clients of mine selling stuff online. Let us know!
By Barry Bell
March 15, 2006 2:27 pm

Believe me, I don’t have any great marketing budget. But to start with, I’m not doing anything more than a simple DM letter.

Here’s the plan…

I’m starting with a sample of 250 very tightly targeted prospects – people who I know would be interested in the blog, but also people who I know would drive it virally towards the people they work with every single day.

In all, it’ll cost no more than £100 (GBP), and that’s only if I’m printing onto really good stock with decent quality envelopes.

I might even be able to squeeze a printed card or flyer or something else into that budget, too.

I know that spending the same on online advertising might bring you more traffic, but then again, it probably won’t be quite so ‘targeted’, either.

You’ve also got the tangible aspect to it. You can hold a letter or postcard in your hands, touch it. You can’t do that with an email or an online ad. That counts for a lot.
By TDH
March 15, 2006 2:31 pm

True. I’m very curious to hear how this’ll turn out, especially since I’ve been thinking along the same lines for a while but never gotten around to actually trying it out. Let someone else do the dirty work, I always say… ;)
By Barry Bell
March 16, 2006 8:20 pm

Heya Michael

>>”Most of your suggestions require budgets (in money and/or time) that the average blogger doesn’t have.”

I disagree. If you’re a ‘pro’ blogger, and you’re treating your blog as a business, then allocating time (and/or money) for marketing is essential – just as it is with any business.

>>”Cold mailing strangers has a very low hit rate.”

Well that depends on how well you target your mailing list.

Some more good ideas, though – I especially like the stickers on magazine covers.
By raj
March 17, 2006 5:53 am

Not sure if this’ll work for blogs, but who knows… When I used to manage a number of local bands and booked shows, I printed off large batches of stickers for each band. I handed them over and told them to strategically place stickers wherever they felt was appropriate (but without damaging property). Alternately, because these bands were mostly kids of 15-22, I suggested they also hand them out at school, to friends, etc.

For whatever reason, there’ll always be people who like free stickers, and they’re relatively inexpensive. If you’re sending stuff in the mail, a sticker with your logo and URL will be more effective – I feel – than a business card. They’re also more fun. It’s the reason why so many musical instrument and music electronics companies include stacks of them with their products.

And don’t think you have to use colour. Black and white is sometimes just as effective, depending on the kind of blog you have. (I’m thinking, say, a tattoo, art, photo, or music blog might have a lot of luck with something like this.)
By Barry Bell
March 17, 2006 10:17 am

It’s not just music-related companies that include stickers.

You get a couple of Apple stickers with every Apple piece of Apple hardware you buy. You get stickers with just about every wetsuit, surfboard or piece of surf branded clothing you buy. Same with other extreme sports gear manufacturers.

It’s all about branding. If you’ve built a cool enough brand, people will want to be seen wearing that brand – and the easiest way to do that is to slap a sticker on your bag or bike or whatever.

It means more exposure for the company, and a few cool points for dude with the sticker.

The same rules probably won’t apply to business blogs, but stickers really come into their own in place of business cards. For example, if you were sent a business card promoting a blog, you might stick in in your wallet, or in your desk drawer, or on a noticeboard. Either way, it’ll be lost in a week/month or two unless it was pretty special.

However, if you were sent a few stickers, the first thing you might do is stick one to the bezel around your monitor, for example. I’ve seen it happen a lot. Then however much time you spend looking at your monitor (again, a lot) you’ll also be spending the same amount of time looking at that sticker just off to the left. That blog url, or email, or skype address will always be there – right in front of you.

There are plenty of other places that people put them, too – and they’re virtually guaranteed to be in prominent spots. Because when people get stickers, they will *always* stick them in places that other people can see, as opposed to sticking them on a page inside a diary, or to the inside of a drawer, etc.

Think about it. It would just feel like a *waste* of a sticker – no matter how crap the sticker was.

But either way, stickers will always have that coolness about them. No science about it. They just will.