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.

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.)

>>”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.

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.

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.

;)

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.

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.