Local Dating Offline Marketing
Posted on April 23rd, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Promotion
Being involved in the Internet Marketing industry gives you a slightly different perspective in everyday life sometimes. When see ads on tv, it makes you wonder things like, “How much are they spending on that ad spot? What’s their ROI like?” It helps you spot obvious scams much more easily than the average Joe. It also opens your eyes to the creative efforts of other internet marketers and their strategies.
Last week Nickycakes visited his folks to surprise his dad for his birthday. While driving around town Cakes spotted a sign that read something like “Single? [LocalCity]Dating.org.” It was a small sign, white cardboard, maybe 2 feet wide, with 2 small metal posts, stuck into the ground near a sign at an intersection. Later on, he noticed more and more of them, all around the city.
That’s nearly free advertising. Thousands of impressions per day. It couldn’t have cost more than $100 for all the signs. Nickycakes made a mental note to check the site later on.
That evening, checking the site out was a little surprising. The guy/girl had set up their own service where you had to fill out a lengthy 4 step signup form and then wait to be contacted by some “dating expert.” Too much work. It would have been much easier to make a little landing page saying something like “there are 234234 singles signed up in [LocalCity]. Sign up here to search for free.” And just direct em to singlesnet or true.com at your favorite affiliate network. Seems like you could put up the signs and forget about it until you start getting your checks.
Cakes out.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Brilliant. I love offline crossovers. Could probably do that too with debt/housing/insurance offers. Or zip submit gas cards… at least that way you know they’re in the U.S.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
I’ve done this and it works veryyyyy well. I’d also recommend if you have a niche store — print off 1000 flyers and keep hitting stores with them.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:21 am
You’re exactly right about the perspective thing. You see dollars signs in everything once you start AM. I’ve been seeing these around the Milwaukee metro area for years. It’s always been the usual suspects, weight loss, make money at home, dating etc. Just goes to show how many overweight, broke, lonely people there are. Would be great to see a case study done on this sometime, I’ve always wanted to try it so thanks for the inspiration.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Yes, this works wonders. I’ve done it without the signs, just printed off lots of papers and taped them to light poles at busy intersections. Use some color on the page and it will attract even more eyes.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Although buying a few small supplies this is a great idea. A little tip from one of my partners as I am not in the dating niche but he is. This wont effect him so he made a bunch of fliers. He lives in a large city so it worked out for him to go to bars and clubs and place these fliers. Most of the places let him place them for free, I do believe he paid a few places some small fees as well though.
With him though he was capturing emails and still is to this day I believe before sending them to the free profile signups.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
ah yeah thats prolly a better idea ruck. can send them to multiple sites over time that way.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Ya, I’ve seen the same signs on my little island here in North Florida.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I see this everywhere! Was going to try it myself just haven’t had the time…
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I’ve seen this around Atlanta before. I’m thinking about doing this just to see if it works or not. I’ll e-mail you if I do what my results were.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I have been researching affordable offline strategies to drive traffic to my sites. National campaigns can be expensive but local campaigns offer greater ROI.
I pulled out my old real estate sales training manuals and got a lot of good ideas.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
great post nicky..
so even a person with no skills has no excuse to not try to make money?
i am running out of excuses.
great idea!..thank you
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I saw a few of these signs around my town… a lot of them actually. Now I can’t remember the URL to see where they went
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Is it legal to just post a sign like this on public property?
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I have made money bidding on these keywords and sending them to my own dating offers.They have dried up in S. Florida though.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Ok I was thinking this over throughout the day and other ways to game local ideas.
1)Go and get some stickers printed that say “$250 gas card, blah blah blah, go to this website”
2)Go around to gas stations at your town and stick them on the pumps, around where they have to put your credit card in.
3)Check results.
Shazam. Instant thousandaire.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
@ steveplace - Not a bad idea right there. Although I believe its an ebook isn’t the gas to water product on clickbank converting at a insane conversion? Matter of fact, just looking at it I see a gravity of 487. Yea, must be a seller. Take and apply
April 24th, 2008 at 12:47 am
It IS illegal and there were 2 guys arrested for doing this in my town because they kept putting their signs up… people got pissed raised hell.. and after like the 4th time they got arrested for it. Vandalism, destruction of property, and littering.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Probably best to check your local littering laws then!
April 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
In the majority of cities it is illegal. However, in larger cities you can ususally get away with it for while before they are removed. On thing to think about though. If you use this idea for AM, and only place the ad text with url, there will be no phone number or contact info. So, as long as you have your domain proxied, you should be golden.
-Matt
April 24th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Forgot to mention, they could still get your info from the affiliate network. But do you really thing they will go through that much trouble? I don’t.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:45 am
@mobrep: i’d rather you not do anything that is illegal, but affiliate networks usually never give out affiliates private information unless ordered to do so by courts. you’d be wise to never put yourself in a situation that warranted such actions, though.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:38 am
The whole offline marketing is a very interesting subject. Do you think its possible to promote zip submits with say 25,000 Flyers.
25K flyers would cost me about $440 from this place
leaflet printing, leaflets, full colour leaflet printing (might be able to get them it cheaper for A6 or A7, especially as that price is for A5)
I can pay a polish guy down the road from me about $100 to hand out about 10,000 flyers outside a tube station here in London. You could probably rinse that many in about an hour.
I’d need to find an offer that is perfect for UK commuters. One that they wont be able to resist getting to work, logging into their email system and whacking in their email address.
Something like free make up sample for chicks would be awesome.
I would need to get a conversion rate of 2.16% to break even, anything more is profit. If I want to scale this idea up I can get more polish dudes and get them to wait outside more tube stations.
I will capture the emails of these chicks and send them other offers by email.