Offline advertisment ?

[mickey]

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with offline advertisment ?

Magazines, billboards, flyers - sponsoring parties or events etc ?

Also if anyone has a list of urls for "offline" magazines that would be great and getting ready to give it a go...

[Lee]

The only problem you are going to see with offline advertising is that you have no way of tracking the results.

Also, offline advertising is primarily used as a branding tool, not a traffic generation tool and it frequently requires multiple campaign runs.

If you are looking for 'traffic' you would be much better off sticking with traditional online advertising methods, if you want to build your brand, and have a budget, go with offline advertising.

We're currently running some advertising in our local bars down here, we got some bar mats printed up with one gay site on one side, and one lesbian site on the other, everyone who buys a drink at our local gay clubs get given a bar mat to put their drink on.

There hasnt been a lot of new sales but what has come in, has paid for the cost of getting the mats printed up and its only been runnning about 30 days

One other thing im noticing is that a lot more companies who have traditionally stuck to online advertising are looking at venturing to the 'offline' world and trying their hands at that whilst a lot of the companies who traditionally stuck with offline advertising are now trying their hand at 'online' advertising.

Its almost as if these companies have exhausted their reach in their advertising medium and are looking at ways to generate 'new' traffic because their existing sources have become somewhat stale to the methods that have been used by them for so many years.

Regards,

Lee

[mickey]

Thank you for that info Lee..

I understand what you are saying about the difficulties in tracking the traffic generated so will have to figure that out , perhaps some kind of cupon code they can enter to indicate that they are from the offline ad etc..

Do you think there is a different between the effects it will have on membership sales VS toys / DVDs ? or is it equally "shitty" ?

[lisa]

Hi Mickey;
Please feel free to email me at lisa@badpuppy.com and I'll give you the names of some of the print publications we've had success with and how we track it.

I can also let you know what consumer events we do that have been successful for us.

[Lee]

Do you think there is a different between the effects it will have on membership sales VS toys / DVDs ? or is it equally "shitty" ?

I do beleive the product on offer has a significant impact on how well offline (and even online) advertising works.

That being said, i dont think either form of advertising can be called 'shitty' it just depends on what your intentions for the advertising are as i said, if you want branding, and have the budget, go for long term offline ad campaigns, if you want instant traffic and have the budget, go with online campaigns.

For the best mix though, id go with with both offline and online so long as you are able to track the results of each, oh and id definately take Lisa up on her offer of help to, BadPuppy has been using both types of advertising for many years and im sure they have a wealth of information at hand

Regards,

Lee