Offline To Online Marketing Methods

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Spades said:
Sounds like a bad ass idea Aequitas. I'm sure you're promoting something with a $10+ payout and not some $1.50 zip submit, otherwise those numbers will probably work against you. Please keep the thread updated, I'm itching to try this shit myself.
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Don't discount junkmail. I made some serious bank off of it when I was at Uni, hitting up the dorm mailboxes at various campuses.
Of course, my costs were pretty much only time & effort, because I'd found out one of the codes that the Journalism department used for their photocopier budget (suuuweeet free colour copies! Although it probably does explain the drop in quality of handouts at the end of that semester for my PR subject).
Anyway, I got about a 2.5%-3% conversion rate on an offer that was paying out $32.50, and over the 2,000 or so students that lived at the dorms, it worked quite nicely for what was maybe a full day's work.
 


HarveyJ said:
Don't discount junkmail. I made some serious bank off of it when I was at Uni, hitting up the dorm mailboxes at various campuses.
Of course, my costs were pretty much only time & effort, because I'd found out one of the codes that the Journalism department used for their photocopier budget (suuuweeet free colour copies! Although it probably does explain the drop in quality of handouts at the end of that semester for my PR subject).
Anyway, I got about a 2.5%-3% conversion rate on an offer that was paying out $32.50, and over the 2,000 or so students that lived at the dorms, it worked quite nicely for what was maybe a full day's work.
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Were you just stuffing flyers in their mailbox?

Anyone ever tried taping a flyer to the side of the community mailboxes? The area I live in has 1 central mailbox for about 60 houses. Hmmmm
 
Anyone ever tried advertising on the paper placemats at local diners? Or even some of the free rags they got - CoffeeNews, Pennysaver, etc.?
 
We have CoffeeNews as well. It's in the Gloria Jeans coffee chain (it's kinda like StarBucks for Aussies, but run by the evangelical Hillsong Church as a tax dodge). I've thought about running stuff in it, but I'm not too sure of the value either, seeing as the ads in it seem to be by municipality, not even by region.

Crazyfish: Preeeety much. Backed it up with a few posters around campus too, so it sorta looked semi official. Especially after the student union had "stamped" it... (thank you Vista Print free rubber stamps! BWUHAHAHAA :D)
 
i did buy an ad in a newspaper a year ago to promote online dating and it didnt work at all. I spent $60 for the ad and i think i made about $10 back.
I just didnt get much traffic from it.
 
Jizzlobber said:
Anyone ever tried advertising on the paper placemats at local diners? Or even some of the free rags they got - CoffeeNews, Pennysaver, etc.?
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I'm thinking about testing dating offers at local, ethnic diners that are popular.
e.g. SPanish dating offers at local mexican food places, Jewish dating at Kosher places etc...

But not in papers, but on posti-it boards near the entrance. Or mabe even working out a custom deal with the restaurants for interesting placements (menu flyers, placemets, table stands).

Something like "Does this date suck? Find Spanish singles you'll actually like at Site.Com"

ok, maybe that's not the right copy, but you get the idea..

I just need to get my shit together, got too much going on now. :Yahoo_29:
 
assi9 said:
With only a 1% response rate it would be profitable. The norm is 1-3%, sometimes as high as 8% if the copy is good


Nationwide Newspapers - Place Classified & Display Ads In Newspapers

^^^^ Has anyone ever tried these guys?
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Seems like this is worth a shot just to test it:

"Try out this 1 million circulation special for only $180.00! Nationwide Newspapers will select 20 different cities to place your ad in nationwide, each with a circulation of 30,000 to 80,000. Great for test marketing your ads. We select 20 cities from a group of the hottest weekly American Classifieds(Thrifty Nickels), and other weeklies. This price is for a 20 word ad for one week. Each additional word over 20 words is $10.00 per word. (.50 per word per publication)."



Your Ad In 1 Million Papers!
 
I found a classified network in my area that I think I will test the waters with, only thing I am not liking it that you can't bold any words or use a border so it's streams and streams of text although they break it down into section and the section headers have box around the title. The section I am going to run my ad in has no other listings, I'm hoping this will make it stand out enough. $150 for 800K circulation.
 
rgordon83 said:
Seems like this is worth a shot just to test it:

"Try out this 1 million circulation special for only $180.00! Nationwide Newspapers will select 20 different cities to place your ad in nationwide, each with a circulation of 30,000 to 80,000. Great for test marketing your ads. We select 20 cities from a group of the hottest weekly American Classifieds(Thrifty Nickels), and other weeklies. This price is for a 20 word ad for one week. Each additional word over 20 words is $10.00 per word. (.50 per word per publication)."

Your Ad In 1 Million Papers!
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That does look like a good idea but I'd love to see what kind of traffic volume actually comes out of that. The ad might be tucked away in the back among 100's of others.

I'm placing an order for a few of their small 15K to 30K circulation weeklies right now. I'll post some results after the ads drop.
 
Spades said:
That does look like a good idea but I'd love to see what kind of traffic volume actually comes out of that. The ad might be tucked away in the back among 100's of others.
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I just called them for some demographics info. They're getting back to me. I'm probably gonna test it though, unless the demo is way off.

For $180....?? that's nothing...

EDIT:

Also, here are the 20 cities that are included:

Birmingham, AL
Boise, ID
Bowling Green, KY
Dallas, TX
Ft Collins, CO
Gainesville, GA
Houston, TX
Kerrville, TX
Lawton, OK
Nashville, TN
Panama City, FL
Paris, TX
Pueblo, CO
Roanoke, VA
San Antonio, TX
Shreveport, LA
St Joseph, MO
Temple, TX
Valdosta, GA
Wichita Falls, TX


They have another package for $80 more that you can select the cities. But they only have a list of 100 cities, and many are small. But actually most are in my target area for a geo-offer i have. I'll keep you guys posted...
 
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Let's say you offer pays $20, you would need 9 conversions to break even. I would hope out of a 1 million circulation you could get 9 people to convert. Otherwise that is completely useless and why would other advertise with them.
 
crazyfish said:
Let's say you offer pays $20, you would need 9 conversions to break even. I would hope out of a 1 million circulation you could get 9 people to convert. Otherwise that is completely useless and why would other advertise with them.
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Keep in mind the papers themselves get 1 mil circulation. Let's say 10% read the classifieds (these are smaller town papers, so that could be low. For a regular paper that's high). And let's say of that 10%, another 10% see your ad. So thats 10k impressions.

Of that 10k, lets say 10% go to your URL. Thats 1000 visitors. Of those 1000, maybe 2% convert (if they have to pay) and 5% convert if it's a form of registration. and 20% convert if it's just a zip submit.

So out of that 1 million, 20 people may buy.
50 may register for free
200 may give you their zip.

Now those numbers were made up. But they're pretty close to typical response rates at each-step of the process. So those numbers are probably not way off.

Obviously there are other factors than can improve or hurt these numbers (mainly your ad copy, landing page copy/ design, and overall message consistency).
 
Please do keep us posted on the 1mil results. I ended up spending $60 on a couple smaller weeklies here in FL, total circulation of ~ 200k. Wrote targeted ads for each city which I'm sure will improve results. They drop next Thursday so I'll have some results to post up.

I was thinking about setting up a cheap toll free voice box (minus the voice mail feature) with a quick message re-stating the web address and that online is the ONLY way to get the "deal." I would think this would give the offer a little more credibility.

Crazyfish, I agree that it seems too good to be true BUT personally, the pennysaver shit that hits my mailbox goes straight to the trash. That's exactly what a lot of these papers are, so I'm pretty sure out of those huge circulation numbers the amount of people who actually read them is quite a lot less.

Lets keep this thread going.
 
I am trying this out in 3 different cities in three different ways (mortgage / medical / life insurance).

The first one runs in two days (Village Voice) - will see how it goes. Total ad budget is $500ish so even if it is a complete bust it won't hurt.
 
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