..let me share an offline affiliate marketing idea of mine (18)
..let me share an offline affiliate marketing idea of mine
I've had this idea for ever, and even though I'm sure it won't make a ton of dough i've always wanted to know how it would convert. So feel free to chime and and let me know what you think, or ways to improve it and i will eventually do it as a case study!
The idea:
Setup a unique offer funnel, and advertise it through custom flyers (on cars) at national NHL, NBA, etc.. league games.
This operation has 3 key elements:
1. being as targeted as possible with the campaigns
2. making a good flyer that people will keep
3. having a good relating landing page/ offer funnel
..so to explain it as an example I'll use NHL games.
Basically you would custom design very enticing flyers, giving away free NHL tickets for the HOME team playing. Actually buy 2 tickets to give away, and raffle them off once all the data is collected. You'd then go to the game and place the flyers on every single car (research all possible parking in the area for the game).
Were talking 20,000 - 45,000 flyers!!! (but pre-test with a smaller amount)
These games happen 2-3x a week.
From here the offer idea is up to you, it can be a custom path you make, coreg, an IQ quiz, all you need to know is you must match your landing page to the flyers.
There's tons of optimizing you can do!
Offer an end date for the contest flyer (which i'd highly suggest).
Easily scale to every major game in the area, you could be out there doing this 7 days a week! Also it can be scaled to nearby cities!
..but this is the main idea. If someone does this you MUST let me know how it goes!
is this legal?
Haha ya don't know if that is legal. But if it is...you should try it Jordan! It would be an interesting study. You could also stand outside the stadium handing them out but dunno if cops with taser you.
If someone is willing to do it. I'll be happy to fund the process!
I've done something similar. You can find stadium data and average attendance for each game for each team on wikipedia. The costs for something like this are actually pretty high... even if you do 20k flyers to hand out on regular B&W 8.5x11" paper, and you find a local printer to do the copies for you, you're talking about at least $400-600 just in printing costs. I know I sure as hell don't want to stand outside handing shit out to people, so you hire people off Craigslist. Most people willing to do this kind of work are ghetto people who cannot find other work (the type people already avoid). People usually come in a mob 1 hour before the game, so you need at least a team of 5-10 promoters all handing it out during that rush till the game starts. Also, you need to stand there like a tool and be the equivalent of a foreman supervising these animals handing your promo materials out or else the second you turn your back, they will dump your flyers in the trash or just stop handing them out. This can of course all be outsourced, you hire 2 foreman, 8 workers. The workers you pay $10/hr for a 3 hour slot of time at the minimum, the supervisors $15/hr, and you're talking about another $350.
20k flyers even theoretically handed out to every single person who comes through (unlikely, I live in NY and even Yankees' average attendance is < 20k), you need a 3.35% conversion rate just to break even. My flyers were as borderline trademark infringing as you could get without blatantly putting on logo's or using the team's trademarked name (big no-no's if you're going to be soliciting, especially on their own grounds). Kind of like how in commecials, NFL players all wear some generic jersey that has their team colors and their number and name but not any of the logo's that they'd have to pay royalties to the NFL/team for. I even had a domain name matched for the message, and a mobile-optimized website for people to get their free iPad 2's (zip submit) if they correctly picked the winner of the game.
Now given this was with the lowest cost production/quality of materials (regular B&W paper), but any kind of more professional advertisement where you kind of infer you are representing the team while not outwardly saying it (to avoid legal issues) costs on average 10x more than this.
If people want to chip in money to see how this works, I could run it providing full transparency (NYC has 7 professional sports teams)... but my gut feeling is that unless you have some insane backend, fancier and higher quality promo materials will not yield that high of an ROI
I would say hire some people from craiglist to put them out for you. Give them a small amount and tell them if you get x amount of people to the site they will get a substantial amount more. That would make them more likely to actual hand them out rather then throw them in the trash and tell you they handed them out.
This definitely could work, and allows you some good options to split-test designs and ad copy.
And none of the deliverability/open-rate problems of email with a flyer wedged under someone's windshield wiper!
oh my god. 'flyers' !
that and 'tiny ads in the back of newspapers'
is how I went 'pro' 25yrs ago.
and brodgers is correct.
unless you have a trailing backend its a losing propistion.
with a residual rebill it works great.
my 1st retirement that brought me to CALI and made me $15k a week was from those, newspapers and banners ands on something called 'alta vista'
thanks to brodgers for sharing his data 
I had this crazy idea to set up near miltary bases and offer payday loan services ( they are all over the bases ) and instead of having this huge operation, I would have a touchscreen kiosk that would just take the person to a payday loan affiliate offer.
I could advertise double what most payday loan vendors max out on with loans by offering 2 offers back to back ( like acai + colon ) and instant money transfer.
Get a small place in a strip mall, set up the kiosk, have a glass window to help people that are stuck, and your set.. no money to be had with you and no risk.
eliquid that's not a bad idea or some shape/form of it.
@brodgers
Putting them on cars would be better IMO then handing it out to people. These people are on their way to a game, they don't want to see it on the way in, and on the way out there in a rush.
@eliquid
I remember a discussion like this on wickedfire relating to malls/flee markets with similar offers. As long as no incentive is involved that idea and a lot of other similar ones could work. The problem is when they see interest rates/rebill rates, or whatever it is your promoting they'll come back to where they signed up, instead of dealing with the actual company (and i don't blame them).
Actually read a Warrior Forum post where the guy was doing exactly this but using a text to win (using a website is very low conversion). The offer was text to win VIP at a club & 2 free drinks. Then the text auto responder sent them a incentivizable napster offer that they had to complete to be eligible to win the prize. He would go out to the clubs and then leave a little early and hit all the cars in the downtown area. You have to be be careful because some cities have ordances against doing this not to mention security at a sports stadium.
Read Post Here
Originally Posted by eliquid
wouldnt all the leads come from the same cookie / IP? you would have to tell your network how your promoting the offer..
How do the networks generally feel about offline promotion?
I've got a take on this that I want to try, for example taking a loan offer and making a geo targetted flyer (using area name etc on flyer) and target the less affluent areas of town pushing flyers through doors and on cars.
Thoughts etc...?
I have done a lot of offline marketing including brand promotion..Here are my thoughts..
1) The further away the target is from the offer, the more distraction they will have and they will quickly forget about it. Think about this..person has to hang on to the flyer or detach the flyer from the windshield (whatever method you use), then review the flyer, then hold on the flyer in the car, then unload the flyer from the car to the home and then finally take it to the computer. Obviously you will have users who can remember the website, but that's rarely the case. There are too many distractions in the above mentioned funnel. Maybe stopping for gas, food, etc. etc.
2) Perhaps one way it may work better is if you can tie it into SMS somehow with QR code. For example, the flyer can say "Send a text message to 55990 with the keyword of your favorite team and enter to win $1,000"
This way you can capture their phone number.
3) You can even take this idea further by doing a bit of grey hat technique such as, take a lot of pictures of the people who are at the game and then right away setup a news type of website with pictures and as soon as the game is finished mass text the subscribers with the news url and tell them that to checkout their picture. There you can capture email address or other offers.
Originally Posted by vidivo
If you work with lead gen companies like leadn or leadmesh, you just end up selling these leads to brokers and end dealers and they could care less what IP the lead originated from.
Based on my experience with marketing my old band or helping various music venues advertise, always print handouts on regular 8.5 x 11 paper but put 4 copies of the flyer onto one sheet in quarters. Not only does this cut your printing costs way down but it leaves the individual with something they can put in their pocket and discover later in the day. Using a full sheet is instant throwaway for me when this happens.
@vidivo
Along with eliquids comment, if you did want to work with aff networks, most of the time you just let them know your operation before hand, and they'll checkout quality, as long as its backing for the advertiser there generally won't be an issue.
I know someone who's done this here in Victoria. The problem is, at least here, you'll end up getting a call from city officials asking why you're littering because such a high % of people will just crumble it up and toss it on the ground.
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