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One of the things that online marketing has given me is an appetite for finding market niches, and even micro-niches. There's nothing like a finely tuned campaign to kepp expenses down and revenues up. But offline channels, such as print and broadcast, can feel rather blunt and ham-handed compared to the web. Lots of money spent, with most of it missing the target eyeballs or eardrums.
CABLE TV
Here's a potential gem of a marketing channel. The cable companies I know all have regional ad inventory available for national programming. You can pick your network, pick your program, and pick what geographical areas you want the ad dropped into.
Talk about surgical! You've got a website that you want to pitch to certain demographics, they've got the data to help you do that.
The biggest mistake I ever made with local cable advertising was trying to go for a high end production value. Simple slides with voice overs are much easier to create on a budget than if you go for video -- which requires expensive lighting, lenses, and general technology expertise that doesn't come cheap. And if your video looks down-scale compared to the programming that surrounds it, you lose. So I learned to stay with the easier to produce still shots.
WEEKLY PAPERS
Many communities have a local weekly paper, even if they're near or even within a major city. And today, all the weeklies in a given region are often owned by a single company. This means you can take out a print ad and target it to various demographics by community, all with one contract.
Another nice thing -- if you end up being a regular advertiser with a particular TV, radio, or print channel, then you may catch lots of free advertising. This is not the web. Air time must be filled and newspapers/magazines must add 4 pages of paper at a time. This results in open at inventory
What often happens is that regular advertisers often get free extras. I've enjoyed actual rates that were as low as 10% of the published card rate, just by having good ads that they could use to fill unsold inventory.
It's worth a try - you can promote an international website through a local or regional offline marketing channel -- why not? Make sure you build in good metrics for your offline campaigns and you may learn something new about your target market.
And you can also go national/international for short money. Those weekly "newspapers" you see in the supermarket have classifieds that are surprisingly well read. I knew a woman a couple years ago who owned a recipe website -- she was totally supported by her recipe and cookbook business -- and she got her start by selling salsa recipes through the National Enquirer classified. Last I heard she still works both channels.
Does anyone else have related experiences?
But, the good thing about all these forms of media, they love to provide you (the advertiser) with lots of statistics - circulation / demographic breakdown / etc.
So, you can easily find out whether its gonna be worth your while or not.
The problem arises when designing your advert to catch your target market! :)
Scott
Regards
Henry
