Good Idea / Bad Idea

Marketing Offline.

[andmunn]

I have a very "niche" targeted website, which focuses on a specific industry. The website is not live yet, but hopefully will be within the next month.

My site is a membership based services site, with membership costing around $40/month (very reasonable for "companies" in the industry i'm dealing with).

I'm debating mailing out approximately 100 "promotion" kits to a select group of people to see the results. These kits would include:

1. My business card
2. A nice pen with my company logo on it.
3. A set of 10 golf tee's with my company name on it.
4. A set of 5 stickers with my company name on it.
5. An invitation card to join the network, which lists the benefits, etc.

I've priced this, and it's something i could do very affordably right now.

Has anyone had any experience with this? Is this a good idea, or a waste of money? Should i just try to target them by contacting them directly online? Any input is appreciated.

Thanks,
Andrew.

[sidyadav]

Not sure if this would help, but I have a shop at ****.com, where users can buy stuff, and I myself by my own stuff then sell those as a fundraiser sometimes (a real one - not a trick/scam) or just for money.

I buy packages at a time, for whatever reason, and if my use is not for fundraising - it makes me good money.

I'd say go for it!

Sid

[edited by: stuntdubl at 1:08 pm (utc) on May 11, 2004]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[digitalv]

I would only do one T-Shirt ... if I got 10 T-shirts from the same company 9 of them would end up being used to wax the car :P

Other than that, if you have it worked into the budget go for it. But ONLY do this for advertising purposes, not for existing customers. Some people will disagree with my philosophy on this, but I don't give out promotional items to people AFTER they are customers - any extra money that could go to that instead gets spent on improving the service I'm providing, not buttering them up with dollar store items :)

[Dpeper]

digitalv,

I would only do one T-Shirt ... if I got 10 T-shirts from the same company 9 of them would end up being used to wax the car :P

If you were reffering to

A set of 10 golf tee's with my company name on it.

He was talking about the kind of tee you hit a golf ball off of. :)

Anywho.. I think offline promotion can be very sucsefull in the right nich, well i managed to state the obvious but hey...

Donny

[andmunn]

LOL :)

Yes..i am talking about golf tee's...it's actually something people could use in my industry, although it's unrelated, people in this industry tend to play alot of golf :)

[Undead Hunter]

10 is too many. Most will get used when people are painting their homes, etc. In fact, I can't imagine a serious executive wearing your shirt on a course anyway. They'd wear their own company shirt, or something that looked good.

Golf balls, on the other hand, might be OK IF they are good balls. Why?

Imagine two good golfers, both driving a ball close to each other:

Potential Client: "Hmm. Which ball was yours?"

Client 1: "(Your company name here)"

Again, though, serious golfers will want their own kind of golf balls. Know when they'd pull yours out? When there's a WATER HAZARD!

And I can't imagine what they'd do with stickers, maybe give them to their kids to play with and trash (what we do when we get them!)

Pen is OK, but I've NEVER consulted a pen for a phone number or contact. However I do have a free calculator from a realtor, and I "see" that all the time. On a pen, its "hidden".

It could be an attention getter, but I'd try a very limited run FIRST before buying in bulk.

[digitalv]

Haha ok well in that case go with 10. I thought you meant Golf shirts :)

[john_k]

10 golf tees - as in 10 of those things from which you drive a golf ball. as in not a shirt.

As for your gift package, it sounds reasonable. You might want to talk to a promotional products person though as they might have some other reasonably priced and unique ideas. (I know a good one with clients around the country - sticky me for the website and contact info)

[john_k]

I meant to include: You might want to throw in a free month.

[andmunn]

Everyone keeps thinking i was talking about t-shirts - i was actually talking about golf tee's - i.e// the ones you hit balls off of? The little things you stick in the ground :)

Thanks for your advice...i priced this set at an affordable price, and it's just something i was thinking of "experimenting with"...in addition to my concentrated efforts of online marketing.

Thanks again for the advice, although mixed :) I think i may try it out, the worst that can happen is im' out a couple hundred..the best, i get a couple people to sign up.

[dataguy]

Pardon my jumping in, but isn't it ironic that all these webmasters have no idea what a golf tee is? Maybe we (myself included) need to get out more!

[percentages]

>Maybe we (myself included) need to get out more!

Speak for yourself;) I play at least 3 times per week. 4 or 5 times if the weather permits :)

But, folks I think you are missing something here, apart from a good social life....LOL;)

The folks you need as clients are the folks that NEED to buy from you, not the folks that like the gifts!

My hosting supplier showers me with freebies, but if they stopped, guess what? I would still use them!

I would actually prefer that they stopped as I see it as a waste of money. I use them for good, solid business reasons.....not the freebies which I am actually paying for anyway!

If you want to attract cheap short term customers then offer them freebies, if you want to attract long term high profit clients then offer them service :)

[saoi_jp]

> have no idea what a golf tee is?

What's golf?

[jim_w]

Bad idea. Spend the money on a SEO. Because without an SEO, it doesn’t matter how little of a ‘niche’ you have, nor if your product or services are the best thing since sliced bread, someone will hire a SEO to take your traffic, even if their site is unrelated to yours. All that is required is for them to think their advertisers would want the traffic you get. If they can sell ads in front of your traffic then they will send you to the bottom of the SERPs on all SE’s and the only customers you will typically have is about 10% of the number of freebees you send out. A portal will take your traffic to insure that you do not start selling ads and taking their revenue away from them.

Believe me, it is a very cutthroat business full of unethical and unprofessional SEO’s and the people that hire them. Sorting the good ones from the bad ones is next to impossible, so be careful. Google has a page about SEO rip-offs around their submit page. Do yourself a favor and read it.

[digitalv]

I would actually prefer that they stopped as I see it as a waste of money. I use them for good, solid business reasons.....not the freebies which I am actually paying for anyway!

Agreed. I get freebies almost weekly and unless someone sends me something really cool like a working light saber it all goes in a box on the sales floor that all employees are free to rob at their leisure. The shirts usually go quick because hey, we all have to wax our cars once in a while, but most of it is still sitting there. Personally I would rather see companies re-invest that money in themselves to improve or enhanec their products instead of wasting it on dollar-store items. If I like your product I'm going to use it anyway even if you don't buy me anything for Christmas.

Bad idea. Spend the money on a SEO. Because without an SEO, it doesn’t matter how little of a ‘niche’ you have, nor if your product or services are the best thing since sliced bread, someone will hire a SEO to take your traffic, even if their site is unrelated to yours. All that is required is for them to think their advertisers would want the traffic you get.

I wouldn't call it a "bad idea" for a startup getting their name around, but you're right in the sense that it shouldn't REPLACE SEO. The nice thing about golf is that it's popular among mid-life crisis business men who blow money on crap they don't need like sports cars they look rediculous in and manicures. Golf terms are frequently searched and there are many people who travel around the country for no other reason than to play different courses. It's a great market to be in if you can get yourself near the top of SEOs, but it's also important to get exchange links with NON-COMPETING sites that golfers would frequent.

What's golf?

It stands for "Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden". The LPGA is a walking contradiction. Heh. To me it's totally lame, but hey most people would think my hobbies are lame ... I like to dig in the dirt and participate in archaeological digs around the world, but no one ever sends me a "I discovered a 5,000 year old Sumerian city and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" shirt. heh. So to each his own I guess :P

[cfx211]

Include a free month of the service.