As promised yesterday I wanted to discuss some ways to integrate some offline marketing ideas for affiliate marketing. Below are just some of the ways that this could be done.
1. Colleges / Universities – Although the majority of college students are strapped for cash they do spend big on certain items. Two such items are school supplies/textbooks and licensed gear for their school. Marketers could post pamphlets or flyers around campus. These flyers would either list a coupon code to be used on the merchant site or a link to a landing page built by an Affiliate. With the NCAA tournament coming up soon it is a great time to use this technique. I do not think it would be too hard to find a college student willing to take a couple hours to plaster his/her campus with flyers for $50.
2. Classified Ads – This following technique has been used forever. Place an ad in the classifieds promoting information or a product. If 1 ad makes you $100 place it in 30 similar newspapers or magazines and make $3,000. An example that could be used would be a small business package that provides everything a small business would need to get started at a discount price. Marketers could provide information about loans, business credit cards, telephone systems, office supplies, fax services, business card service. It is important to be choose publications that are targeted to your products audience
3. Summer Camps – There are over 10,000 “sleep-over” or “sleep away” summer camps catering to over 5 million campers. This is a huge market. Many parents send their kids candy, popcorn, snacks, sporting supplies and nick knacks through out the summer. Affiliates could work with their local summer camps, camp related websites or businesses to provide coupons or ideas for gifts to send their children.
4. Fundraising coupon sheets / Stores – There are endless amounts of organizations who are active in fundraising. As an affiliate why not reach out to your top 10 merchants for exclusive coupons. Coupon sheets could be created and sold or provided with other items that are being sold for the fundraiser. These sheets would cost next to nothing to create significant income. I realize that there are quite a few websites that provide a percent of sale to your charity of choice. However, there is no reason why this could not also be done on a smaller scale for a charity or organization that you are active with. This same type of coupon sheet could be provided to local businesses to offer to their customers at the time of purchase.
These are just some of the endless amounts of ways to integrate offline strategies into affiliate marketing. Since Affiliate Marketing is all about relationships many of these techniques rely on how closely an affiliate manager is willing to work with their partners. Providing custom codes and tracking based on codes is extra work that an Affiliate Manager would need to be willing to do to make this work. I encourage affiliates and AM’s to be creative in their marketing to think outside of what 99% of what affiliate partners are doing.
I like #2 alot. I think it has legs. Many of the old infomercials selling "Systems to making $ through classified ads" used to center around this very concept. The difference is that they would sell that kit for a couple bucks. You could monetize it through Affiliate Marketing.
You should do this immediately and blog about your results. I'll be checking back for updates!
Posted by: Michael Tabasso | March 01, 2007 at 10:29 AM
Yes - Update with your results. That would be helpful. Thanks.
Posted by: dee | June 20, 2008 at 10:32 PM