Driving just outside my neighborhood and everywhere thereafter, it is very common to find ads splattered on the most unimaginative and stupidly common places. It’s a joke really, sadly most of these cheap ads announce well… web pages.
Ah… yeah.
They are effective, of this I’m certain, but c’mon; is this even legal?
There are many ways to advertise websites and although you can print on a cardboard and stick it on the grass, there must be new more dignifying ideas. Such as:
- Facebook ads!
- AdWords (Google Ads)
- Use guerrilla but be creative
- Start a newsletter
- Link other websites and ask for the same, crosslinking
- Use traditional advertisement
Facebook ads
Hey I can’t really say I love the place, I hate it, can’t stand it! But people use it all the time on their phones, in the workplace, during meetings… And we have to agree, Facebook is a huge place, but when you can direct ads to niches and small communities you can reach a client fast! Unlike Google ads which are content driven, Facebook’s are also socially specific. This means that reaching real estate agents for our classifieds page was fairly easy as they were approached on a time when they were actively participating on real estate matters in a light social context. After our classifieds campaign, I started seeing the latest web-giant/web-trend in a new light.
AdWords from Google (Our fair and noble giant)
Not to be mistaken with AdSense, AdWords are site-targeted advertising banners placed by Google on relevant sites. You basically tell Google, “Hey google, I’ve got this site that sells rubber chickens” and Google will try to match your ad with web pages that have to do with clowns, a circus, or Monkey Island. You might say: “Wait, I’ve no interest on selling my chickens to Russian clowns”, you can also target by region and a bunch of other criteria so just choose Latin markets or Puerto Rico in our case. I’m reaaaaally being vague here and there is a plethora of articles on the subject but I suggest you start directly from the horses mouth or this wiki.
Guerrilla Marketing
One of the most important aspects of guerrilla marketing is being creative, having a creativity-driven campaign outside of traditional methods. Planting cardboard that visually and literally pollutes your environment is not guerrilla marketing, its honestly dumb and unimaginative. In my book, guerrillas have grown to include viral marketing, fairly famous on last year’s 2nd quarter… Including your viral campaigns in sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can be productive and creating viral content and posting to YouTube was the craze of all viral marketeers. There are also new companies, web advertising agencies, that can help you with innovative ideas; a local one is Populicom. An example of their work was a location specific bluetooth campaign that took me by surprise, to this date there are new companies that specialize solely on bluetooth ads but Populicom were the innovators in Puerto Rico.
Start a newsletter
Your clients will appreciate it and you’ll achieve one of the most important concepts on advertising: “top of mind”. Reaching your client base on a weekly or monthly basis will earn your company a front seat on your clients RFP’s and relevant decision processes. Furthermore, most of the time business people will want a “what’s up” from their suppliers and relevant industries.
Crosslinking
It’s not just for us geeks these days. There was a time when each website had a weirdo that lived in a dark and creepy lair and everyone called a ‘webmaster’. It’s such a dumb name and silly concept. People fail to understand that websites have companies behind them, business people that made a website to make business. Unless you step into a wormhole that spits you in the 90′s most of the time you contact someone through their web page, you’ll find a real life person eager to exchange links with you. It helps you create a web of contacts in the internet, which by the way, is the most important ingredient in search engine ranking. Ooh! that’s a polemic statement, comment on it and Ill back it up.
Use traditional media
Yes the monster, it’s there for you! Many people overlook the growing rate of new spots each year. Its a healthy growing industry driven mainly by large companies with huge budgets but all this growth, in capitalism, means that new media companies have to compete with new fair prices. Maybe your project can’t afford the largest led billboards but mesh advertising is sneaking over this industry fast. They can be placed almost anywhere with few infrastructure investment. Bus shelters and banners are fairly common, digital signage is easy to deploy, cheap …and considered traditional in some regions.
So really… you can’t imagine all the hard work government-paid, tax-funded employees have to go through to remove uncreative ads from signs, telephone poles, and private property. PLEASE advertise responsibly and use all this new and available media.
