Offline Guerrilla Marketing

I wanted to give you guys some ideas on how you can promote online offers, offline. A lot of times you can make much more money promoting offers offline than you can online because there is very little competition and you’re not paying a cost per click for that traffic in your local community as opposed to on Adwords, etc. I can make 2-3x the amount of money offline, in some cases.

Here’s a cool idea. What if you hired a local college kid to go around to the massive apartment community down the street and put a flyer in everyone’s door? Just like an online ad, something attractive, bold and eye catching that they wont just throw in the trash. Unfortunately, Chinese restaurants and other places do a great job of ruining the fun for everyone else by spamming apartments on a weekly basis. However, if you do something the non-standard way , maybe people will actually look at it.

I actually did an experiment last year with this exact method. However, I created several split tests based on hunches I had of what might work.

The first split test was involving putting a basic flier at everyone’s door with bold eye-catching headlines and a text bribe to go online and visit the website. The website, ultimately, was an opt-in form to get these people on my list and then they were sent immediately to a special free trial with a coupon code that was emailed to them. I know, a lot of steps, but done properly you can make it a real business rather than just sending people directly to the offers landing page and trying to get “hit and run” profits as fast as possible. Sure, I lost a few people and lost a few immediate conversions. But, through past split tests I’ve realized that I will generally make more money building up my list and giving them reasons to KEEP buying products I recommend, over and over again. Ok, on with the story. So, for the split tests, I did the following:

1. Regular flyer with a text bribe and URL.
2. Regular flyer with a free tips CD inside (the CD was nothing more than a disk with a free PDF on it and links to my opt-in page on it, outside of the CD had a hand written note/text bribe about the CD) inside a manila folder with a hand written message on the outside of the folder as well.
3. Regular flyer in a manila folder with text bribe and $1 bill inside (and hand written message on the outside of the folder).

This was just a random, irrational test that I wanted to try. I had no idea if any would work and I wasn’t trying to over-think the process. What do you think yield more results and ultimately the most money? The one with the $1 bill obviously, right? Wrong. The one with the free tips CD bribe. (The CD even had a hand written note on it explaining what it had on it and that it was free).

This free bribe CD that people were actually interested in at this apartment community worked very well. The key is to make it look like it was done by hand. This can work really well for things like weight loss and golf tips Given those 2 examples I’m sure you can come up with a bunch of other stuff that it could work for. Just think about what you can give away for free in PDF format on a CD for tips or secrets that people may be inclined to look at. It’s amazing because most people think its a friend or someone they know that has left the envelope. And, that’s how you get them to open it. You can do what I did and write a note on the envelope/manila folder itself and say something that sounds personal like a friend would write to you on something they wanted you to see.

This entire strategy is about quality, personalization and bribes. When they get to the opt-in form you can follow that up with another bribe to get them on your list. At this point they’ve already:

1. Acknowledged your envelope.
2. Opened it.
3. Probably read it.
4. Put the CD in their computer.
5. Looked at your PDF/Video.
6. Found your URL.
7. Went to your URL.

They’ve probably done at least 7 things by the time they get to your landing page. Give them any reason in the world to opt-in at this point and they probably will. An additional bribe for another free product would work well. Keep in mind that the free product on your CD must good quality for this to work. Hint, hire a ghost writer over on Warrior Forum for $100 if you absolutely can’t think of anything yourself that will make people say “that was cool”.

Then when you find something that works. Replicate your results in 5 other nearby cities. Go beyond apartment complexes. Find people on craigslist to do it in another state. Scale it up. You should also be trying your own split tests.

Last but not least, the list is a big part of this. You don’t want to ruin all the credibility you built by giving them the free CD to turn around and send them directly to a credit card form. Build your relationship with them and make them a repeat customer based on your credibility rather than finding ways to trick them into buying ASAP all the time. It’s not going to work for every type of product but it’s at least something you should be considering as an Internet Marketer.

–Brian