Strange SEO tactic

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loginname

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Hey

Lately I've been asked by a company to create a website for them. The niche is one of the most saturated niches on internet. They only pays me for stuff that they can see with their own eyes. So forget about keyword optimizations. (they don't know what it is anyway)

I asked them what tactic they will use to get traffic to their site. They said that they would employ some guys who would travel to every city and talked to people in the cities. And in that way create interest for the site and get traffic....

sounds strange enough to me.... :p
 
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WTF.... Their overheads will be Many $$$$ cheaper to just Let You SEO properly and then
Set up A Decent PPC campaign...

Let Me Be the First to Say.....DUMMMMASSSSEEESS
 
I know this tactic. Is very good.. I have great working forum with a lot of users by using this tactic. It`s caalled Guerrilla Marketing. It`s cheaper than PPC.
 
Standard practise for many brick and mortar business,

Street canvass, instore Dems, Door to Door canvass, Leaflet distribution

Not SEO, but general marketing, general RESULTS based marketing!


If you want to offer them a service that can be quantified, try this

Pitch them on setting up some Affiliate Program, (sales or leads depending on business)
Explain that they will only pay for what they get (this is what they do anyway offline??)
Now YOU go away and SEO YOUR OWN sites, sending the traffic to them!

If you do this, you can broker a better deal than any similar service being pushed on the big aff networks, perhaps even progress to your own affiliate program!


Many Brick and Mortar business are scared of new shit, they WILL pay for non-quantifiable advertising (read TV/Newspaper/radio etc) which makes it ironic that they wont do the same for the interweb and they're business.

Overcome this by offering QUANTIFIABLE web strategies.

(yes there is technical learning curve if this sort of strategy is new to you)
 
I think they can sponsor a smart person who really knows to drive traffic instead of sponsoring flight tickets.
 
If they succeed we will call it BRILLIANT OUT OF BOX THINKING....& if they fails they are just simply DICKHEAD....
 
Offline marketing is one the best traffic strategies for online sites as well.

I have personally seen one online classified site hit straight to the roof in terms
of traffic simply by posting offline news ads and ran few weeks of tv media.

They have since stopped the promos but the traffic maintains...
 
Quite an old fashion way and yet effective. But should also consider promotion thru online-SEO...
 
Well, if that's the way they want to do it, here is what I'd do to squeeze some extra money out of them if all they're interested in is results they can see (and getting results they can see for their website in the niche they want is that impossible):

Tell them you'll set up a website that will reach out to people that live in the major cities they are going to pay to send people too. Your website will find people that are willing to do the job of offline marketing in those cities at only half of what they plan on paying their people to do directly and on top of that, they don't have to pay for airfare or anything else.

Should be easy to rank for a website like that, and then you can send people to that site from here, getafreelancer, other forums, craigslist, etc.

So, then you can charge for the following:

Making the original website they wanted
The second website (the "get a people to do their offline marketing" site)
Ranking for the second website (which you should easily be able to do)
Driving traffic to that site
Possibly a commission for each active "employee" they hire from the site that you made
 
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I don't see this as strange...
The jehovah's witnesses have been doing this for many years.

:D
 
I think this is like word-of-mouth but in a professional aspect

those people employed would probably should create a major buzz impact and should be results-oriented...else, they dont get paid
 
Hmm... So your client obviously knows nothing about internet marketing. Probably doesn't know shit about websites either. These are the kind of people who go wow, ooh, ahh when they see really pretty websites with tons of flash, circa what was popular in 2001. Give 'em what they want, cheezy-ass graphic-heavy website with no real content that can be set up in a day, and make them think that "For what you want, this is gonna be really difficult and time-consuming to do it right." Charge them OUT THE ASS for your services.

Worst case scenario, they throw money at this saturated market, (what does that tell you?,) never make any of it back and you can be like "Hey, you saw the website, you said yourselves it was [dope, hot, da bomb, fly, tight, whatever else the suit-and-tie crowd is using to try and sound cool] and what? I can't help it if the salespeople you've been flying around the globe don't know how to promote your product."

They'll probably fire their sales staff, restructure their whole campaign, and hire you again to redesign the website to go along with the new campaign. And the cycle continues. You've got yourself a big, fat, cud-chewing, fly-infested, flatulent cash cow right there my friend!

Moo
:cow_yello
 
Ravager said:
I think they can sponsor a smart person who really knows to drive traffic instead of sponsoring flight tickets.
Click to expand...

Some people on BHW who are having a hard time making ends meet
could sign up for this and market themselves at the same time. :)
 
loginname said:
Hey

Lately I've been asked by a company to create a website for them. The niche is one of the most saturated niches on internet. They only pays me for stuff that they can see with their own eyes. So forget about keyword optimizations. (they don't know what it is anyway)

I asked them what tactic they will use to get traffic to their site. They said that they would employ some guys who would travel to every city and talked to people in the cities. And in that way create interest for the site and get traffic....

sounds strange enough to me.... :p
Click to expand...
Anyone reading this thread who thinks this is a dumb idea, must not be aware of one of the biggest success stories regarding a website that used this very method.
The site is called MySpace. ​
During the initial startup of MySpace, the founders and other eUniverse employees would go out to the local hotspots in LA and talk to the musicians, models, and other clubgoers promoting MySpace and convincing them to set up accounts. The company held contests to see which eUniverse employees could sign up the most users.

Only after establishing this initial user base, did eUniverse use it's other established resources and email lists to promote MySpace. Without the original person-to-person signups, it would have been much harder to get the masses to signup.


The OP company's idea isn't bad if they have the resources to send people to the cities, and if they have a good enough site for real people to be interested in.

You should read this other thread to learn more about creating a simulation of a popular site in order to create true popularity.
edit-
I just noticed that this is an old thread that someone else bumped.
But, it's still a good topic. Offline person-to-person promotion is an idea worth taking a look at for many websites.
 
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If the niche is selling private jets or something where there are only a handful of customers in the world then this totally makes sense. High value deals require in-person sales. Makes total sense if the niche is right and the guy has the right contacts.
 
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