Online Promotion: Using Bumper Stickers To Promote Your Online Business But There Are 3 Rules

When I first promoted the idea to my clients of using bumper stickers to promote their online business assets, they all thought I was nuts. In fact some of the comments were like "Promoting your online business on bumper stickers, you have got to be kidding, no one is going to access your website." Except along came the 3G Network and true internet enabled phones. Guess who's laughing now!

The world and the internet is undergoing a major revolution. The revolution is that the world is truly getting wired with more and more gadgets becoming wired to the internet and in particular mobile phones and vehicles. Two years ago, the most common way people would access the internet was through using a computer at either work or home. With the release of internet enabled phones, more and more people are now using these devices to engage services and buy products.

We started a campaign some time ago in which we decided we were going to actually use our website in our car cleaning business as the primary contact point rather than using a phone number. We placed bumper stickers and window decal stickers on cars we clean regularly to tell the owners when their car was next due for a car cleaning service (similar to mechanics) but instead of having our logo only on the outside of the sticker, we incorporated our logo and domain together. The outcome, 35% of our business now comes from people seeing the bumper stickers on the cars whilst they are in carparks or being driven around the city.

So what do you think this type of advertising is worth if you had to pay for it. Well in our city to place a moveable ad it costs between $1,500 to $2,500 for a 6 week stint on a bus. I am quite sure in places like LA or New York you could expect to pay $20,000 to $100,000 for that same service. We get the service for Free and we currently almost 1,000 cars with bumper stickers on them and consequently this is one of the largest sources of business for our car cleaning business.

We have also used the same principle for other businesses as well like builders, computer training and so forth. Why does it work?

One of the reasons we chose to use our domain on our bumper stickers was that a domain name or text is much easier to remember than a phone number. If you do not believe me, just look at the number of advertisers who get 1800 or 1300 numbers and then convert the next 4 or 6 numbers to text. For example there is a dentist in Townsville whose phone number is 1800 SMILE. I have no idea what the number is but I certainly remember his 1800 SMILE.

Look to get this technique to work there are three key rules you must follow in using bumper stickers on cars or vehicles -

1. Your Domain Name Must Be Easy To Remember

When we used this technique for our computer training business we found the domain name we used was way too difficult for people to remember because it had a combination of ones and dashes in it. To overcome this issue we simply bought an easy to remember domain name and then linked it back to our existing domain. For example we actually used the domain Townsville Computer Training dot com on the bumper sticker because it was easier to remember than one dash on dash one dot biz.

Keep the domain names you use really simple and easy to remember and this will work really easily. For example if you ran a pizza shop and you wanted people to order online and you were in say LA in the United States, I would be securing a bumper sticker with domain name LAONLINEPIZZA.com This is a much simpler domain name to remember than your business name. However, your online optimization should still revert around your business name.

2. Make Sure Your Text Is Able To Be Read 2 Car Lengths Away

The biggest mistake I see many people who use stickers on their cars is to make the text to small to see. I always try to develop our stickers so that the domain names actually can be seen two car lengths away. If the text is too small then no-one will see your website domain.

3. Encourage People to Put Your Sticker Where it is visible

The biggest challenge most people have is to get people to put the sticker on their vehicles after they have received it. The best way to do that is to give them something free if they do that. For example if you ran a website and you wanted your clients to put a sticker on their car, you might say to them, send me a photo of the sticker on your car and I will give you a 10% discount off your next purchase or you might give them a Free Travel Mug. Put it this way, giving them something that is cost effective for you as a reward will mean they are more likely to do that.

I have seen many different companies use a range of techniques to achieve this. One of the radio stations in North Queensland Australia, wanted to promote people to listen to their station, so they ran a competition where they got everyone to put a sticker with the radio stations logo onto their cars and they ran prize patrols over a number of weeks. If your car was seen with a sticker on it, you were then pulled over and given a prize.

Another food outlet company, actually global fast food chain gave a sticker out with their logo on it and a special offer, out in the local newspaper. They basically said that if you put the sticker on the driver side of your car each time you go through their drive thru you would get a free drink upgrade. The interesting thing about this sticker is that it expires after 6 months, but it is quite amazing the number of people who still have the stickers on their cars, promoting the fast food chain two or three years after the sticker had expired.

Literally the bumper sticker has become a long term advertisement for your business. Bumper stickers with your logo and domain name is a great offline promotional tool and will get results for your business for a lot longer than any other medium plus the cost of a bumper sticker is negligible compared to other mediums.

One other note, you can measure the success of this medium by ensuring the domain name used is different and easier to read than your standard business domain name and as such the number of people who use the bumper stick domain should be able to be measured just as you would on the internet. This will then prove to you whether your marketing investment was in fact worth while.

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