Roughly a month ago I made a small offline promotion and the results seem to be quite marginal:
- The “ads” were put on several stores
- I didn’t notice any peak on traffic due this
- I didn’t notice any significant impact on newsletter subscribers
I must say that I put only few grayscale prints, so that might have impact. I have some prints still left, and I’m going to stick them somewhere. It won’t hurt to place them anyway.
Darkmoon reported quite similar results:
Halfway in August, we did some offline website promotion, by distributing some flyers at a neighbourhood kids party. In the second half of August, we experienced some noticable growth. But I think the contribution of the flyers was only marginal. There was a small increase in direct hits, and 1 newsletter signup as a result.
In conlusion I think there should be more effort put in the ads: more money, more color, more copies, more places in order to make it more efficient. I suppose easier strategy for offline promotion would be to contact local news paper or talk with some local seminars rather than just sending flyers.
I started coding games when I was a small kid with access to Commodore 64.
It’s like online promotion, really: you need to reach your key audience. If I were to put out flyers for a niche site, I’d either think of some specific content which would interest a larger segment, or target the flyers very specifically. (Say, university labs with some sort of game courses.)
I believe your closing comment is spot on: this kind of content is probably best publicized via editorial media and personal displays.
For an internet website that targets video game programmers/designers, you’re better off sticking to online advertisements. Offline advertisements usually only work for offline businesses, whose customers are people who don’t sit in front of a computer all day ;)
It’s hard to measure the exact results of an offline promotion. In our case, about 100 flyers were given to people in the target audience of the website: parents and kids.
In the nearby future we will write some emails and/or letters to childcare centers (BKO in dutch, don’t know the correct english term), and maybe schools. Will be interesting to see the results…
@Ali: I agree, I don’t think I’ll invest in offline promotion for my games business. Not in the first year at least :)
I wouldn’t say offline promotion is bad or that I won’t do it again. I’m saying bit like the same as Joonas here: the promotion must be focused & targeted. Making a speech for a goup of game developers (and handing out flyers) could be good way to get publicity & credibility. I also must say that I wouldn’t underestimate the effect of newspapers (or television!) – it’s in my interest to try to get coverage from these medias. I recommend both online+offline promotion.