Radio

Radio advertising can be very effective in advertising your URL if your domain name is short, catchy and easy to remember. Creative webmasters could develop short scripts themselves whereby their ad incorporates their slogan which in turn incorporates the benefits of visiting their URL. As with TV advertising radio ads work best when targeted towards a specific demographically segmented market such as a certain cities residents. Again price wise you mightn't be able to compete with the big boys and have ads on very popular stations, but local stations offer good prices. Keep in mind however that prices all depend on when and how often your ad is run.

Newspapers, classifieds and related magazines

The print media which includes newspapers, journals and magazines is another avenue where your can have your URL exposed for everyone to see. It's best first to start advertising your products, services and URL in local newspapers and then if successful continue onto regional and national publications. If you can't afford the common graphical advertisement as seen throughout newspapers and journals related to your industry don't worry as most of these publications have classified ad sections. Classified ads allow you to reach a targeted audience very cheaply with a simple short message and of course your URL is included in there somewhere too.

Company vehicles

We all see vehicles with company names and telephone numbers on them driving our streets and motorways. This is a great idea as it gives potential customers the chance while out and about to learn about the company and also learn about how to contact them should they need the service or product they offer at some stage in the future. I often wonder why more websites aren't promoted in this way by simply adding the company website URL also, you definitely should do this.

If your business is an exclusively online entity then your URL should be large and very visible to anyone who glances in the direction of your vehicle. Again many people would be driving or walking by as your vehicle drives by and wouldn't be able to write down a long website address so it would be an advantage to have a short, easy to remember URL.

A word of advice before we move on, if you do choose to brand your personal or company vehicles with your URL have it done professionally, if your design looks poor people might be inclined to believe your site and products are poor too. Check a local business directory to find out who can do this for you.

Branded novelty items

This method is a personal favorite of mine. It involves purchasing and distributing items such as pencils, pens, t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, calendars, keychains, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets and the like. All these items will have your URL located somewhere on them helping to attract people to your website.

Usually these items are given away for free, however some sites such as Google successfully sell a number of items specifically designed to improve the Google brand.

If you decide to use such items in your offline marketing campaigns be smart about it, offer items which will be used by the people most likely to buy your products or services, for example if you sell software or computer components distribute branded mouse pads as computer users are likely to be interested in what you offer. Similarly if you sell office stationary you could distribute pens to local businesses, hopefully when they need more stationary they'll notice your slogan and URL then come visit and buy.

There are lots of angles one can take with this method, most can be very effective but just have a good think about it before you order those 3000 pens, won't you!