In previous installments of this series, we have looked at a variety of traditional adult web site marketing techniques. In this installment, we'll examine a few methods that won't be appropriate for everyone, but that will serve as "thought fodder" for coming up with a few of your own unique promotional ideas:
When considering new methods of promoting our sites, Dawn and I looked at several oft seen "guerilla marketing" tactics. These methods were flexible, inexpensive, and are commonly used to promote live bands at local clubs - which is how we first saw them used. Here are a few ideas for using them with a twist:
Hand Outs and Stick Ups
The first method, employing printed "hand outs" is a tried and true method of attracting attention. You can hand out printed flyers on street corners, place them under car's windshield wipers in parking lots, and staple them to telephone polls. Be careful not to put explicit materials on these handouts, and do not distribute them in a manner that will get you in trouble.
You can replace traditional printed flyers with novelty items such as custom printed condoms, or as Dawn once did to promote her previous amateur site, individually wrapped "handy wipes" with "You'll need this after visiting my site!" printed on them - along with her URL. These make a neat replacement for a traditional business card as well.
A similar approach using "stick ups" (small Avery labels printed by the sheet full with your URL and site description etc.) can work wonders as well. Adhere them everywhere: pay phones, ATM machines, toll booths - anywhere that people will stop and read them. Like the handouts above, you may encounter legal difficulties from doing this if you are not careful, and if your URL is long or hard to remember, your prospects won't be able to recall it later, nor take it with them as it's attached to the object you affixed it to.
Like these ideas, but are afraid of getting a fine for "littering?" Then check this one out:
PORN WORKS' Purple Pontiac
It was a cool evening on the New Hampshire seacoast, and Dawn and I were out to play: We ended up at the New England Dragway where we whiled away the hours enjoying the races, and cooking up a plan that was so cunning, you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel! With a little bit of effort, we could take a lesson from Winston, Budweiser, the US Army, and a host of other marketing powerhouses: we could campaign a race car to promote our sites!
Before you say that would only be good for the "big boys," perhaps you should be introduced to the wonderful world of bracket racing. While this will not be a tutorial on the sport, suffice it to say that in this "head's up" form of drag racing competition, you can run just about any vehicle you can imagine. Everything from "real" racecars to the mini-van your wife drives the kids to soccer practice in every day. This broad spectrum of vehicles includes, of course, Dawn's Purple Pontiac Sunfire - a car which she paid cash for by selling her panties on the 'Net!
Now before you laugh at the apparent absurdity of drag racing a 4-cylinder car not known for its stunning acceleration, consider the fact that as this car slowly makes its way down the ¼ mile long track, it will travel at a pace that allows thousands of young men with disposable income a chance to read my main URL, PORNWORKS.COM, displayed on a removable magnetic sign attached to the door: Using a removable magnetic sign also allows you to maintain your anonymity when driving around town.
In addition to the folks physically at the strip, it is almost certain that photos of our "race car" would be printed in local and regional racing-specific publications, and may even garner some mainstream attention, as a race car sponsored by a "porn company" is a definite novelty item. Using a removable magnetic sign (like you often see attached to commercial pick-up trucks and delivery vans) also allows you to maintain your anonymity when driving around town, or parking in your own driveway.
While such endeavors are certainly not for everyone, they illustrate the endless possibilities of creative marketing when promoting your site. This type of "out of the box" thinking is just the ticket for attracting traffic to your adult site - a necessary ingredient for your success, and an increasingly difficult proposition in our incredibly competitive environment. What can YOU do to attract visitors to your site that is different from what everyone else does?