I had a great idea to promote my blog and join in the Halloween spirit at the same time last Friday. What better timing, I thought, than to pass out candy with a little blog business card attached? So, Halloween morning I found some great deals on big bags of decent (Willy Wonka!) candy and some festive holiday sandwich bags with zip seals. Perfect.
I made a 4"x5" graphic postcard advertising my new city blog with MS Publisher software and printed about 50 on my personal printer. The cards looked professional and I used some phrases to peak interest. You can see an image of the promo card above.
I filled 50 bags with a generous handful of candy and one post card and waited for night to fall. There a very popular shopping and dining area called Belmont Shore in an affluent Long Beach neighborhood, which I stereotypically assumed would also be tech savvy and interested in a new city news source.
I set out around 6 p.m. and found the mile long street crowded with trick or treaters, their parents and plenty others who refused to join in the festivities walking in their civies. Most merchants stood at their entrances and passed out candy to the kids. I was targeting young and middle aged couples, single women and a few older couples who looked at me curiously.
There was a definite air of suspicion about me, which I wasn't prepared for. I'm a very normal looking, nonthreatening girl and I'm not sure what made people apprehensive about accepting my candy bags. Perhaps they thought I'd laced it with meth or something (C'mon! They're individually wrapped pieces). But, nearly half of the people I offered bags to turned them down. This after accepting candy from hundreds of strangers standing in shop doorways!
I think it may have been connected to my opening line, "Hi, here's a bag of candy from a new city website". The moment I said 'website' some eyeballs widened and others turned away. "No thanks," they'd say. Hhhmm. Curious. "There's nothing to buy! It's just free candy," I'd call after them. Not one came back. Drat.
These decliners made me walk up and down the street about an hour longer than I'd anticipated to give away all my candy bags, which I did. All 50 of them. I did get a fair share of "oohs" and "aaahs" from people who seemed a bit excited about my new blog. I thought they'd surely check it out later.
Wrong. Since Halloween night, I've gotten all of six direct hits to my local blog URL. How sad! Only 11% of my test group even bothered to visit the blog. How much you wanna bet 100% ate my candy! Oh well, Halloween candy promotion idea: $15; marketing lesson learned: priceless.
I don't think any promotion involving food from a stranger is going to prove very effective for me. My next campaign will be a more traditional approach. I'm going to purchase a text ad in a very large condominium complex's monthly newsletter. This complex has nearly 600 units and the newsletters are delivered to doorsteps by the home owners' association. More on that later this month.
Traffic Update: Still dismal, less than 10 hits per day. Subscribers fluctuate between 3 and 5.
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