Alright, I'm interested in starting up a health website (possibly focused on mothers), and looking for offline marketing ideas. Goal is 10,000 unique visitors per day within 4 months. Note: I probably wouldn't be starting this for a few months, probably after my baby is born.
first of all: congratulations on the baby and hope everything works out second: 10,000 unique visitors/day within 4 months is not impossible but it would be very hard if you do not have the money to spend or AMAZING never before seen contents. here are someways for relatively cheap ways you can market offline. take out ads in parenting magazines, health related magazines. write articles and email the editors of those magazines and plug in your website. this helps in 2 ways.. a) if your article is good enough to be printed, most people who read it would want to read more b) free advertising for your website. get a list of new mothers and do direct mailing. this might cost about $1,500 or so total for few thousand mails. you can get a bulk discount from the USPS. start up a forum and encourage visitors to let other parents know about your site. (thats a bit more online) give out prizes, such as a free 6 month supply of pampers or something like that. if you have good credit/business credit you can finance it, so the cost isnt that high in the beginning and you can make low monthly payments. hope this helps and let me know if you need more help and congrats again
I know a few doctors offices around here have "free speech" boards. You could probably put up a flyer or two on these. Also, maybe offices will let you have your business card on the desk.
Print out brochures and drop them at related locations. For example, if your site was about baby health, I would drop the brochures at baby clothing stores (i.e. "Babies R Us", "Babies World", and "Childrens Place" are 3 major baby stores where I live). Also drop them at doctor's offices as suggested above. DM may not work well for you. I would rather spend the $1500 in a magazine that is related to the specific niche that you are trying to get into. $1500 will get a nice full-page ad, or 4-5 quarter page ads in most magazines.