3 Out of the Box Ways to Start A Link Marketing Campaign

Coming up with ideas for a link marketing campaign can be very tough. It seems like every idea under the sun has already been done to death. How do you come up with creative ideas that haven’t already been exhausted? How do you find ideas that’ll turn heads and get people to pay attention, check out your material and ultimately link back to your website?

What you don’t want to do is rely just on traditional linking techniques. While these can work for generating a base of moderate quality backlinks, if you want high quality links you really have to step outside the box. You have to get real people who own real websites to pay attention.

So how do you come up with these ideas?

Get Some Natural Air

Start by getting yourself out of the room and away from a computer screen. Try to do something active, get some sunlight or do something relaxing.

It’s not a coincidence that so many of the world’s best ideas came while people were taking a bath or going for a run. Getting away from your normal routine allows your subconscious mind to work on the problem. If you’re constantly stuck in front of the computer screen, you don’t give the most powerful part of your brain the chance to do its work.

So go for a massage, a jog or just a soak in the sun in the park. Get yourself away from the daily grind.

Bring a journal with you so you can write down any ideas you have right as they hit you. Don’t try to think about the problem, but don’t push thoughts out of your mind either. Just relax and let your brain do its work.

Re-Use Abandoned Tricks

There are a lot of tricks businesses have used in the past that have long been abandoned. Do some research into old marketing tactics and see if you can revamp them for today’s modern environment.

For example, one old restaurant marketing trick is to place coins in people’s meters. The manager would walk a 2 block radius around their restaurant. Whenever they see a car whose meter has ran out, they put a couple quarters in there for them and leave their business card with a little note saying they added a bit of cash.

When the driver returns, they’ll be so overcome with goodwill that they’re very likely to visit the restaurant in the future.

How can you take this marketing tactic and apply it online?

One way might be to write a custom script that scans people’s websites for broken links. Once you find a broken link on someone’s site, write to them telling them that you’re a fan of their site and just wanted to point out that a link is broken. Explain that this can hurt their rankings in Google. By doing them the favor of helping them find the broken link, you’ll likely build enough goodwill to ask for a backlink.

Look for old marketing tactics and see how you can apply them to today’s modern world.

Combine Two Different Ideas

Take two ideas that seem completely different on the surface and combine them.

For example, in the world of small public companies, it’s not uncommon for a number of businesses in one industry to be rounded up and combined into one large company. Taking this idea, you might combine it with the idea of running a contest.

Ask your audience: How would they run your industry if they owned the entire industry? Ask them to be as detailed as possible. For example, if they ran every business in the fishing industry, how would they run it? This could spark a lot of good discussions and generate a lot of buzz.

Try combining two seemingly completely different ideas and see how you can use it to generate excitement and build backlinks.

These are three ways you can jumpstart the thought process if you ever get stuck for ideas for building backlinks. Standing out and building backlinks often takes a bit of creativity, especially if you work in a competitive industry. Use these tips to help yourself jump out of the box and come up with something that’ll really draw attention.

Author Bio – Zeeshan, the author of this article is from Directory Critic, a master directory of web directories. In addition to providing world’s largest list of various types of directories, they also offer a submission service to help webmasters submit sites to most important directories in general, niche, and local categories.