i had a strange request from a client to market his car rental service WITHOUT a website. this car rental company is small and new.
what i had in mind is using classifieds, myspace and facebook. Google adwords wont work on hubpages and squidoo right?
any other ideas?
thanks in advance
social media sites are best way to promote your business and also create free blogs, create free website in Weebly.com
There are many forum available they have buy/sell section you can offer your service there
You can write and submit articles to article directories about car rental service. Article marketing is a great way to generate a steady flow of traffic without a website. You can also use Facebook to advertise that service.
It will be very difficult to promote a business without a website, today, all business have a website, it is one of the motor of a business.
But if they really don’t want a website (i think they make a mistake here) so you can always promote using social media, press release.
what about email marketing? anyway, you can have a try. Because some of my friends prefer this way, I guess it does work to some point.
I still like the idea of the “limited stock” style site where you have a design which focuses on the lack of stock encouraging people to buy while they can (and once the items have sold out you have a “check back soon for more” style message with a newsletter to keep them up-to-date when new stock arrives (sort of how web conferences or concerts promote tickets or special edition stuff by putting a tap on availability but keeping interest up on the item which people are looking for). 
post your product on social sites and build community there it’s all free
Gee that’s a horrible predicament
If that is the case then they should use scarcity in the marketing approach.
I’m still with most of the people here questioning why they wouldn’t have a site, even a simple bit of brochure-ware for starters.
That aside, building an online businesses without needing your own site is something that possible with the popularity of facebook and other social mediums but pulling that off IMO is much harder than having your own site in which to act as your home base.
Your also putting big dependencies on third parties. Say you based the business on a facebook fan page, you have zero promise that they’ll be there forever, same with things like YouTube channels etc etc. For a startup, seems risky to me.
I think it’s difficult.
You can do it by email marketing, classified ads, forum marketing and others.
But open a free website is maybe good one if someone don’t have money. There is a lot of free domain and free hosting.
social networking sites are great…definitely try PPC on adwords, yahoo and msn
The question I have is why?
You can build a basic website for less than $100. Nowadays, a website isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. If a car rental service can’t afford a basic website, they probably shouldn’t be in business in the first place.
David Jackson
You could try Affiliate marketing through pay-per-click such as MSN adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing both allow direct linking to sites that are not your own. By being an affiliate, you can create ads for their products, and send click-throughs directly to the merchant’s site. You don’t have to build an intermediary site or use your own site to direct traffic. When your click-throughs convert, you’ll get a commission in an instant.
You could always advertise limited stock on the website and when they get more cars in you could have the store’s front-end element (which sells them) re-appear with the fresh stock. Plenty of websites with limited numbers of good have stuff like countdown clocks of the number of things available for purchase and when it’s gone the website says something like “nothing here, come back soon” or have an email subscription list where people could get updates when fresh stock comes in. Just because they don’t have the stuff doesn’t mean you can’t drive demand up to ensure the stock keeps shifting when you get it.
Have to agree with the others that a website is essential for just about any type of business, and if nothing else, just having even a simple brochure like type of site gives them a lot of credibility.
Think of the companies you do business with. Given the choice of two equally capable companies - would you give your business to the guy with or without a website?
If they do get a website and their worst fears of having too much business come true, I bet they could easily ramp up their own capacity to handle those clients, or sell the leads to other companies to handle them.
Cheers,
Steve
thanks for the feedback peeps.
the reason that my client did not want to setup a website is because they are fairly new in the industry i.e. startup. the other reason they gave me was they were worried if the demand is more than what they can supply, in this case the amount of cars in their disposal. so not to disappoint the customers, they decided to play safe by offering what they could offer.
i guess i will let them roll with their ‘websiteless’ marketing campaign that i’ll recommend soon. when the leads are coming, hopefully it will open up their eyes.
by the way, do you guys trust 3rd car booking php scripts in hotscripts or using CMS plugins like Wordpress or joomla that offer similar function? which is better?
im thinking of making a sales pitch to them in my next appointment in hope to convince them of setting up a site.
thanks in advance.
set up some sort of facebook page that has all of the necessary information then run the ads on facebook. seems strange though, usually local businesses contact internet marketers to either build them a website and market it, or improve the current one and market it. must be living in the stone age 
get a free blog from wordpress or blogspot and do what you can do with your own website, it yields same result except that the blog is not yours
Thank you.
Some clients may not be ready or have yet to see the benefits that a website can bring them. It is actually our duty to make them ‘see’ or understand the need of having one. What you can do is like some members have suggested, include a self-hosted site as part of the marketing campaign. When your client start to see the visitors or leads coming through the site, they will love to have their own sites or even engage your service to further improve the site.
Definitely forums is the best way to go. I mean in every forum there is a section called buy sell and trade and from that you can sell your services. Forums are big and interactive and from observation Im seeing a lot of people making money just by being active in forums.