Creative Marketing, Press and Collaborations.

I'm a little new to the online marketing forums, but have spent plenty of time reading through all of the posts and absorbing as much information as possible for recruiting affiliates and launching digital products.

In doing so, i've noticed one thing: no one seems to ever talk about creative marketing efforts on here?

Ad words, facebook, email and affiliate marketing are all obviously tried and true methods for consistent traffic -- and certainly something that is important to know every facet of, but it's totally foreign to me not to also be thinking about creatively marketing your site(s) to get press, viral buzz, collaborations with established brands, celebrity endorsements, hosting events, etc, etc.

It seems like a lot of online marketers are so entrenched into online marketing, to the point that they forget some more traditional relationship building and out of the box marketing efforts. The kinds of things you'd do before the internet was a thing.

Doing the basics is essential, but you should always also invest in promotional gambles that may lead to huge traffic and / or customer waves. Send out a couple hundred dollars in cupcakes to potential partners, members of the press. Fire off some e-mails to people you admire. Do a publicity stunt. Court some bloggers. Find ways to attach yourself to authoritative brands "As seen in the offices of Google!, featured on MSNBC!" Be involved in a sex scandal (true story).

$200 in PPC should equate to a reasonably known amount of conversions, but also investing a little time and energy into a gamble / relationship building campaign can easily give you an infinitely higher return and nearly always gives you some cool opportunities and contacts.