Most Interesting Findings
I decided to try something a little different and illustrate the marketing challenges of a small business. I’m using one of my clients, PrescottWeddings.com.
PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning their weddings. Along with a ton of information for brides and grooms, the site includes a resource guide where local businesses can advertise their products and services.
We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-up businesses, PWC didn’t have much money for marketing. Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limited budget):
1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site — advertisers and couples — essentially at the same time. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to appeal to each group even though one was dependent on the other — advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto the site, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resource center.
2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone in Prescott — and had burned their advertisers while racing out of town. Businesses were understandably hesitant about sinking their money into another bridal venture.
Armed with those challenges, we went to work. Now, just over two years later, PWC enjoys well over 40,000 hits a month and has increased its advertising base by over 600%. On top of that, PWC is well on its way to establishing a reliable brand in not just Prescott but throughout Yavapai County.
So how did we do it? A great Web site with great content plus three main marketing strategies:
1) Using print to drive traffic online
2) Thinking small
3) Frequency, frequency, frequency
I’ll cover number two and three in the next two articles. Today we’ll talk about number one: Using print to drive traffic online.
The cornerstone of PWC’s marketing program has been print advertising, more specifically monthly advertising in the local newspaper. Print advertising is an excellent choice for many businesses — from small to large. In fact, it’s not uncommon for small and medium-sized businesses to build their advertising program around print.
The strength of print advertising is its flexibility. Print publications come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can appeal to a broad readership or a narrow one. They can be published every day or once a year. This variety gives you a lot of flexibility in fitting print advertising into your campaigns.
You can also track print to a certain extent (coupons in newspapers for example). Print is physical, allowing your customers to carry something around with them.
However, print’s weakness is also its strength. It’s a visual medium only, so it requires more effort and interaction from your audience to make an impact (they need to stop and read it).
In the case of PWC, we chose monthly advertising in the local paper as the foundation of our marketing program. We decided upon the local newspaper because it has the broadest reach. Prescott isn’t big enough to have its own evening television news, so the newspaper is the best vehicle for local news.
If you live in a big city, the local newspaper may not be practical because of cost. In that case, you may want to try a niche newspaper or magazine, like a business or lifestyle journal, or maybe a regionalized newspaper. In Phoenix for instance, the Arizona Republic is the main newspaper, but all the cities around Phoenix, like Scottsdale and Tempe, also have their own papers.
Because PWC is a Web site, there’s an assumption we should be using only online methods to advertise. Online methods are good, and PWC does use them, but they only take you so far. Print is a part of the “real world” — something you can touch and pick up, not virtual like a Web site. Print has also been around a lot longer, and carries more trust with it. We found by using print, some of that trust and “real world” essence rubbed off, making PWC seem less anonymous and more like a “bricks and mortar” business (a business with a store front).
Also, since we were trying to drive local traffic to the site, it made sense to advertise locally rather than attracting people from all over the world. But even with our local advertising, we still have a substantial number of visitors from around the state, including Phoenix and Tucson, as well as all over the globe.
The point of our marketing program was to advertise regularly so we could both build the PWC brand and drive traffic to the Web site. Yet it was essential to keep our costs down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could. More on that and how we “thought small” in the next article.
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Tags: business marketing management
Posted in Banner Advertising · March 6th, 2010 · Comments (0)
Free Web Advertising – searchEstate – The search engine advertising solution for free web traffic.
searchEstate is the ultimate Internet Advertising Solution, optimised for Internet Explorer and Firefox.
To those who are not aware of searchEstate;
It’s a Major Search Engine that PAYS YOU to advertise and gets free web traffic to your website through its free web advertising …
Quote:
“searchEstate is an Internet Advertising Solution based on an Internet search engine. We are member-based and share our advertising spaces and revenues with our members.”
About searchEstate…
searchEstate is an inversion of the ‘pay-per-click’ model employed by the major search engines. It’s like having your own SEO Company working for you 24/7. searchEstate is becoming known as ‘the peoples search engine’ because it allows the individual to profit from Internet advertising, instead of the major corporations.
searchEstate gives fast search results and you can even share revenue from the free web advertising. Internet advertising fees that the searchEstate search engine generates, is shared amongst its members..
The Difference…
Until now, free web advertising was only available to those who knew the search engine optimisation techniques required for top placement. searchEstate is a search engine that changes the way you advertise. Now it is possible, without specific technical knowledge, to attain top search engine rankings and get free web traffic to your site.
The Alternatives…
searchEstate has two modules, free and pro versions.
The free version allows you to build a Free Web Advertising network that rotates around the search engine on millions of pages, thus giving your business great exposure. The more people that are in your free advertising network, the greater that exposure becomes. SearchEstate search boxes are now starting to appear on many websites.
The Pro version of searchEstate offers a great deal more. A thousand automatically mailed ads each month. Twenty advertisements with 100 keywords and strategic exchanges with the top Internet search engines. Commissions on paid members through an affiliate program. Logo ads, Banner Ads, Text Ads and Search Engine Ads are all catered for and tracked by the searchEstate program.
Quote…
“The key to success is to sponsor others into searchEstate. You can do it by yourself or we can do it for you via our amazing Advertising Co-op. For a limited time, we help you build your downline easily through our 1000 fresh leads each month.”
Summary…
It seems that now there is an alternative and complete Internet Advertising Solution to paying the major search engines! As we are told, the best route to success is to actually own your own business. Your own Internet Advertising Solution is a great way to promote your main business.
Quote…
“What if we were to tell you that we can strategically go in and place ads in your billboards that other people will pay for? What if, say, the average pay-per-click fee was $0.10? Something really low cost, just to be on the safe side. Well, for 100,000 ad billboards, just having 1 ad get 1 click per day will net you $1,000 per day, minus our 5-10% service fee!”
Well, that’s certainly something I could live with! After a very concise conversation with the CEO, it seems a very viable proposition. A true “Swiss Army Knife” sort of business solution.
Why pay for your advertising when you get nothing in return? searchEstate seems the perfect solution. Why use anything else? The major search engines are fat enough already. Of course, there will be sceptics. That is why I took the trouble to talk about searchEstate with its founder and joint CEO.
When someone actually shows you how it works, it’s a lot different to just telling you.
There is no limit to a search engine database. It is not reliant upon sustained memberships. It is only reliant upon advertising. Isn’t it nice to know that now the Internet user can grab his/her share of some of the revenues generated?
From the inside, this certainly looks very lucrative. The Beta-Testing has shown amazing and consistent results on the Major Search Engines. searchEstate is certainly capable of achieving it’s promise of free web advertising.
About the author:
Michael A Fowler, M.B.A.
Helping people online since 1998.
Creator and Author of ‘The MBA Way’ system. Expert Author and Web Writer.
Online Trainer and Coach.
E-Mail – Goldcard43@aol.com
Website – http://www.the-mba-way.com/freewebadvertising.htm
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Get helpful info about internet marketing – make sure to go through the site. The times have come when concise info is truly only one click of your mouse, use this chance.
Tags: business marketing management
Posted in Banner Advertising · March 6th, 2010 · Comments (0)