Do Business Well

Web site display advertising: You can place an interactive display ad on one of the popular Web sites. For example, you can place an advertisement on the Yahoo search engine. When people access Yahoo, they see your ad. If they want to see your site, they simply click on the ad. The cost of running a Web ad can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. It all depends on the amount of traffic generated by the host site. As I’ve contended a few times, I believe this kind of online advertising should be billed based solely on results. In this case, you should only pay for the number of visits you receive from the host site. If you don’t get any visits, you pay nothing; if you get thousands of visits, you pay more. If you can, negotiate this kind of results-only program.

Web site links and pointers: To generate traffic on your Web site, you want people to discover your existence on other sites. For example, if you have a site about fishing supplies, you want to be listed on all major sites frequented by anglers. You can approach the owners of the sites and ask them to display a hypertext listing of your site. If it’s a really popular site, they may ask you to pay them, or you may be able to negotiate a reciprocal deal by which you list them if they list you. Take a look around the World Wide Web and find the sites which would be visited by your target audience. Then send them an e-mail message asking them to point people to your site.

Newsgroups: If you have an interesting story to tell, you may be able to promote your Web site in a newsgroup. If you’re launching a site about knitting, for example, you can send a message to a knitting newsgroup describing the useful information found on your site. But keep this in mind: newsgroups are not intended for commercial purposes; they’re for people to discuss particular subjects. So be careful using newsgroups for promotion. You don’t want to aggravate the people in a newsgroup by being too commercial in your approach. Tip: If you want to use newsgroups to develop business relationships, spend a lot of time participating in one or two key groups. Offer useful advice to the members. Think of it as public relations rather than advertising.

• E-mail: Be careful about using e-mail to launch your promotion. Don’t send out hundreds of unsolicited e-mail messages announcing your program. You’ll get back a lot of nasty e-mail messages. You can even be kicked off the Internet by your service provider. However, you can use e-mail to send out messages to your existing customers if they have given you prior permission. That’s why it’s important to put e-mail addresses in your customer database, even if you aren’t ready to launch a digital promotion. Once you are, you can use these addressesto send out an announcement. Once again, I reiterate: Don’t send out unsolicited e-mail messages. Get permission first.
• Internet mailing lists: If there is an Internet mailing list related to your business, you can subscribe to the list and promote your Web site on it. For example, if you have a Web site about personal finance, you can subscribe to a mailing list about retirement planning. As a subscriber, you can send a message to the list server which will automatically distribute it to everyone who subscribes to the list. As with newsgroups and e-mail, you have to be careful with this strategy. If you appear to be too self-serving, you will raise the ire of the other members and possibly find yourself expelled from the list. Once again, think public relations, not advertising.
• Commercial online services: You can promote the launch of your digital promotion on one or more of the commercial online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online, and the Microsoft Network. If you have a specific target audience, these services may have special conferences which cater to them. For example, a tennis racket manufacturer may want to participate in a tennis-related conference on America Online. Commercial network online advertising is expensive compared to other online promotions, but it may be able to deliver to your target audience.
• Public BBS networks: In spite of the growing popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web, BBS networks are still going strong. There are thousands of BBSs across North America covering every imaginable topic. In most cases, they’re free to join. Directories of BBSs are available at libraries and bookstores. If you find a BBS which caters to your target audience, you can log in and announce the launch of your digital promotion.

Promoting the launch of your BBS: When launching a BBS, _you want to get a lot of people using it as quickly as possible. It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario: to get a lot of people using your BBS, you need to have a lot of activity on the system; to generate a lot of activity, you need a lot of people using it. For this reason, you need to do something at the beginning to get the ball rolling.

For example, if you’re setting up a BBS for an association, give the service away for free to the first 200 subscribers (if it’s a fee-based service), or enlist a core group of people who will use it actively in the early stages. The initial group will generate a lot of messages, and this activity will attract additional subscribers. Once you reach a critical mass of users and activity, the system will take on a life of its own.

Direct mail and telemarketing are two traditional tools you can use to launch your BBS. You can mail out installation packages to your potential subscribers. The package should contain a disk (with the connection software), installation instructions, and promotional material on the benefits of the system. Also, you can call your potential subscribers and find out if they have a computer and a modem. If they do, you can send them an installation package.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 2

• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 1
• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 3
• Electronic Money and Online Transactions
• Small Business New Product Failure
• Hold regular promotional events
• Digital Television
• Measuring the Success of your Service Provider
• Categorizing Internet Direct Marketing Players continue...
• E-commerce Branding as part of Integrated Marketing Communication Strategy
• What Evidence Do You Have of Success?

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