|
Having a fantastic website is all very well and good, but if no one
knows that it exists then it is a complete waste of time and money. As
one forum member's signature used to say "If no one knows about your
site, the launch will be as successful as a lemonade stand smack dab in
the middle of the Sahara Desert." It is all too easy to think that a
few meta tags is going to get your site to the top of Google. There
have been numerous discussions on the forum about the use of meta
keywords and the general consensus is that meta keywords carry little,
if any, weight any more. The debate is on-going so to be on the safe
side I still use them, but I don't rely on them.
The
process of search engine optimisation is a big one, and something that
will not be discussed here. In fact, one of the main points I am going
to try and get across is that you shouldn't rely solely on search
engines for traffic. Here I am going to tell you some ways of promoting
your website without even thinking about Google.
I believe that as a whole, web designers forget about off-line
promotion all too easily. Most of us have our heads stuck inside a
computer pretty much all of the time and we have a tendency to forget
about the bigger world out there, I know I do. We are also very busy
concentrating on the visual and technical aspects of actually getting
the website launched. Before the mid-nineties most people didn't use
the internet and it certainly was not perceived as the compulsory
marketing tool for every business that it is today. But companies
existed back then and businesses flourished. I am not saying that we
should ignore on-line promotion, but rather that we should use off-line
promotion to supplement search engine optimisation and promotion.
The Press and Media
A few years ago my company built an environmental product and
information site for a local client, www.greenandeasy.co.uk. The
clients were well informed about on-line and off-line promotion and
part of their total budget and time was put aside for post launch
promotion, something I consider essential for a successful website.
They contacted many members of the local and national press and were
featured in many magazines and newspapers. Within a short amount of
time they were swamped with orders for their products and requests for
information. A few months later I contacted the BBC with a small
portfolio of my work and they picked the Green and Easy website which
they reviewed on a television program which was aired across the globe.
All it took for this to happen was to find someone who might be
interested in the site and tell them about it.
The press love reporting about communities, after all, their main job is to report to them. We run an art community website www.voodoochilli.net,
and although the vast majority of the visitors find the site via
Google, many highly targeted visitors are there because they have read
about us in magazines or heard about us from friends. The site has also
featured on the BBC website on two occasions which has helped. Like
most community sites, although its primary purpose is to serve and
promote its members, a by-product of this is that it also helps promote
the people that created it. In my opinion community sites are easier to
promote than product sites. The reason is that promoting a site like webforumz.com
for example is great for its members, but it also raises the profile of
the people that created it, work on it, help test it and – It's in
everyones interest for this kind of site to do well. Community sites
also have the advantage that they tend to grow exponentially due to the
fact that the more members a site has, the more referrals will be
generated.
Journalists and reporters are desperate to find good news and
promote it; it's their job, and they have impossible deadlines to meet.
Concentrate on local and regional press initially as you are more
likely to get a positive response. Make it easy for them by telling
them why the site you are promoting is a worthy story and how it
relates to their readers, listeners or viewers. Explain to them how
useful it is to people and how it makes a difference to those that do
use it. It is in your interest to have a clear understanding of these
things anyway. Sometimes a press release can help clearly define this,
and if they use you once they may just do a follow up feature in the
future.
Word of mouth
Word of mouth has to be one of, if not the best form of off-line
promotion. The best thing about it is that it is completely free.
Gigantic websites like YouTube, Google and Facebook
didn't grow simply because of huge marketing budgets (although it
probably helped!). The simple fact is that if you offer a useful
resource, be it a web application or just information that cannot be
found elsewhere, people are going to talk about it. They are also going
to link to you which in turn feeds your on-line promotion. The only
major downside to word of mouth is that it can't be controlled and it
can be negative. It also takes a long time to build up.
There are many other forms of off-line promotional techniques, some of which are listed below.
- Poster and flyers
- Mail shots
- Direct mail marketing
- Paid advertising
- Trade fairs and magazines
- Bill boards
- T-shirts
Guerilla Marketing
In 2002, Acclaim, the computer games giant offered people £500
($1000) plus a free gaming console if they changed their name to
'Turok', the title of a game they were releasing. Think about this for
a minute. £500 and a console really isn't much money to a company as
big as Acclaim, and it received a lot of attention from newspapers,
magazines and websites. I am writing about it now, 5 years later. One
of the most fun ways of promoting your site or product is by this use
of "Guerilla marketing". It is often quite shocking and bizarre so it's
likely to get a lot of attention. Here are some examples:
- Get a bunch (the more the better) of your friends to wear
identical, brightly coloured T-shirts printed with your logo or web
address. Then make them sit somewhere together – like on a bus. People
will not know what is going on and will start asking questions.
- In
the past some brave people have run across a live soccer match wearing
nothing but a temporary tattoo of their logo or web address to try and
get some publicity! I cannot personally condone this because it is
illegal, however it does show you the length some people will go to
promote their brand!
- Pay for someone to have your logo on their forehead.
There are loads more out there, the wackier the better.
Advertising in Radio, Newspapers, Magazines and TV
Finally you could also consider paying for an advert. This tends to
be a quite expensive way of marketing a site. A good little tip a
client once shared with me is to prepare an advert for your local press
and ask them only to use it when they have what is called "lay space".
Simply put, they will use your advert when they don't have many others
and you will make a considerable saving.
I hope that some of the above is useful to you and that you will
consider off-line as well as on-line promotional techniques for your
websites and projects in the future. It might also be a good idea to
mention the idea to your clients when discussing the project budget.
Voodoochilli Design Ltd
www.voodoochilli.com
|
iEntry 10th Anniversary
Announcements
Contact
