Advertising on a Budget -- Part 1: Using Print to Drive Traffic Online

This is the first article of a three-part series. 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 (you can read more about PWC, including a testimonial from the owner of PWC, on my Web site, http://www.writingusa.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 (but more on that in a later article) 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 Part 2.

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. She offers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.co m

---

Winning the Traffic Exchange Game

Winning the traffic exchange game can be done. I was... Read More

Social Bookmarking Traffic Results

The results of the social bookmarking experiment I have been... Read More

How to Increase Link Popularity

Link Popularity refers to the number of links coming from... Read More

5 Power Tips To Double Your Online Sales

"How Can I Double My Sales?" - that must be... Read More

The Most Common Small Business Web Site Traffic Killers

A prospective client asked me to view his web site... Read More

Keyword is the king in the Kingdom of Search Engines Optimization world

Digital Economy : What Is e-Marketing : Internet Search Engines... Read More

Baxter Grabber - Advanced Landing Page Strategy

What you are about to read is the strategy for... Read More

Links to Success

Did you know that web linkage is responsible for a... Read More

How to Get Customers for Free

There's no shortage of ways to spend money promoting your... Read More

Why Traffic Touts and List Pushers Are Bad For Your Business

In this Article we look at the second competitive advantage... Read More

Aspiring Webmasters Want To Know, What Makes A Website Grow?

It appears that most webmasters have come from the world... Read More

Increase Your Web Site Traffic With Link Building

Looking for a way to increase traffic to your web... Read More

131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies

In search engine optimization, "off page" factors have become more... Read More

Do You Need to Marry The Daughter?

For the sake of this article let's forget about search... Read More

Reciprocal Linking Overload - Any Old Link Back Will Do?

Are you attempting to become a Google junior by adding... Read More

Traffic Secrets - Secrets of the Guaranteed Traffic Companies Exposed

Our Story A few years ago, we were struggling... Read More

How to Approach Potential Link Exchange Partners

Exchanging links can be a great way to build relations... Read More

How to Build Web Traffic Daily..

How to Build Web Traffic DailyI - Introduction II -... Read More

Use eBay as Cheap Traffic!

Did you know that according to alexa, www.eBay.com is ranked... Read More

Utilize Those Traffic Exchanges.

I`ve had people come to me and say "Traffic Exchanges... Read More

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website

How can you have effective results in major search engines?... Read More

Jump-start Your Link Building (without Getting Sandboxed)

Link popularity has been written about ad nauseum, but most... Read More

My Top 12 Web Site Marketing Strategies - Part 2

Part 27. Ezine Ads - create an ad for your... Read More

Simple Steps to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Every website owner wants their website to be popular; some... Read More

Online Advertising: 14 Easy Ways To Make Your Web Site Visitors Give You Their Email Addresses

You may have heard many times, that getting the e-mail... Read More

Is There Such A Thing As LAZY Way To TRAFFIC?

Nowadays there are just too many people trying to give... Read More

25 Common Link Exchange & Search Engine Terms

In today's world of website promotion and traffic building, a... Read More

5 Unique Ways To Get More Free Traffic

Ok so the first way to get traffic is not... Read More

Top Tips for Requesting a Reciprocal Link

While most webmasters agree that reciprocal linking is a very... Read More

Your Traffic Building Checklist: 15 Ways to Get More Visitors Who Are Ready to Buy (Part 2)

>When many of my clients first come to me for... Read More

Using an e-Signature to Guarantee a Boost in Your Web Traffic!

Using an e-signature is one of the easiest, most effective... Read More

Importance of Keywords - Wrong Keywords Means No Traffic!

If your new to the internet marketing world, you might... Read More

Targeted Traffic for Your Website - 3 Guaranteed Ways to Create Lift-Off

Targeting traffic for your website is as easy as knowing... Read More