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Other Added - Marketing Case Study: Launching WebSiteMarketingPlan.com (2001 - 2002)
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is often viewed as a quick way to get traffic to your website. After all, the advertising itself is just a few words so it shouldn’t take too long to put it together, get it online and wait for the customers to be delivered to your website on a silver platter. Right?Maybe not.Many businesses use most of the words available in their word count to place the name of their business and they don’t take advantage of researched keywords. PPC advertisers could be paying more money for their ads then they need to because they haven’t investigated less popular keywords that are just as effective and provide a similar return on investment (ROI).In most cases you can even take advantage of a negative keyword. What this means is if you have a company that sells a variety of nuts, you might consider placing a ‘– cashews’ if you don’t actually sell cashews. Essentially this eliminates the PPC advertising to show up on any sites that feature cashews.
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (wit
When you’ve spent time, major time, developing a successful affiliate site, you’ve learned things it would take others years of trial and error to learn themselves. Information you can sell. Perhaps it isn’t about creating the perfect affiliate website. Or how to make money focusing a site on guys who delight in finding certain software bugs. But something that has a large and broad audience, such as an aspect of blogging behavior.Offline publishing takes months, maybe years to get to market, even after you’ve written it. Printing costs are huge, and even if you find the right agent and editor, you’re faced with the daunting task of self-promotion, because only the stars get whirlwind publicity tours and book signings. And in a fast-moving industry, the information could become out-of-date by the time the presses stopped. How can you capitalize upon this knowledge?Ebooks are a great way to share current information, with almost no expense, and the potential for good profit.
The Challenge
WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was to be a companion site to the Web promotion and marketing plan guide "How Much for Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing." Although the approach was relatively new -- marketing plan development integrating traditional and online marketing strategies -- the general "Internet Marketing" category was crowded and very competitive. Additionally, I had much offline marketing experience, but zero online credibility.
My initial challenges when launching the Website were:
1.) to gain online credibility and
2.) to be heard in a crowded and often hype-filled category.
By February, 2002 the site was nearly ready. I had fought through a FrontPage learning curve and had a site brimming with content but a bit hard on the eyes (let's just say I could never make a living as a graphic artist). I signed on for a basic hosting plan with Lexiconn and uploaded my Website. Within days, Alexa found the site. Rank? 17 million and some change.
With the site up but largely unknown, an early focus was to get my target audience -- those looking for strategic marketing and planning ideas -- interested enough to visit WebSiteMarketingPlan.com. Making it even more difficult (wouldn't want to make anything easy on myself), I had decided on a severely limited budget -- no consultants and no expensive marketing programs. Just a computer and a truckload of reference books.
Marketing Site Launch Case Study: The Approach
To gain credibility for both the marketing plan book and for myself, I had to show that the approach explained in the book was solid. For this reason, I developed a marketing plan for the site using the same planning process detailed in the book. When done, I had a summary page with four strategies and four to six programs under each. The 20 programs were to be implemented over 12 -18 months, revised as necessary over time.
Thinking in terms of the customer acquisition stages of "awareness," "interest," "trial," and "repeat," I focused first on implementing marketing programs that would build "awareness" and "interest."
Here are some of the marketing programs implemented February through September, 2002:
Getting Listed in Search Engines and Directories
To gain site awareness I manually submitted the site to about a dozen search engines and directories -- the large ones plus a hand full of specialty sites.
Because of budget constraints the Yahoo! directory, at $299 a year, was not feasible. I paid a one-time submission charge to Looksmart (this was before they "improved" to a pay-per-click model) and submitted two URLs to Inktomi through PositionTech.
I purposely did not submit to Google because I had read more than once that Google rankings may be higher for sites Googlebot finds on its own. I do not know if it made a difference but Google did find the site, with cheer-invoking results.
Publishing a Newsletter
Early on, I started a newsletter and continue to publish every one to three weeks. Strategically, this was both to gain personal credibility and to have my own publishing and advertising venue. The first issue was published in March, 2002 -- with five subscribers, including my mom. lol!
I am adamant about growing a targeted, quality subscriber list so I stayeded away from mass acquisition tactics. Going with slow and targeted methods, my opt-in list at end of September, 2002 was around 600 and growing by 5 -10 daily. Far from spectacular, but in line with my expectations.
Writing Articles
Also to gain both personal credibility and awareness, I wrote and distributed articles. Mostly, I added the articles to content sites. Publishers may reprint an article at no charge as long as the article remains intact and the resource box at the bottom is used. This creates a win-win situation. The publisher gets free content and I get free advertising.
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (with
When we first began franchising our company we believed that the franchisees should be able to call up the founder anytime they wanted to ask a question. We know this would not last forever, in fact we figured until about 120 franchisees or so. We later learned 70 is about all any one person can handle and I beat my head against the wall micro-managing all aspects of the company. It seemed at the time relevant, as I had built the company and knew every single aspect of it, you name I knew it, from legal documents to soap supplies for our “Mobile Car Wash Rigs.”It wasn’t until we had about 50 franchises or so before I realized that the franchisees had felt intimidated to call with what they believed to be non-essential things and thus were flustered and frustrated in not knowing answers to their questions. We solved this later by putting massive amounts of information online in the Intranet System and hiring staff and getting our vendors to better coordinate more positive or absolute tim
With the site up but largely unknown, an early focus was to get my target audience -- those looking for strategic marketing and planning ideas -- interested enough to visit WebSiteMarketingPlan.com. Making it even more difficult (wouldn't want to make anything easy on myself), I had decided on a severely limited budget -- no consultants and no expensive marketing programs. Just a computer and a truckload of reference books.
Marketing Site Launch Case Study: The Approach
To gain credibility for both the marketing plan book and for myself, I had to show that the approach explained in the book was solid. For this reason, I developed a marketing plan for the site using the same planning process detailed in the book. When done, I had a summary page with four strategies and four to six programs under each. The 20 programs were to be implemented over 12 -18 months, revised as necessary over time.
Thinking in terms of the customer acquisition stages of "awareness," "interest," "trial," and "repeat," I focused first on implementing marketing programs that would build "awareness" and "interest."
Here are some of the marketing programs implemented February through September, 2002:
Getting Listed in Search Engines and Directories
To gain site awareness I manually submitted the site to about a dozen search engines and directories -- the large ones plus a hand full of specialty sites.
Because of budget constraints the Yahoo! directory, at $299 a year, was not feasible. I paid a one-time submission charge to Looksmart (this was before they "improved" to a pay-per-click model) and submitted two URLs to Inktomi through PositionTech.
I purposely did not submit to Google because I had read more than once that Google rankings may be higher for sites Googlebot finds on its own. I do not know if it made a difference but Google did find the site, with cheer-invoking results.
Publishing a Newsletter
Early on, I started a newsletter and continue to publish every one to three weeks. Strategically, this was both to gain personal credibility and to have my own publishing and advertising venue. The first issue was published in March, 2002 -- with five subscribers, including my mom. lol!
I am adamant about growing a targeted, quality subscriber list so I stayeded away from mass acquisition tactics. Going with slow and targeted methods, my opt-in list at end of September, 2002 was around 600 and growing by 5 -10 daily. Far from spectacular, but in line with my expectations.
Writing Articles
Also to gain both personal credibility and awareness, I wrote and distributed articles. Mostly, I added the articles to content sites. Publishers may reprint an article at no charge as long as the article remains intact and the resource box at the bottom is used. This creates a win-win situation. The publisher gets free content and I get free advertising.
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (wit
1. Pop-upsOne of the most underused and highly effective ways to capture emails is to create a pop-up window on your web site. This can be a pop-up on entry or exit - they are both effective. When we started using this we saw a 500% increase in opt-in subscribers.2. Subscriber boxYou should prominently provide a email subscriber box on each of your site's web pages. This will significantly increase your sign-ups.3. PostcardIf your customer list is mainly offline you can send out a postcard and offer an incentive for them to send back their email address.4. ContestsContests are a great way to capture opt-in email addresses because most people will have to give you their correct address so they can be informed when they win.5. Advertise Your Autoresponder AddressMany people will run ads advertising their web site. A smarter way is to run ads or
Here are some of the marketing programs implemented February through September, 2002:
Getting Listed in Search Engines and Directories
To gain site awareness I manually submitted the site to about a dozen search engines and directories -- the large ones plus a hand full of specialty sites.
Because of budget constraints the Yahoo! directory, at $299 a year, was not feasible. I paid a one-time submission charge to Looksmart (this was before they "improved" to a pay-per-click model) and submitted two URLs to Inktomi through PositionTech.
I purposely did not submit to Google because I had read more than once that Google rankings may be higher for sites Googlebot finds on its own. I do not know if it made a difference but Google did find the site, with cheer-invoking results.
Publishing a Newsletter
Early on, I started a newsletter and continue to publish every one to three weeks. Strategically, this was both to gain personal credibility and to have my own publishing and advertising venue. The first issue was published in March, 2002 -- with five subscribers, including my mom. lol!
I am adamant about growing a targeted, quality subscriber list so I stayeded away from mass acquisition tactics. Going with slow and targeted methods, my opt-in list at end of September, 2002 was around 600 and growing by 5 -10 daily. Far from spectacular, but in line with my expectations.
Writing Articles
Also to gain both personal credibility and awareness, I wrote and distributed articles. Mostly, I added the articles to content sites. Publishers may reprint an article at no charge as long as the article remains intact and the resource box at the bottom is used. This creates a win-win situation. The publisher gets free content and I get free advertising.
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (wit
In the next five minutes you could have nine high-energy Google ads running live. Each tailored for your own, specific business. And each ad possessing DOUBLE the CTR and ROI of your best performing ads today.Here's how:By the way, you don't need much thought or creativity to do this. What's more, very little typing is required, as you can cut and paste the words we're going to create here, right into your Google AdWords control panel.Now follow my path...1) Open up a new document in Microsoft Word. Insert a simple table that has 3 Columns, and 3 Rows.In the top-left cell of your table type the words, 'Did You Know?'2) Below that, In the second row, type 'Quickly, Easily'3) In the final, Third row type the emotion triggering word, 'Exposed'4) Back to the First row (the one that starts with 'Did You Know');Create a killer headline, using a proven, winning headline formula. Make sure you include the search keywor
Publishing a Newsletter
Early on, I started a newsletter and continue to publish every one to three weeks. Strategically, this was both to gain personal credibility and to have my own publishing and advertising venue. The first issue was published in March, 2002 -- with five subscribers, including my mom. lol!
I am adamant about growing a targeted, quality subscriber list so I stayeded away from mass acquisition tactics. Going with slow and targeted methods, my opt-in list at end of September, 2002 was around 600 and growing by 5 -10 daily. Far from spectacular, but in line with my expectations.
Writing Articles
Also to gain both personal credibility and awareness, I wrote and distributed articles. Mostly, I added the articles to content sites. Publishers may reprint an article at no charge as long as the article remains intact and the resource box at the bottom is used. This creates a win-win situation. The publisher gets free content and I get free advertising.
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (wit
Reciprocal linking has been a widely used strategy for web promotion, in spite of requiring significant effort from us webmasters. First you need to evaluate the convenience of every exchange, then do the actual link publishing and finally, it is necessary a periodical check-up of the corresponding link prevalence.Trying to make things easier for busy webmasters, a wide number of Link Exchange Managers have appeared. These tools are now a very competitive field in the e-Marketing arena. As a result, links in the web have grown much faster than quality contents.The main purpose of current reciprocal linking is to earn link popularity in the search engines, which means better ranking. However, it ads very little value to the Web, and takes away traffic in the same way as it brings it in.For the search engines, telling good from bad links is getting more and more difficult, and it makes sense for them to penalize such links.We have found several evidences showing tha
Joining Organizations
I also become a member of a few organizations. Early on, I joined the eMarketing Association. This has become a mutually beneficial arrangement. In addition to the normal membership benefits, several of my articles appeared in the monthly newsletter and article of the week.
In 2003, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com was also accepted into the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I also joined the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (iAfma) and the Internet Warriors.
Communicating
Personal communication with select high-level marketers and specialists garnered mentions of the site as well. Actions that have led to personal communication with several high-caliber personalities include: 1) Answering questions on bulletin boards, 2) publishing guest articles in my newsletter, and 3) publishing others' material on the site (with permission, of course).
Note that I always initiated contact by giving something of value. I did this for two reasons:
1) More likely as not, I had learned from them through their writing. In my own mind, it was a small payback for that free advice.
2) I am uncomfortable with "selling," so do not push goods/services, etc. on others. If the relationship produces revenue, hooray! If not, refer to #1.
Learning from Others
WebSiteMarketingPlan.com and its companion marketing plan and Web promotion guide are "big picture," planning resources. When it comes to implementing promotional tactics, top specialists have been a tremendous resource. I do not always take their advice, but they are indisputably more knowledgeable than I in their chosen fields. Three of my favorites, in alphabetical order:
- David Frey, MarketingBestPractices.com David's a former Anderson business consultant and top executive. He now makes his living from home with several successful information products/services.
- Paul Myers, TalkbizNews.com Paul has a rare combination of abilities. He can understand issues from all sides, develop innovative marketing programs, and write with great wit. Don't let the rough exterior fool you -- there are some smarts under that hat.
- *Jill Whalen, Search Engine Optimization at HighRankings.com (See note and disclaimer below.) Jill takes an ethical, common sense approach approach to search engine optimization and marketing. She is also highly visible in the search engine optimization community. Several Jill Whalen articles appear in All Info About Search Engines and other information sites. Jill Whalen interviews appear across the Web as well, on sites such as Search Engine Blog. She also runs a highly successful forum.
Other programs were in progress or "on the back burner" until the timing was right.
The Results
The initial challenges - gaining credibility and attracting attention - were well on the way to being met.
As of September, 2002 (seven months after launch), monthly visitors to WebSiteMarketingPlan.com were consistently growing and numbered about 10,300 for the month. Just over 8,000 of those were unique visitors.
The site had a top-5 Google ranking -- usually first or second -- for both "Internet marketing plan" and "Website marketing plan." The site was also in the top ten -- usually fourth, fifth, or sixth -- for "marketing plan" (all terms without quotes).
While the interest level and number of visitors to the site far exceeded expectations at that point, the conversion rates (which had not been a focus) were disappointing. It was time to move to the next stage of implementing the site's marketing plan -- focusing on "trial" and "purchase" through increased attention to improving conversion rates.
*Jill Whalen Note: I am -- as of 2004 -- one of Jill Whalen's forum moderators. So
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