NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> When To Begin Promotions?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> When To Begin Promotions?
Kim Brooks (kbrooks_at_cortland.com)
Fri, 07 Nov 1997 10:37:22 -0800
At 11:16 AM 11/6/97 -0500, Lisa M. Hodgkin wrote:
>
>I'm developing a marketing plan for the next few months to "re-launch"
>our communications suite. To date, there are two divisions of this
>suite, with another in beta testing to be launched in late January. My
>question is when to begin our own promotions...
Your promotions should be ongoing -- now, then another push when the new
site is ready.
Before the site is ready... Keep building traffic. It will give a good
idea of what to expect when the site is more complete, so you can sell more
accurately. In the meantime, do tell everyone what to expect in the
future. PLEASE don't have fake links -- just a simple outline of what's to
come. Or make self-promoting ad banners leading to samples of future
content (with email sign-up boxes right there). Make sure that you are
gathering as many visitor addresses as possible so that you can draw
everyone back again when it's ready with an announcement. Contests,
newsletters or forums are great means of getting those email addresses. It
will be worth the effort.
After the site is ready... use those addresses to draw everyone back.
Contact your PR network again. Push, push, push. Then keep pushing.
Marketing and PR should be ONGOING. New sites debut every day, you need to
stay fresh and in front.
To sell future visitation... go ahead and undersell, just make sure your
contracts are short-term. Like give them the first month REALLY cheap. If
you are super-successful, they've gotten a great deal & will come back. If
visitation is less than expected, you won't feel guilty and they won't feel
cheated (and they will hopefully come back). It's hard enough to sell web
ads; it's near impossible when you don't what numbers to sell. So just get
the visitation up and get whatever ads you can when first building.
Kim Brooks
