Re: advertising campaign

From: Jeff Allen <jeff_at_summerjobs.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 17:26:04 -0500 (CDT)

Abe, I would like to recommend a few different methods of
marketing and advertising your new site on-line using a
limited budget. 20 When we market our sites we like to take
a cost-per-visitor approach. Since our sites (on-line
career sites) don't sell a product directly to our visitors
we try to keep our cost-per-visitor fairly low.

Here are the best methods I know of. They aren't secrets,
but I have found them effective. If anyone has some other
suggestions please email me because I would love to find
some new creative ways to market on-line:

1) Goto.com - Buy visitors (auction style) at a set rate.
You bid on a keyword, like "Sports", for a set cost per
visitor. When someone searches on the word "Sports" the
returned listings are shown relative to the amount bid per
visitor. For a keyword like "Sports" you will pay 72 cents
a visitor. For "women's soccer" you will pay 2 cents.
Spend some time finding related keywords to your site that
aren't too expensive. Goto.com lets you see how often
keywords are searched on. Even if you only get 10 visitors
from buying the women's soccer keyword phrase you still
have attracted 10 targeted visitors for 20 cents. A
bargain. Also, always use your URL in the goto.com listing
- even if they don't click they may remember your URL for
the future - and you don't have to pay if they don't visit
you directly from goto.com

2) Real Names - At 100.00 per year - real names
(www.centraal.com) allow you to buy names like:
Sportspage: Basketball, Football, Baseball and Soccer
Guides. Then, when users search on a keyword like
"Basketball" in looksmart or Altavista they are presented
with the option to look at Real Names - which should
included your name. Users can click on your Real Name to
visit your site. We get about 120 visitors a month from
our Resort Jobs real name - or 1440 visitors a year for
$100.00 - not a ton of visitors - but a very attractive
cost per visitor of 7 cents.

3) Click Trade (www.clicktrade.com) - Let other sites link
to you - you pay them, and Click Trade, only when a visitor
is referred to you. For about 20 cents a visitor you can
attract some decent links to your site (which will also
help your search engine rankings).

4) Sponsor smaller sites with related content. Find
related sites (Use Alexa, free at www.alexa.com) that have
a decent amount of traffic (use the Links in and Stats info
in Alexa) and similar traffic. Contact them and offer to
sponsor some content on their sites for between 1 and 3,000
dollars per year. You will be surprised at how many sites
will accept small sponsorships, even if they are not
advertised as being available. Caveat: make sure they have
enough visitors to get a return on your investment. You
can also sponsor links on certain sites as well. You may
not have much luck with bigger, corporate sites, but with
smaller, private sites you will find some cash-starved
entrepreneurs willing to give you a link for short change.

5) Advertise off-line in yellow pages - A Web Bound bold
listing is only 50 dollars a year - and their book and
magazine is circulated to several hundred thousand off-line
readers. It is hard to track results, but we always use
it.

6) Banner ads - Target your ads on AdSmart or Flycast -
AdSmart (www.adsmart.net) has some networks (Gen-X, Outdoor
Sports) of sites that you can target as a group. So, you
can reach a bunch of sites with the audience you want by
dealing only with one agency. (Note, we have a site that
AdSmart sells ads for - but in the Career and College
channels). Also, Flycast offers the best way to reach a
mass audience at a low CPM. They have over 800 sites (I
think) that you can reach individually, or as a whole. Of
course, if you are going to use banners make sure you have
really good ones that give users a great reason to click on
your site (giveaway, contest, great content). You can also
use Value Click (valueclick.com) to buy click-thrus on
banners. I have never used this service, but it may be
worth a look if you have a discrete budget.

7) Spend time (and money) getting into major directories -
Make sure you are listed in Yahoo, the Open Directory
(www.dmoz.org) and with Inktomi (Hotbot). List your site
in foreign directories, when appropriate. No matter how
much you spend, the reality is that many of your visitors
will reach you via a directory, review, or search engine
listing. 20

8) Sponsor opt-in email lists. Find some sites with a
related audience that have email lists. Offer to sponsor a
mailing of the list. Your mailing list ad should give
users a very good reason to click through to your site.

9) Have a contest. Spend 5 grand and give away a trip for
two to the Super Bowl, Final Four, etc. Make people search
your site for answers to clues that they must have to
enter. Everyone loves a contest and it is a great way to
get people to your site and to see your site content. It
is also a great reason for a press release (if it is a
really cool prize). Make sure you follow all of the legal
rules of having a contest...

Just some ideas I thought you might be able to use on your
limited budget. Best of luck.

Jeff Allen

About Jobs Network http://www.summerjobs.com
http://www.resortjobs.com
http://www.internjobs.com
http://www.internationaljobs.com
http://www.aboutjobs.com (coming soon).

mailto:jeff_at_summerjobs.com

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Received on Thu Jul 01 1999 - 18:00:37 CDT