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Advertising On A
Budget -- Using Print To Drive
Traffic Online
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by: Michele Pariza
Wacek
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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.
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 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 the next article.
About the author:
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.com
Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza
Wacek
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