From: Jeff Allen Subject: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> advertising campaign ABE GOTTESMAN WROTE: >I am currently tasked with creating an effective advertising >campaign... Our ad budget is relatively small... Any >suggestions or recommendations are greatly appreciated. Abe, I would like to recommend a few different methods of marketing and advertising your new site on-line using a limited budget. 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. 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@summerjobs.com