I am tring to get advertisers for a start up internet site. Does anyone have any ideas on boosting my efforts?
Answers (21)
Start with a competitor analysis. Note what your clients' major competitors are doing online. Does research on that particular market segment - i.e. if you're client sell shoes, research what the local and international online trends are.
Ask yourself how a 'website' or 'web based service' could benefit your client? Identify some marketing and business objectives and determine how these can be met online.
I guess you and your company are at same position we were at 4 years back for a startup portal in DELHI INDIA. To get advertiser you need to tell them that how would it help them for that you need to identify customer first then target advertisers. You might have to use promotional activities.
For advertisement on a website or magazine a advertiser looks at two things first your customer reach (database ,you gota built it) and second how good marketing policies you have. You need to show them that you are using certain place to market the portal so traffic is there i.e.,BTL,ATL activities such as Direct Marketing,Advertisement etc.
For More contact me through linkedin or sandeepgandotra@gmail.com
Could give leads on database building.
Thanks And Regards,
Sandeep
SEO SEO SEO SEO.
For a startup, marketing budgets either do not exist, or if so are very limited.
Do an analysis of words/thought strings that are relevant to what you offer. And optimize the content to delivery on those ideas.
Boosting Traffic always gives more reasons for advertisers to look at you, as you can offer a wider net to expose eyes to.
There are many display ad techonolgies where you can share the cost of click or CPM impresions on .. like google adsense. Just some food for thought on why i giving the SEO answer :)
George P
Accomplished B2B Sales and Marketing Leader
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1)
I think your potential advertisers will at some time or another be doing search engine lookups to find companies like yours. If you know the key words or search terms these prospective clients are likely to use, I would strongly recommend working with companies like (but not limited to) Google and invest in such initiatives as Google Ad Words and search engine optimization of your website.
Good luck!
Advertisers buy eyeballs. Some will risk buying ‘potential’ eyeballs if you follow my advice below. Proving to them you can bring those eyeballs to your website which in turn gives their online advertisement exposure is the key. Advertisers are now much better educated and since you are launching a start-up, it is difficult to prove you will deliver value on their advertising dollars. So you have to sell ‘potential’ eyeballs.
You do not indicate what your website is about and this is really important so I will give you the generic advice that works in most cases. My suggestion is to be VERY narrow in your initial choice of target market your website will cater to. The narrower the target, the better chance you have of attracting advertisers for that particular niche.
For instance, if your website offers 'counselling services' that is too broad a field for advertisers to see potential. If you position your website to offer ‘financial counselling services for single dads with an income of $50k per year or more and at least one teenager under his care’, that is a niche advertisers can grasp and see potential in. Of course you may offer a broader range of counselling services, but positioning your website in the beginning for one small segment. Once the advertising interest picks up and stabilizes, you can broaden your website’s target market to include other services you offer.
The next question… How do you target market so specifically to one niche using your website? If you are not sure, contact me or ask here again. Take a look at this article I wrote to help people like yourself understand the steps you will have to consider for building an effective website.
Links:
A lot of cold-emailing/calling Plus getting introductions from any business partners you are working with that may already have the relationships with advertisers in place. Also, finding out which media agency represents the advertisers you are targeting.
Having a professional looking media kit helps. Outlining the key value proposition of your site in a few key bullet points in your intro emails is also a good idea. Media buyers want to know a few key things once they have decided that your site might be a good fit:-
1) How much traffic does your site get
2) Where does it come from (broken out by region)
3) What is the main demographic of the site (eg. males between 18-35 with incomes over $xx)
4) How much does the ad space cost - is the CPM competitive with similar sites they are buying ad space on
5) Do you offer any non-CPM rates, e.g CPC, CPA, CPL
Try Google's AdSense or a similiar service via Yahoo!.
https://www.google.com/adsense
Google will provide ads based on the content of your site; and will pay you a portion of the clicks. This can draw in a considerable amount of money if you have large amounts of traffic.
If you do not want to use Google, Yahoo! or MSN to display adverts on your site, then you will first need to generate large amounts of traffic to your site before any advertiser will consider it as a worthy return on investment op.
To increase traffic, SEO is recommended, as is providing high quality copy on your site that is user-friendly and provides value. For resources on SEO; see http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
They have handy tools which will allow you to fully optimize your site so that it will rank highly.
The first tool you should use is the spider simulator. Find which keywords bring business to your site, search them on Google and use the simulator to index their site and find the proper keyword ratio and backlinks that have given them their preferential preference on Google. Copy that forumula. Utilize it on your site and provide a better value to the user than the current top ranked site, and within a few months, you may see your site at 1# for the ranking.
If you do not have time to do this yourself, consider using a SEO firm. However, SEO takes time, a LOT of time, so be prepared to spend a lot of money for quality SEO work that will provide substantial results. As with all things that guarantee strong returns, SEO is an investment that requires a high initial cash outflow and some time before a measurable return is seen.
There are some SEO firms that promise results for as low as $45 with backlinks. These are normally scams with nominal results; that link your page to useless sites that may even cause Google to derank your site because of irrelevancy.
Some firms may promise to bring you traffic via pay per click advertising; but if you are only generating revenue from your ads, it will probably not be cost effective (and depending on your keywords, may cost you a considerable sum). PPC is better suited for companies selling goods or services with high profit margins. If you have a low profit margin (such as with ads), you may be paying up to $100 dollars for each dollar you earn in ad revenue. Therefore, it's probably best to just stick with SEO.
You may also want to list your business on free local directories such as Google's local, which can put your business at the top of search results for a top keyword that's geo-specific ("search marketing chicago"). Two other great and free directories are Yahoo! Local and Yelp.com. Using these directories not only brings you great, quality traffic, but is also cost-effective in comparison to some of the other online directories which charge upwards to $149 a month, for marginal results, if any.
Links:
Clarification added May 3, 2008:
I wrote "The first tool you should use is the spider simulator. Find which keywords bring business to your site, search them on Google and use the simulator to index their site and find the proper keyword ratio and backlinks that have given them their preferential preference on Google."
I meant to say, search to see which sites are showing up on Google for those keywords and use the simulator to study what your competitors are doing that works. Then apply that formula to your own site.
Pratik P
Manager, Legal Business Consulting at Huron, Founder and Visionary of SABAsearch.com
We were in the same position about 3 years back. Our first step was to implement a strong SEO plan. SEO is the smartest way to use your marketing budget, as well as provides a strong presence and credibility to your online advertisers. When they see you pop up on the first page of the search results, sometimes that's enough for them to feel comfort in that "potential" eyeball value (as mentioned above).
Finding your nice market is also another good suggestion provided by one of the previous LinkedIn members. The internet allows you to attract a very niche market by using specific keywords on your website. If you can attract a solid and dense population within a particular niche market, then you will surely find advertisers that want to "tap" into it.
Before you start looking for advertising leads, you'll need to first understand your own website analytics. What is your bounce rate? If it's high, then you want to understand why. Your website may be getting 50,000 pageviews a month, but if the bounce rate is high, then a majority of those pages are being loaded by people who don't even want to be there. This 50,000 pagecount is now a "false" value perceived by your advertisers, who will surely not perform repeat advertising on your site if they receive a low ROI on their advertising campaigns.
My advice is that you don't prematurely try to sell your ads - have some patience and wait until you can solidly offer your clients a value from true and consistent visitors. This may take some time, but will pay off because you will get repeat advertisers if your website truly holds up to its offered value. Repeat satisfied customers is your key to continued success. Wait until your website obtains some consistant statistics, and then sell away!
Try relationship building with the people who use and value your site. My best customers see my site not only as an advertising platform but also as a resource.
Aileen Harris
Try an open source ad network like OpenX.
Links:
Harry H
Principal at Octane Interactive, LLC
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Lead Generation (2), Advertising (1), Events Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Public Relations (1), Project Management (1), E-Commerce (1)
Use Google Adsense and/or ad networks until you generate enough visitors to do it on your own.
Bob S
schmidt@provider.com Sr. Director, Direct Response, Online Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations Services
Some good advice has already been given regarding applying some search engine optimization. I'd start with the on-page factors (keywords, metatags, use HTML heading tags, etc.). This increases the ability of those who are looking for your site to find it, always a good thing.
As to the ad sales piece, I'd offer time-based sponsorships to some initial advertisers. e.g. $X per month and not worry about impression levels, or you could simply guarantee that the ads will run until a certain number of cilcks have occurred. As you gain visitors, at some point say around 5,000 visitors/day, you could then switch over to pure cost per click.
I would then consider building out a sponsor section of my site where I built a page for each sponsor giving them plenty of copy about their business.
Matt C suggests this expert on this topic:
I'm a tad biased, but my SEO co-workers at OrangeSoda.com are fantastic are driving high quality traffic to your website, which in turn will increase your ability to sell ad space at higher prices. Don't underestimate an investment in quality SEO work. Call OrangeSoda for a free quote.
Venkatram K
Practical polymath
Best Answers in: Treaties, Agreements and Organizations (1), Internet Marketing (1), Commodity Markets (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Ethics (1), Computers and Software (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
What will the website contain ?And what is it called? If your website has the same name as your email id I think you have a problem. Honestautoestimates? change it .
Then there is the question of regional/national/global - who do you want to reach?
Mansing B
Marketing and Communication at Tech Mahindra
Best Answers in: Internationalization and Localization (1), Equity Markets (1)
Dear Abbay,
What i believe as a Marketing Professional is, before delivering any thing in the market, you have to know what you are targeting and how to target? niche area or business segments as per your webpage requirments will boost the chances of selection process and profit but at entrance level you have to struggle with the cost and profit?
Think who will buy from you? But you can always your website through number of sales channels to get maximum interest - find SWOT.
I hope this will help!
Mansing Bhor
Hey Abby,
I can see you already have got a lot of good answers. However, there are a number of scenarios in which the desired solution might change slightly
For example, Websites catering to highly active and networked users, for example 14-18 yrs age group, IT professionals etc.
For this category of websites 3-4 shots of Viral campagins works like wonder. Try to make it a comic strip that carries the message also.
Have a look at these virals given below; as a potent tool to attract quality traffic to the site as well as advertisers.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=09hYg38omRk&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nQQKO7JBW3g
Hope it helps.
Use Affiliate networks with good merchant programs!
Start off with earning cost per lead or cost per sale and when you rack up on visitors then you could approach ideal clients with stats showing apx how much $$ you've earned for XYZ company and it'll also make you look bigger as usually only larger merchants would offer affiliate programs through networks i.e. cj.com
Mark L
Chairman of TaxAdviceNetwork.co.uk - the UK's largest network of independent tax advisers
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1)
Good advice above.
Lots of internet start-ups fail as their business model requires income from advertisers. Two things to think about in your quest:
1- Why would you want new visitors to your website to click an advert and then go to another website instead? Is the income you might get from the advertisers worth it or would you be better off ensuring that your visitors buy something from you?
2 - Why would an advertiser pay good money to a start-up site that has no track record of visitor numbers? You'll need to have a good answer to this one if you are to attract any advertisers.
samantha F
Internet Marketing Strategy, Social Media Advisor, Small Business CEO
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1)
I don't mean to be direct, but here goes:
Don't bother with advertisers before you get 10 million pvs/month. It's a waste of resources. Focus on driving the numbers in the right direction, then get your ducks in a row with some of the suggestions listed above.
Good luck.
Links:
Mark O
Affiliate Manager at SFP Network
Best Answers in: Business Insurance (1), Economics (1), Quality Management and Standards (1)
Affiliate Marketing.
Free Salepeople - only paid when they make a sale.
all the answers given here were excellent. most importantly plan. make a site map, thing about everything from the usability to the url extensions.
if this is your first site know that you are going to have a ton of changes after the first draft.
hire an experienced web designer take a look at our site map over night we became 4000 pages you need to organize it and it needs to be categorized.
