Advertising…what works?

Obviously when you are starting a business you’ve got to look at ways of promoting it. Initially, people think that word of mouth will get them a load of business. It’s a very Irish thing – everyone knows everyone, therefore by spreading the good word that should equal a lot of business. It doesn’t work like that – that said networking is clearly really important and telling people about the business (without boring the s out of people – they’ll only listen so much) – but you have to look at lots of ways at promoting the business and pay for it too.

It obviously depends on who you are trying to attract. In terms of Baba Beag the target market is primarily female – as women tend to do the lion’s share of kid’s clothes and gifts shopping. On the Baba Beag site the customer base is 95% female who purchase – In terms of marketing and advertising – the site needs to focus on generating interest amongst this market. Initially we focused on both PR and advertising. Re: advertising we had to decide where best to spend the cash. Because god knows there are enough advertisers willing to take your money (with the risk of very little return from ill thought out choices).

In terms of spend you have to decide on where to split it for online and offline spend. My experience was that initially the offline spend definitely got eyeballs into the site. It’s always a very good idea to insist on some editorial when you are taking out any advertisement. Don’t listen to these guys who tell you they only give out independent editorial – it’s not true – well not in magazines or supplements. If they want your business tell them you want some editorial. Then you need to look at some online spend – obviously GoogleAds is there – and you should use them as it does get eyeballs into the site. But you should also try and track and set conversion goals that are trackable( i.e. sales) through Google Analytics. This is something that I haven’t done so well but am making a concerted effort to do so now. Then there’s lots of interest sites – for my business obviously there are parenting sites where parents hang out and discuss topics and look for information. Try these and track what they generate. My experience of directories (sites with a façade of information but really don’t provide any meaningful info) are a total waste of money – so be careful where you spend your cash

More anon

Search Engine Optimisation

Just a quick note on this for the time being – will be coming back to this regularly. When I first started the website I was told that google wouldn’t really start ranking me for a few months. And this was my experience. For the first six months I wasn’t coming anywhere in the top 10-20 for my keywords. However, after that I started getting ranked and coming up in the first page for quite a few of my main keywords.

 

Up till this point my google referrals had all come from pay-per-click. Once I saw how effective the organic search could be I started to play around with it. And within a few weeks I started coming in in the top 3 for a lot of keyword searches. I used a tool called the IBP – International Business Promoter. The part that I really used was the function which compared my site to top 10 sites with similar keywords. It then told you how to change your own site to replicate their success. It’s quite tedious but really worthwhile. You see an immediate pay-off in terms of traffic and I also think that people trust a site that comes up high on the organic searches rather than just the pay-per-click. A lot of people I talk to say they don’t even look at the pay-ads and that they purely focus on the organic searches. I’ve seen some stats where they look at the click through rate of the top 3 and it makes an enormous difference to be number 1. So that’s where we should all be striving for.

 

Anyway, more on this later.

How about some PR

When I started the business I have to say I was fairly unversed in the arts of PR. I still am to be honest – but a little more aware. I have to say I find it pretty painful to write up Press Releases and try and put together media packs of various descriptions. But that said, it’s really worth it. I launched the site at the end of June ‘06 – and started to run some PR in mid July. I think summer maybe a good time in terms of getting angles published. A friend of mine was a sub-editor in one of the Sunday Newspapers – I got him to have a run through my Press Release – he made quite a few structural changes – but essentially left the message roughly the same but it was much tighter. Having a really tight and succinct press release is really important. And obviously have a really punchy headline. I’m no expert in this so will leave it as a general rule for anyone writing releases.

But once I was happy with the press release and got together some nice photos I then started emailing and ringing around the various lifestyle and business editors from all the national and regional newspapers. I had two angles that I was trying to push – firstly, lifestyle – a new online children’s site for time poor cash rich mothers – the site was to be an alternative to high street shopping etc… The other story that I suggested to go with was the business angle – discuss the experience of setting up a new business.

Both of these stories were well taken up by both national and regional newspapers. I had coverage in the Irish Times, Indo, Sunday Tribune on lifestyle and on the business story got coverage from The Sunday Business Post, Sunday Times, Irish Indo. A lot of the regional papers ran with lifestyle coverage – like the Kerryman, Corkman, Longford Leader, Donegal Democrat

And then in the run up to Xmas I got a lot more coverage from the Indo again in the Magazine on Saturday. This year I haven’t been as proactive as I should have been with pursuing PR – but still have gotten mentions in various parenting magazines, Fashion Magazines such as Image, and Parenting Supplements in National Newspapers. You really need to keep at it – as painful as that might be.

There’s a Media Contact Directory that you can buy that has all the editors and Journos details in – buy that, get yourself prepared with your P Release and start emailing and calling away. And hopefully you get some coverage – plus it’s all free. Also, use all your contacts – you’d be amazed how many people you know working in media that can get you some PR.