Initially when I launched bababeag.ie everyone was giving me advice (for all sorts of things) but especially on how to market and advertise the site. Everybody who I talked to was of the opinion that you had to get your site listed with all the big content providing sites that were relevant to my business. In our line of business that translated into sites such as rollercoaster.ie, magicmum, irishhealth, EUMom etc… all the parenting sites. Initially, it was probably right that I advertised on these to get the name out – but I have to say as time went on the conversion rates from these sites is very low. And as the likes of rollercoaster stick more and more listings in their product pages the throughput keeps on dropping. But the funny thing was nobody mentioned to me about SEO and real online marketing (because people, especially small business owners, just dont have a lot of understanding or experience in these areas).
I stopped advertising on these content sites around June of this year – and it has done nothing to my traffic. Instead I focused on trying to get my site optimised to get free organic listings from google et al. Im not saying i’ve done a great job but I’ve increased traffic whilst saying myself a few grand in advertising costs.
The message I would send out is that if you’re launching a site, of course look for ways to get the name out there – and that probably means paying for it initially. But dont fear experimenting with advertising channels when you build up a client base - and especially focus on optimising your site if you’re an online business (sounds obvious but lots of businesses don’t) which is great because for those that do, there’s a big pay off.
