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.
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