Small Advertising Budgets

How does the small guy succeed

[cyril kearney]

A potential client came to me today. He has a site and no visitors. The site is selling things aimed at developers and webmasters. (I don't want to be too specific, but it includes books, periodicals and software etc.)

I reviewed the site and it is okay probably a b+ or a-.

Now he wants to conquer the world. His initial advertising budget is $3000 over with more to come if he shows progress.

I would like to know how others would spend this money.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Well Cyril, I hope you enjoy playing with the money in your head :)

Of course, its not as fun in reality when you spend it eh? :)

Although Ive never laid out cash on the web (yet), id want some quality links at the foot of some quality related sites

(Could $3000 get you on to 2/3/4 PR7 Home pages for a year..i.e. good volume of traffic sites?

Im sure the PPC'ers will have many ideas, as will others! People like the idea of spending money when it aint theirs ;)

[tedster]

Pick a few good kw phrases and build one page for each - then submit to INK and tweak away. You might even start with just one page. You'll know when you've got materials developed that will also work for you PPC, and then you can start in on that.

Inktomi's "pay-per-year" is a very happy way to get traffic and develop pages that convert. PPC can eat through that little nest egg in no time while you're scrambling to make things happen.

<added>The job is traffic AND conversion. That's why I'd pay very little until I'm sure I have pages that convert well.</added>

[cyril kearney]

To just finish up this thread. I suggested 2500 being used to advertise in pin-point targeted newsletters.

SEOs got budgeted 500.

The client feels that he wants to try 3000 in a three month period and then wants to provide more money if traffic seems to be growing.

brotherhood_of_LANs idea about going on 2/3/4 PR7 pages is good but I think the short term benefits of the newsletters will prop up this sagging site and I passed along the idea.

tedster's idea was passed along too but I felt the SEO would be in a better position to implement it than me.

Thanks to both of you.

[Mike_Mackin]

>and then wants to provide more money if traffic seems to be growing.

don't forget conversions
you can increase that traffic every month but if it is not converting he/she goes belly up.

If the $3000 doesn't make him/her a profit with promotional money left over the program has failed.

$100 toward PPC can test conversion rates, in some cases.

[cyril kearney]

Mike_Mackin,
I am a strong believer that clicks really don't matter that only conversions do.

I tried to address this by really refining the targeted newsletters where the click to conversion ratio would be better.

The client doesn't necessarily need to make a profit in the first three months but needs to see that he is making progress.

The PPC idea sounds doable.

[bigjohnt]

This also depends upon whether you are trying for instant/direct sales, or trying to create some branding and awareness. In this case, I think we can assume that direct sales is the goal.

I'm with you Cyril, I would focus on optin newsletters, backed up by PPC on cheap terms. Optin newlsetters are generally highly targetted, conversions will be higher (depending on your offer) than PPC.

I would also "cheat" and try to write a few articles to be distributed for "free" publicity at a few ezines. Editors are usually looking for new material, and will give you a sponsor box.

[JamesR]

If he gets an affiliate program set up, offers a decent commission, and then contacts other webmasters, he will have a load of free marketing.

[paynt]

As you say your client is selling books and informational materials so I assume you have some content to back it up. I’d tend towards bigjohnt’s idea and create some articles to find placement for. You can combine this with tedster’s idea of creating some pages around a few good keywords. I would figure out the keywords that convert, I agree with that, and start with promoting those. I would develop an article for each that I could place on the site in an archive (this archives can later be developed – tons of ideas for that). I would look for opportunities to place the article in exchange for a link back and bio. Ideally you would only place a third of the article with - rest of the story (using the right keyword anchor text of course) that leads back to the page on the site where the article can be found. I would then also if you get these little partial articles get the bio and a link with the bio to the home page as well.

These are the pages (the articles) that I perhaps buy into Inktomi with and tweak on, as tedster has suggested. What you’re doing with this is a few things. You’re building content, hopefully drawing in an audience from the articles, creating authority, and of course the whole ‘doorway’ idea in placing them with Inktomi.

Look for higher PR sites to carry your articles. Make them content rich, unique but always have a good lead home. Don’t mess them up with a bunch of crazy crosslinking but do tie them in if you can to other pages on the site where they fit.

Of course this is just one of many ideas. I would also make sure the site is clean, the code is clean, it’s linked into the rest of the site well….blah, blah, blah.

[Crazy_Fool]

$3000 huh? it's easier to get sh*t from a rocking horse than to get $10 from some of my clients ...

so how would i spend $3000? well if the site isn't in yahoo yet, i'd add it there. if it's a worldwide site, might be worth looking at other paid directories, although i'm hesitant about signing up for looksmart uk considering what's happened with looksmart.com

i'd look for some highly targetted keywords and set up overture / google adwords etc - keeping them highly targetted should improve the conversion ratio while keeping the costs down to a minimum

i'd also go for the idea of a few pages in ink, maybe AV and Teoma / ask jeeves as well. i wouldn't go overboard on that as i'm not convinced that traffic levels from this lot would be that high (maybe others feel differently)

might also be worth looking at advertising on webmastering sites - that's where potential customers will be hanging around.

i also like bigjohnt's idea of the free articles cheat.

i'd be interested to hear what forms of promotion you settle on and how they all work out.

[john316]

>> SEOs got budgeted 500 <<

I'd bump that up a bit, at least half.

The other schemes can be measured for effectiveness in a fairly rapid fashion and jettisoned if need be.

SEO is not a flash in the pan "spend", but a strategy well worth investing in for the long haul.