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Piggyback PromotionsMy first customer has "retired" to his dream home - a lodge in Northeastern Ontario. I use quotes around retired because if any of you own a lodge, you know that retirement is a myth because there's always something that needs to be done. His website has been online for about three years and visitors to his site usually wind up becoming visitors to his lodge. When the site first went online, he was worried that he wasn't getting many visitors to his website. (Is this sounding familiar?) Of course, if nobody visited his website, it would be a big waste of advertising dollars - not something a small business like his could afford. So, what changed? The thing that kick-started his visitor count was removing one word from his print advertisements and replacing them with his website's URL. You're probably wondering what the big deal is. Everybody already does this, right? WRONG!! I still have clients who do not include their website addresses in their print advertising, despite my repeated insistence that they do so. Usually, the reason is simple. "I forgot this time - but I'll make sure it goes in the next one." If you forget to put your website address in your Yellow Pages advertisement, you get to wait a whole year until you have another opportunity. That gives you a year to forget again. I have a client with a local audience. He drives a truck around the city every day. His truck signage includes his company name and his phone number. He's had a website for two years and he still hasn't updated his truck signage to include his site's URL. I've heard a dozen reasons why he hasn't done it yet, even though his competitors have their URLs plastered all over their vehicles. You may think that this client is unique in his failure to advertise his URL but observation shows that at least 50% of companies with websites don't advertise them in their newspaper ads, store signs or other promotional material that I see. Small to medium enterprises are most susceptible to this malady. Can it be effective? You bet. I work with a fellow who makes signs for a living. The feedback from his customers who specifically promote their website URLs in their advertising is overwhelmingly positive. One of his customers reported his website traffic tripled once his new sign went up. You Can't Rely on Search Engines All The Time!! One of the reasons I hear for not needing to promote a URL in other advertising is because of search engines. Everyone talks about how important search engines are to get your site noticed. While they are important, you can't rely on them all the time. Your target audience may not use the keywords you selected as being the most important. (You did do your market research, didn't you?) Or, if they do, your site may not be found in the top 10 results. Maybe you're a local carpet cleaning company. Are you going to try and get top 10 positions in the major search engines under <carpet cleaning> when the majority of people won't be able to use your local service? Search engines are not the answer to your site promotion requirements. However, if you're doing any advertising, you can advertise your website. It doesn't matter if you use print, radio, TV, word of mouth, car, bus or bench ads, transit shelter posters, subway billboards or skywriting to promote your business - you can piggyback a quick plug for your website in those other media. My first customer is having a great summer at his lodge and he's considering opening for the winter because of demand. He calls me every now and then to complain how much work I'm making for him. He still advertises his website's URL in his print advertising because he knows the difference changing one word made to his business. My customer changed one word. It was a small action that other companies still overlook because it's easy to do so. Somebody once said "Don't sweat the small stuff" but sometimes, it's the small stuff that makes all the difference. Internet
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