Everyone needs more traffic!
Do you have a website? Does it work for you or is there room for improvement?
I bought my first website over 12 years ago. At that time things like 'search engine positioning', 'wysiwyg browsers' and 'secure servers' were well into the future. Yes its hard to deny the whole website thing has become more complex over the years. It is however still one of the best, if not the the best, method of promoting your business to the public.
I operate an email newsletter for my current B&B which I use to sell my service on the world wide web. My current subscriber list is sizeable and I have a steady trickle of subscribers produced by various channels of promotion.
The bandbowner.com site was purchased, or should I say the software on which the bandbowner.com website sits was purchased because it fulfilled a considerable number of criteria we believe we required to operate successfully. One of its very many virtues is its' ability to track where traffic comes from and what search phrases are used.
Ever seeking to test methods of marketing we or should I say Tom , he is the techie, took some of the things we learned about website promotion via bandbownner.com and applied it to carlton-lodge.com. It produced some interesting results.
Our goal was to increase the number of subscribers to the email newsletter from the Carlton Lodge site. To do that we had to get the site viewed by more people and to do that we had to raise the profile of the Carlton Lodge website on the world wide web.
At the time all this was happening there was a unique event happening in the publishing world. I am referring to the release of the sixth and penultimate Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Tom figured that there would be a lot of traffic on the web looking for Harry Potter at the time of the launch. More precisely Harry Potter would be typed into search engines throughout the world the nearer and nearer it got to release day.
The trick then was to link Harry Potter to a page on the Carlton Lodge site.
This was done by the purchase of some inexpensive prizes we could give away and the promise of a free weekend to the subscriber whose email address was drawn from the hat on a certain date after the book was published.
What ever criteria you use to measure success this was undoubtedly a success!
By the time the promotion was taken down the email subscriber list was increased by a whopping 30%!
And the cost? £20.00 in prizes, a free 2 day break (£15.00 at cost) two train tickets, we promised the winner a ride to Hogsmeade Station (in reality the North York's Moors Steam Railway) and a copy of the new Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, in total £40.00.
Could you do the same? You must ask the question why not? Below I list the steps we took to boost the traffic to the Carlton Lodge site you do not have to be a rocket scientist to do the same.
- Decide precisely what you want to achieve. Increase traffic levels to your site, increase the numbers on your mailing list hard and soft, get some local/national publicity etc.
- Decide on your prize, a free nights B&B, A romantic Dinner for Two, 2 tickets to watch….etc.
- Decide when the page will go live and when the happening will finish.
- Pick and event, national or local, which you know people will be looking for on the world wide web. If you can contrive a local connection, in our instance the railway, so much the better.
- Create a page on your website with your promotion:
Subscribe here to win…..
Put your address here to receive our brochure…
Enter or competition here to win two tickets to the……
Meet that well known…..when you stay with us - Issue a press release using the Press Release Generator using the actual page's address.
- Put a clear link on you home page to the page you have created.
- Clearly record your success.
When the spiders come to your website they will record any changes you have made and read the page you have created on your 'event'. When search phrases are entered into Google and other search engines your page which will of course be liberally scattered with the search phrases (e.g. Harry Potter) will be found and offered to surfers. Your traffic levels will rise improving your websites visibility and whatever you have done to capture your prospects for future mailings, email or hard copy, with their permission of course you will have more targeted customers to contact for your next promotion.