Advertising a website

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paulocon

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Hi,

I have developed two websites (which I won't name here). Bascially, the two websites provide fully featured content management systems for

i) Estate Agents/Auctioneers and
ii) Sports Clubs (GAA, Soccer, Rugby etc).

So, for example - the Estate Agency one allows agents easily manage their property listings, upload photos (dymanic resizing), add news etc. and allows users subscribe for property alerts etc.

The sports one allows clubs easily add fixtures, results, reports, photos, news etc and again allows users subscribe for newsletters etc.

Both have been designed with ease of use in mind - meaning that there is no need for in-house IT expertise to keep the site updated.

My question is if anyone has any good suggestions on how to advertise these services. I already have a couple of happy clients on both sites who will give good feedback... I'd like to steer clear from something like an email campaign..

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
 
It will really depend on your budget and how much time you want to put into it.

How are you willing to spend on advertising?
 
umop3p!sdn,

To be honest, trying to keep the spend on advertising as low as possible. Sorry for the typical response 'as much as possible for as little as possible' answer but just starting out so my budget is quite limited. Bit of a catch 22 situation.

I know the product is good as those using it are very happy - it's just a matter of getting exposure!
 
As a secretary of a sports club I often receive brochures etc via our controlling body from other companies. It would be best to get a list of the secretaries/adminstration contact details form the relevant sports organisation, which they seem to have no problem giving out. For example the Dublin GAA county board. They should if you ask give you the list of the secretaries of clubs in dublin and their email addresses/contact details. If your product is as useful as you state then they would be only too glad to know about it.

As for the estate agents, possibly advertise on a busy property website, other than that again use their regulatory bodies for information.

H
 
I would second the advice to look at Google Adwords. I use it to advertise a property for rent and it has generated many leads and some sales. The main feature I like is that you can set your own daily limit so if you've only 1 euro a day budget then that's the max it will ever cost - this is my budget by the way. One sale (for me) recoups more than a years worth of advertising.
 
Just some wild suggestions here... some may have been already stated and not all maybe relevant or practical in your specific case but hope they help;

* Submit your service to Magazines/online articles for feature inclusion
* Submit to other typical users of your service
* Submit to relevant competitions
* Do up some flyers, brochures, laminates, business cards etc. yourself
* Make alliances, partners with established vendors/services to sell your product/service
* Submit to Free online classifieds and link listings both locally and globally such as http://dublin.craigslist.org etc
* Submit your service to an online article submission sites i.e. you write an article that others can use in their ezines or on their websites and in exchange, they give you "credit" at the end of the article in the form of an "author bio" or credit paragraph.
* Post to forums but oly if your service can provide value to the discussion (include your website or company name in your signature line).
* Ask for referrals and testimonials from your satisfied customers. praises your product or service, ask them to refer you to their friends and associates. Ask them to write their opinions do
* Educate your current customers using tip sheets, fact sheets, helpful hints, etc.
 
Good list. One more suggestion — there are of websites/software applications out there that will automate the task of submitting your website to the main search engines...
 
Adwords are good..make sure you use the right key words. I used to subscribe to adwords which paid for itself but since I have added a database to my site and paid more attention to the key words on each page my visits have actually gone up and I have stopped my google subscription as site is nearly always in page 1 of search!
 
Thanks everyone for all the replies..

Hibernicatio, nice suggestion - my sites are pretty specific in who they are aimed for so I'll try diggin up some contact information for clubs etc..

If anyone knows any publications circulated within the estage agency business, please let me know so I can get straight to my target audience...
 
Gauloise, I think a lot of people out here would love to know how you managed to get such a sucessful hit on your site with key words.
Perhaps you could give even a hypothetical example, or better still an actual example of your key word selection.
 
Well what I do is quite specialised and I am referrring to google.ie searches results pages from Ireland not whole web. It refers to a geographic location and all its regions, counties etc..I took my keywords from my report on adwords and tried to apply (or rather webdesigner did) to as many pages as possible within the site and database.
 
Press release might be an idea. SBP and ST Business sections often have write ups on business solution products.

Ask an estate agent without a website
1. Why they don't have them
2. How many people have contacted them trying to offer them a web package.
I know that some estate agents have had sites designed for free, by designers looking to build up a portfolio.

In relation to Google etc. If somebody who "should" have a website, has not got one by now, chances are they mightn't even know what Google is.
 
You are very niech so direct marketing followed up with a cold call and then a good sales pitch. Yellow pages cheap. list brokers not bad for what you want. look at the Irish direct Marketing association website. youll have to google it. I would search using clubs on google and look at each site see where they could be having difficuty and then get phone number and qualify them. This will usuaily be a comittee purchase so read up on sellingto a committee and then make sure that your marketing is focused on any advantages due to their unique buying process.

I woulkd become very focused. focus your spend only on the exact people that could need your product. depending on your finances this will be as cheap as a phone call. organise apointments. sell sell sell.

You are nieche so get talking to them.

sorry bout the spelling.
 
DrMoriarty said:
Good list. One more suggestion — there are of websites/software applications out there that will automate the task of submitting your website to the main search engines...
Click to expand...

I'd be very very skeptical of these services. It is virtually impossible for anyone to create an automated submission application to hundreds of search egines/directories. They typically try to extract $69.99 or whatever from you and don't work.

Best thing to do is manually submit your site to the biggies (Yahoo/Google), a few relevent directories (Browse Ireland is a good start and Dmoz). Then try to improve your google ranking.
 
The best way to choose your keywords is to carefully look at your most successful competition and determine what keywords they have on their website i.e. if they have invested in some search engine optimisation specialist, you can determine they're most successful keywords by running a keyword density analyser on their site.
 
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