Hello friends, I am starting a daily deal Web site specific for one city. Could you please suggest some effective marketing ideas for my Web site? Basically all my customers are from one city. Thanks
BUMPER STICKERS! For reals... bus signs, taxi signs, local radio, newspaper, sites that you know your city already looks at (craigslist/kijiji)... and so on.
Try to focus on website that are most viewed by the people in your city. Do the research and make it more creative. Best of luck.
Just try some local online marketing strategies please. For example, find some local forums online and then promote your site on these forums; You can also choose to make a deal with the local restaurant or the dry cleaner to give away the list of their customers to you. In exchange you can offer their customers a free lunch or coupons that would enable them to shop at the most happening or at least a fairly good shopping mall of their city.
Google Adwords is great for local campaigns. Craigslist, Kijiji obviously. What about getting a distribution network of local business owners who either for free (or for a price) will place promotional materials for your website in their businesses. Like a stack of postcards by the cash register or a poster or something. Direct mailers might work. Post flyers on local community bulletin boards. Put your URL on your vehicle. Media coverage - try to get the local paper/tv network to run a story on your website. Facebook would probably work well. E-mailers that have an element to them that encourages people to forward them to their friends. You can probably buy advertising space on popular local websites as well. I run a user-generated marketing ideas website that has over 450 marketing ideas on it (http://www.marketing-training-center.com). You might find some good stuff there.
Write articles and visit those sites that people in the city often go to are awesome. Newspaper ad might be a good investment in the start... Participate those group meeting and such might also help you. Good luck
Very nice!!! I am also getting lot of ideas. But advertising is really very tricky unless you try it. I will say trial and error is the best solution. Then only you will realize what is working for you and what is not.
One way that seems to be really effective for local traffic is press releases. News tends to always shoot to the top of Google, and with local news, there is a lot less competition. Just make sure that your keywords are in your title and in the first line of your press release. For example: Daily Deals in "City". You don't say what sort of deals that you're presenting, but it would probably help if you did a more specific title. For example, if you are doing restaurants, you could say, "Today's Best Restaurant Deals in City." Keep the topic specific, but without putting an actual day in there, and you can post these to press release sites about once a week. Don't pay for this, use free press release sites. Good Luck! Teresa
Press releases! How did I miss that one... I second that for sure. Good suggestion tjmiller. Start building your media contacts in your city. You could do the online ones as suggested above, but I think you'll want to supplement that with some offline media attention as well.
- Utilize all the social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, My Space, ETC. - Contact local media and present them with a story. If you are doing something unique, they will write about you and that will be the best free advertising you will ever have. - Research local forums. If it is a bigger city, you may see tremendous results. Think outside the box...sometimes the strangest idea will yield the most results.
Google Maps is a great way to drive massive traffic to your site for free. Also do not overlook offline promotions with flyers and newspaper ads.